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HDK (Hate Death Kill) is a side project of Sander Gommans, better known as guitarist of Gothic Metal outfit After Forever. System Overload is aptly named, as not only are there a lot of people participating on this – 13, including 6 on vocals alone – and the music is a little bit all over the place as well. Melodic Death meets Gothic meets Power Metal, you get everything from the "restrained" Gothic style to rather happy-sounding parts, all the way to aggressive and heavy guitar shredding. No surprise there, all decent though the mix of genres can often get messy, switching back and forth enough to send you into an epileptic fit. Some rather crappy sound effects are used on occasion, very unnecessary and detrimental to the album.

On the vocal side, well, with 6 people doing them, what do you expect? You get your melodic Death growls which are tolerable but not all that great – merely "OK", a lot of clean vocals ranging from a semi-operatic/Gothic style, to a slightly more positive-sounding, "Heavy Metal style." There's a bit of rap-ish junk in there too, thankfully kept to a minimum. The multiple changes of styles within one song vary from tasteful to downright retarded – some parts are just plain annoying. Your mileage may vary, but I've never been fond of this kind of stuff.

Personally this is not something I'll ever listen to again, but if you like albums that are all over the place (literally) and have a liking for Melodic Death/Gothic/Power Metal, then give this a try.