Reviews list for Overkill (US-NJ) - Horrorscope (1991)

I purchased this album as soon as it came out and loved it straight away. I didn't know it at the time (it was my first experience with the band), but Overkill had really tightened the screws with this release. Their albums have always been fun but prior to Horrorscope, they just lacked a little consistency in my opinion. Albums like Years of Decay and Taking Over are fan favourites (and I enjoy them), but I found them to be slightly hit and miss. When the band put their heads down and structured their tracks, they always impressed me, but occasionally things got a bit silly and the wheels fell off somewhat. Horrorscope finds the band in awesome form and they clearly spent a whole heap of time making sure everything was tight and worthy.

Bobby Blitz's vocals also improved dramatically on Horrorscope and while he's still an acquired taste, there are far less awkward moments that make me cringe. The guitar sound is great and the production in general is top notch. I think some of the bands finest tracks are on this album with Coma, Horrorscope, Live Young, Die Free and Soulitude topping the list. Overkill have released an amazing number of albums of the years (15 at last count!) but I see this as the highlight of a long thrashing career.

In the grander scheme of things, despite a career spanning nearly forty years and with my metal listening years fast approaching thirty, I only really started to get on with Overkill from about 2014.  White Devil Armory received enough praise amongst peers for me to give it a whirl when previous attempts to engage with the band had been unsuccessful due to me not instantly getting along with Bobby's vocal style.  Slowly but surely I began to unravel their vast and varied discography, picking my favourites and dismissing the less appealing releases over the past five or six years.

Horrorscope  sits atop the pile of favourites.  I find it one of the most consistent thrash metal albums in my collection if I am honest, perhaps even the most consistent of all.  Surprisingly for me it is not an album that goes near the extremity of my preferred end of the thrash spectrum.  The album is surprisingly accessible and catchy to find in my collection (considering that the likes of Condor and Sadus adorn my shelves as regular plays).  I am a sucker for real chuggin' riffs and that motor engine like efficiency to the riffs on this album just pull me right in.

In terms of the aforementioned consistency they maintain this for eleven tracks which is no mean feat.  Even the cover track doesn't trip the record up.  It just feels full of running still even as it draws to a close.  This was the final album before the groove elements started to creep into the band's sound and to be fair if you manage to achieve a great album like this then it is forgivable to try something new on future releases, although it wasn't as successful admittedly.  I hear melody on Horrorscope as opposed to any real groove influence entering the fray and it is on these more obvious melodic moments such as New Machine that the record loses a bit of entertainment unfortunately.  Not devastating but enough to keep the record away from a full five stars at least.