Review Summary: A great album from a band that disbanned within a year of it's release
In the midst of the Nu-metal craze of 1998 Kilgore released A Search for Reason, a record filled with hardcore influenced alternative metal. They toured Ozzfest and in 1999 disbanded, making this their tour-de-force and what a force it was.
Steamroller, the opening track, comes in like the machine it’s named after with fast hardcore chords before going into this infectious metal groove. This track already displays the great vocal skills of Jay Berndt, who sounds like a mix between Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots and Fear Factory’s Burton C. Bell (who lends his vocals to TK-421), a sound that fits the music perfectly. He screams, he barks and the guy can actually sing!
Musically I would call this a metal album, but hard-rock, nu-metal and even some prog-rock influences are to be found in the sound of Kilgore. A sound driven by grooving metal riffs (Steamroller, Never Again), great melodic metal ‘ballads’ with big ringing chords (Introverted, Providence) and fast almost hardcore-like songs (Double-Edged Sword).
One thing that stands out on this record are the lyrics and the vocal melodies. In the song Providence – one of the best metal ballads ever written - Jay sings:
‘If you seek the wild horses, bound for uncharted courses, you would never grab the reins, for a chance to learn from your mistakes, stand up and deliver yourself, from all that you know’.
This entire album is filled with great ‘story-telling’ lyrics from the first to the last song.
It’s a shame they never made another record after this, cause this was definitely one of the highlights of 1998.
