Years of decay --- Overkill --- 1989 *Year corrected as per The Batlord below * (Atlantic)
Well we've made it, and we're in the final day of Metal Month. So let's deviate off from the more extreme metal we've been listening to up to now and have some thrash metal, shall we? Overkill are acknowledged as one of the biggest of the East Coast thrash bands and have been going since the mid-eighties, making them among the oldest US thrash bands still on the scene. They boast an ex-member of thrash giants Anthrax, and released their last album in 2012, with their new one, which will be their seventeenth overall, due next year.
A nice little ditty called "Time to kill" opens the album with a dark, grindy guitar rising to meet thumping, punching drums and there's a scream from vocalist Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth before it all kicks off with the kind of raucous abandon and energy you expect from your favourite thrash bands. There's always been a bit of the punk in thrash metal and you can hear it come through here from time to time, but first and foremost this is metal, and it's heavy! "Elimination" is faster with some fine shredding from Bobby Gustafson and Blitz's voice reminding me of Brian Johnson, quite high-pitched but not a scream.
"I hate" is pretty cool fun, but looking down the tracklist I'm quite surprised to see a song that is over ten minutes long. Could be very interesting, could fall flat on its face. We'll know in another two tracks. Very punky chants in this as Blitz snarls
"I hate you!" and Gustafson goes wild on the axe. Lot of unrestrained anger in "Nothing to die for" with a great guitar solo that almost treads at times on progressive metal's toes but quickly returns to its thrash roots. After that we're into that ten-minuter I mentioned, and "Playing with spiders/Skullkrusher" opens on a sort of feedback guitar then a big heavy Sabbathesque riff takes the song, and for a while you wonder if you're listening to doom metal rather than thrash? It's very slow, very grindy, very dark and very heavy. Even Blitz's voice is lower than it has been up to now.
Then about halfway through Gustafson winds up his guitar and the tempo picks up, Blitz's voice rising to meet the change, then Gustafson takes over for the next two minutes or so, ripping off a blazing solo. I'm not sure where "Spiders" ends and "Skullkrusher" begins, but it may be around the eighth minute, when the tempo slows right back down again to the doomy feel of the opening section. The lyric seems to support this theory. "The birth of tension" gets things moving again but it also has that slower feel to parts of it then a nice acoustic introduction to "Who tends the fire" almost fools me into thinking this may be a ballad, but ... no. It builds up nicely on the guitar though until it reveals itself to be a heavy cruncher with some very prog metal guitar and Blitz doing a decent Dickinson impression.
It's one of two long songs, each around the eight-minute mark, that follow each other, the other being the title track. This also begins with an acoustic guitar passage, though the vocal which comes in quite quickly does seem to indicate we could be heading into ballad territory. Well, for the first three minutes we are, anyway, then it ramps up on heavier percussion and stronger guitar, the tempo increasing though still moderately sedate. Much more energy coming through from Blitz and a nice solo from Gustafson, before it drops back to the slower, acoustic guitar and returns to the style of the opening section. It finishes on a powerful, downbeat outro and takes us to the final track.
"Evil never dies" starts with what sounds like cello or violin, a slow, dirgy atmosphere that's really only lacking a big church organ to complete it, then guitar burns into it and thundering drums attack, a rapid-fire delivery from Blitz with some serious shredding from Gustafson. Like, it's okay but a bit raw and basic considering what I've heard from them on this album. Almost sounds more like a tacked-on bonus track, but it appears to be a legitimate one.
TRACKLISTING
1. Time to kill
2. Elimination
3. I hate
4. Nothing to die for
5. Playing with spiders/Skullkrusher
6. Birth of tension
7. Who tends the fire
8. Years of decay
9. Evil never dies
Good solid fun from these guys and I can see why they're so respected in the thrash metal hierarchy. You can also see the influence former guitarist Dan Spitz had later on Anthrax, having begun his career with Overkill just prior to joining the then-fledgling New York thrash giants. I don't feel, on the strength of this album at least, that Overkill are as good as Annihilator, Anthrax or Kreator, though as Grampa Simpson would say, they're not without their charm. Just a little too basic for my tastes. But then, basic can be good, and they've obviously amassed a huge following, having been together now over thirty years. And like I've said before, what do I know anyway?
Read more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overkill_%28band%29