For over thirty years, Overkill have flown the flag for a dirty, punk-infused brand of thrash, resolutely refusing to compromise and weathering the vagaries of the ever-fickle music industry in the process. With Bobby ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth (vocals) and D.D. Verni (bass) the only constants, Overkill have now welcomed Jason Bittner (ex-Shadows Fall, Flotsam and Jetsam, Stigmata) into the fold on drums and his crushing presence has given the songs on the wings of war a spiky edge that, no matter how familiar the listener might be with Overkill, still raise the hairs on the back of the neck. An exercise in pared-back brutality, the wings of war sees Overkill unleash ten incandescent tracks in fifty minutes, the whole album blazing past in but the blink of an eye and leaving the listener dizzy with the sheer hedonistic fury of it all.
Kicking off with the storming last man standing, a gleaming thrash monster with a proto-industrial opening that harks back to James Cameron’s Terminator, Overkill instantly throw down the spiked gauntlet, daring anyone to enter the ring with a mocking sneer. This is blistering stuff and, if the new production tricks add a touch of additional armour to Overkill’s rhinoceros hide, the inner-workings remain rooted in the 80s thrash that has proved the band’s driving force for the last three decades. After so breathless an introduction, believe in the fight faces a tough challenge, but stands its ground as the band unleash a ferocious barrage of thrash riffing, Bobby sounding ever-more inhuman as he delivers the lyrics like machine gun bullets. It’s a punk-encrusted, thrash-infused groove machine, and there’s a strong argument that believe in the fight is pretty much the perfect Overkill song, refined and channelled into five, mind-melting minutes. Emerging from a gnarly groove, Head of a pin detonates like a shrapnel grenade, Bobby coming off like Axl Rose singing The garden of Eden after a bottle of whiskey and a 200 carton of cigs. Relentless stuff, it gives way to the aptly-titled Bat shit crazy, an apt description of a band who seem to defy the laws of aging with a casual disdain that suggests they have ravaged portraits hidden in their attic. Cruising off the back of a riff that makes you want to leap from your seat and break stuff, bat shit crazy is the perfect antidote to every bad day ever, the band unleashing a full-blown metal anthem in the process. The first half of the album arrives in a pile of shattered teeth and blood in the form of distortion. Opening on a reflective note, the beer long spilled upon the ground and the party long gone, harmonised guitars suddenly burst from out of nowhere as Jason leads the band into a mid-tempo grind that slips and slithers around Bobby’s hellish vocals – the track building over the course of its six-minute runtime into a truly claustrophobic blast of toxic thrash.
The second half of the album unloads with A mother’s prayer, an unstoppable thrash beast that pales in comparison to the white-hot, abrasive punk blast of welcome to the garden state. Based around a hyper-speed riff that sounds like the Sex pistols getting molested by the Berserker, welcome to the garden state is pure adrenalin in sonic form and it’ll be responsible for more than a few coronaries in the pit. Allowing a much-needed breather, the sinister opening to where few dare to walk is but a moment’s respite before the band employ a dark, mid-tempo groove that sounds like the black album on steroids, all creeping melody and tense tom-work. An album highlight, where few dare to walk is a deft exercise in tension and relief and it showcases a different dynamic, before out on the road-kill streaks out from the speakers like liquid fire. The album comes to a searing conclusion with hole in my soul – one last gleaming thrash explosion that comes loaded with hidden layers of melody that guarantee it’s a track to which you’ll return long after the initial rush wears off.
Few bands so perfectly exemplify the punk spirit that runs through the heart of thrash metal and The wings of war is pretty much everything you could want from a thrash album. From the stunning guitar work to bobby Blitz’s towering vocal performance, Overkill hit a perfect ten every step of the way, and the music is ably supported by a blistering production job that threatens to strip the paint from the walls. Thirty years in, Overkill still sound as enraged and enthused as they did at the outset of their career and, in Batshit Crazy, they have a new anthem with which to challenge a whole new generation of metalheads. Molten metal at its finest, the wings of war is pretty much a perfect metal album. 10
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