Review by Rexorcist for Overkill (US-NJ) - The Years of Decay (1989)

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