There’s plenty of variety on offer the adrenaline-fuelled punch of ‘Elimination’, the raw and visceral ‘I Hate’, the smouldering title track and the album’s centrepiece ‘Playing With Spiders/Skullkrusher’. From the moment the swinging blade that is ‘Time To Kill’ kicks in The Years Of Decay gets its head down to deliver a foot-on-the-monitor, horns-held-high thrash-fest. Streamlined, but without sacrificing their core sound, this album is the definitive mission statement, and with the songs to back it up. ‘Overkill III (Under The Influence)’ is a truly spooky tune and brings the album to a fitting finale.įurnished with their best production thus far (courtesy of Terry Date) The Years Of Decay found Overkill joining the major league. Under The Influence finds Overkill expanding their sound by adding acoustic guitar to bookend ‘Drunken Wisdom’ and neo-classical lines to give ‘End Of The Line’ a grandiose feel. When the cyclical riff that heralds the arrival of ‘Hello From The Gutter’ appears it’s time to crank up the volume (it quickly became my neighbours favourite song) and, like an electrocuted spider, the guitar solo mid song is jaw droppingly brilliant. ‘Shred’ is the explosive opener and the band rarely let up for the next 50 minutes. Verni’s bass, whilst never shy, is prominent in the mix and the overall impression is of a band happy in their collective skin. Taking Over was pivotal in developing some progressive leanings, with both ‘Fatal If Swallowed’ and closer ‘Overkill II (The Nightmare Continues)’, breaking the seven-minute mark, it was obvious that the band weren’t going to be confined by any genre constraints.įollowing its predecessor by a mere 16 months Under The Influence picks up where Taking Over left off yet the band sound far more confident. Often called “the Motörhead of thrash” (from who’s album they took their name) Overkill perfectly fused metal musicianship with punk attitude and Bobby Gustafson’s buzzsaw guitar cuts straight through soon-to-be-classic tunes ‘Wrecking Crew’ and ‘Electro-Violence’.
Possessing all the aggression you’d expect from a first-generation thrash band opening shot ‘Deny The Cross’ is suitably satanic and introduced Bobby ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth’s demonic squeal to a wider audience (this offering gate-crashed the Billboard charts). On the strength of that debut, they scored a deal with Atlantic Records and Taking Over was a major step up in class and makes the perfect starting point for this collection. While Overkill’s debut album (‘85s Feel The Fire ) showed great promise they really hit their stride with sophomore effort Taking Over. Collecting six of their best albums The Atlantic Years 1986-1994 is testament to a band who never sold out and perfectly illustrates why they’re so highly regarded today.
As one of the earliest thrash bands to sign to a major label they beat a path through which others followed and, like most pioneers, they were usurped by those who later refined the sound for mass consumption.
Drawing equal influence from punk and the NWOBHM, New Jersey’s Overkill were pivotal in the formation of what became known as thrash metal.