Seemless SEEMLESS (Equal Vision)

It would be easy to dismiss Seemless as just another side-project band formed by a group of established hardcore musicians who needed a band and needed one quick. The members include former Killswitch Engage singer Jesse David Leach and former Shadows Fall drummer Derek Kerswill, who hooked up with guitarist Pete Cortese and bassist Jeff Fultz to record this debut on their own dime. Originally released on Losing Face last year, the disc has been picked up by Equal Vision, who issued a remastered version at the end of January touting the band as something new and different on the Mass Metal scene. Indeed, Seemless eschew the hardcore bent of Mass Metal in favor of the more traditional alt-grunge approach not wholly unfamiliar to Cortese and Kerswill, who spent two years collaborating in Medium, a band who are really at the root of the Seemless sound. The result carries more echoes of Black Sabbath and Soundgarden than Shadows Fall or Killswitch. Gone are the vociferous outcries Jesse David favored in his former band: instead, he sticks to a clean-cut upper-range tenor that shines over Cortese’s fusillade of detuned power riffs. There are even strong hints of bluesy ’70s hard rock mixed into the punk urgency of "Something’s Got To Give" and "The Crisis." It may not mark a new direction for Mass Metal, but it’s a tried-and-true path to the land of timeless rock.

(Seemless headline the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston next Saturday, March 26, with Reverse, Stephen Brodsky of Cave In, and Of the Hour; call 617-228-6000.)