Overkill (US-NJ) - The Years of Decay (1989)^{Release ID: 1616}

I didn't really know what to expect of this album. After really enjoying Feel the Fire I'd been left feeling a bit disappointed by both Taking Over and Under the Influence. I think I've realized that what I enjoy about Overkill is not necessarily what many other fans enjoy. The Years of Decay initially gave me that same sense of disappointment, particularly considering many consider it to be the best album they've ever released. But it turns out this one’s a grower.

When I read other reviews on RYM, it seems a lot of people list Elimination and I Hate as two of the very best thrash metal songs ever. It's these songs that lead me to my initial frustration as I don't rate them at all. It's not until the 10-minute Playing with Spiders / Skullkrusher that this album really takes off for me. So now it's clearer than ever that I like Overkill when they take their time and craft solid lengthy songs and not as much when they thrash about for three or four minutes. The three highlights on The Years of Decay are the aforementioned Playing with Spiders / Skullkrusher, Who Tends the Fire and the title track, which are all over the 8-minute mark. Time to Kill, Birth of Tension and exciting closer E.vil N.ever D.ies are also pretty good.

Overkill's always been a fun band before anything else, and back when I was first exploring the thrash scene many years ago as a total noob to metal, these guys were one of the major players.  But I rarely return to their albums now because of so many other ventures and the fear that I was neglecting other genres for metal, just like when I neglected too many other movie genres for horror.  So now that I'm back on metal for the time being, this is the perfect time to go over this.

Now once again, these guys are fun, a lot of fun.  Because they focus so much on songwriting and twists and turns each song, it's easy to see why this album became a staple for the band and the thrash fans.  The production is their clearest so far.  They've earned it after an impressive catalogue beforehand.  Of course, it started out with a couple of little problems, despite being a lot of fun.  First of all, the album's all about shifting places, but song of these songs are sharing some of the same ideas and twists.  It doesn't help that they share the same tempo as well.  Nothing super-surprising happens until the guitar solo to Nothing to Die for.  As well, despite perfectly clear production, this also makes the album feel a little empty in the background, like the album's missing another layer that should never have been neglected or removed.  This also allows for some songs to become overlong.  I mean, 56 minutes can easily be too much in a genre where one of the four leading icon albums of said scene is literally half that length.  And I'm talking about Reign in Blood, with the others being Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and Rust in Peace (forget Anthrax for me, will ya?)

But the album has a good deal of creativity and shows much more effort in this vein than with previous works, even if I may call those previous works better for doing a much more impressive job with the elements they had than this album does.  The Sabbathian rhythm to Playing With Spiders was totally unexpected but very much apprciated.  Hell, the singer's iconic voice is just PERFECT for this.  He's basically a thrash variant to Bon Scott, but a better singer overall, so pairing this with doom metal was a good move.  On top of which, how often do we even get thrash bands that venture into doom metal?  Can we just take a moment appreciate the fact that an iconic thrash band with an already good set of albums decided to take this turn and pull it off?

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Thank you for enjoying that moment with me.

This might not be their most well-fleshed out album, but it's good to see that they were trying out some new tricks.  Overkill rarely ever does a bad album because they always have spirit and the willingness to branch out behind them, and ironically, The Years of Decay seems to be the perfect album to fully describe their personality.

88

The 1980s thrash scene gave us some of metal's all-time great albums. However, I only found Overkill to be a functional thrash outfit and re-listening to this so many years on hasn't changed that conviction one iota. I have always found their medium-paced thrash to be uninspiring musically and their songs, in the main, are fairly bland. I dislike the oft-times screeching sub-AC/DC vocals and I can't shake the notion that what Overkill really wanted to be was a good old classic metal band in the vein of Priest or Maiden and jumped aboard the thrash gravy train to gain some exposure. Of course I have no proof that this was the case and may be doing the band a grave disservice, but from the evidence of their music this is the impression I get. Now, this isn't one of those truly awful records as they do have some talent and when they do get it right as on closing track Evil Never Dies their thrashing is not too bad. They seem best though when moving away from out and out thrash. The ten minute Playing With Spiders / Skullkrusher and it's almost doom metal pacing and the slower build-up of the Maiden-esque title track are when the album sounds best in my opinion. So the problem with Overkill for me is the apparent attempt to squeeze their square peg into a round hole.