Motörhead, Overkill (1979)

Thirty-four of the most bullshit-free minutes ever pressed to a record. There are a lot of reasons to dig Motörhead, and they’re just about all accounted for at one point or another on Overkill, their 1979 sophomore album and one of three records (granted one of them was prior-recorded) they’d have out that year in the wake of the success of their 1977 self-titled debut. Too metal for punks and too punk to really be metal, Motörhead would nonetheless become a pivotal name dirtying up the cleaner, classier intentions of the NWOBHM in the early ’80s, and Overkill helped set the stage for that. Its raw power and full sprint were pivotal in the development of thrash as well, and as much as Motörhead — then the lineup of bassist/vocalist Lemmy Kilmister, guitarist Fast Eddie Clark and drummer Philip “Philthy Animal” Taylor — are forever bound to the landmark property that is “Ace of Spades,” songs like “Stay Clean,” “Overkill,” “No Class” and “Metropolis” are every bit as essential, and from the bruiser rock of “(I Won’t) Pay Your Price” to the could-have-been-Hawkwind “Capricorn” and the swaggering “Limb from Limb,” Overkill is a whiskey-drunk, balls-out classic that’s every bit the “they don’t make ’em like this anymore” album its reputed to be.

Motörhead don’t get much coverage around here, unless you count bands doing covers or Woody‘s column, the title of which is in reference to this LP, and I have my reasons for that. Their insurmountable history is one — more tours and records than just about anyone could count — and the fact that they’re more or less a given is another. You might be familiar with Overkill and you might not, but there’s just about no way you’re going to click play on the YouTube video above and it’s the first time you’ve ever heard Motörhead. Shit, they have their own cruise! It’s not like they’re hurting for press or there’s much left to say about them that’s never been said. You might as well write poetry about the moon.

But of course, plenty of people do that as well. I hope you enjoy Overkill. This is the 1996 reissue, so some bonus tracks kick in at the 34th minute. Listen to them or don’t. More Motörhead never hurt anybody, unless you count tinnitus.

—

Kind of a quiet week, at least on a personal level. That suits me at this point. My ankle is just about healed up save for some pretty specific flexibility issues, and my grandmother seems to be getting stronger physically after last week’s scare. She’s 99, so it’s not like she’s gonna go out and do a six-minute mile, but standing up is progress. I also left the house yesterday and didn’t get pulled over by any cops, which was a welcome change from the norm.

Of course, I live in terror even saying such things that a piano will magically fall from the sky as I walk to the mailbox or something, but my point is it was a stressful couple weeks to start 2015 and I’ll take what I can get as regards moments to catch my breath. I’m going to a show tonight in Providence to see USA out of Vietnam, and I’ll have a review of that early next week. Monday, an audio premiere from India’s Shepherd and a premiere of two behind-the-scenes Karma to Burn clips, so plenty going on one way or another.

Also planning on having a new podcast up before next week is out and I’ll review Sonny Simmons and Moksha Samnyasin and Torche albums and the second Black Moon Circle LP if there’s time. The radio stream has been running on the backup server most of this week, so I didn’t do a round of adds, but I should hopefully have something going in that direction by next Friday. Fingers crossed.

Hope you have a great and safe weekend. Please check out the forum and radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

In his second “Spine of Overkill” column for The Obelisk, Chris “Woody High” MacDermott is a man after my own heart, writing about New Jersey thrash heroes Overkill‘s very first demo, Power in Black.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Woody‘s band, Mighty High, recently announced a record release show for their new album, Legalize Tre Bags, for April 20 in Brooklyn.

Please enjoy:

When your humble editor asked me to write about heavy music from the 1980s, I immediately said yes but had a helluva time coming up with a decent name for the column. He rejected all of my suggestions saying that I could do better. I knew he was right and it took some thinking and drinking before coming up with just the right one. Finally, one night it was literally staring me right in my face. I went over to a friend’s place to listen to albums and guzzle his beer. He had recently picked up the triple-LP version of Motörhead’s Overkill. I remarked how the spine of Overkill was dwarfing everything else in his LP collection and I knew I finally had what was needed. Since Motörhead’s Overkill was released in 1979, it’s not eligible for my ramblings on the Obelisk, but I can certainly write about New Jersey’s finest thrash metal band — Overkill. Even though it’s been about 25 years since I’ve seen them live or bought one of their albums they had a profound impact on me.

Back in 1982/’83, as I was really starting to discover all the incredible new metal that was being pumped out across the globe at a furious rate, I was having trouble keeping up. Import records were essential but really expensive. The next step was to get into tape trading. Through classified ads in the almighty Kick Ass fanzine, I started corresponding with other creeps around the country that had lists of tapes that they would dub in exchange for stuff they were looking for. I didn’t have many demos but luckily found some cool dudes who would dub stuff for me if I sent them blank tapes and money for postage. I’d usually send them an extra blank for them to keep or they could send me even more stuff. It was awesome coming home from my after school job to find these packages waiting for me. Who wants to do homework when there are live Exodus shows to listen to? I got Metallica‘s No Life til Leather demo not too long before Kill ’em All was released and was really into it. Most of the demos I was getting were good but nowhere close to that.

But one that really kicked my ass was Overkill‘s Power in Black five-song demo, released in 1983. I figured a band named after my favorite Motörhead album had to be good, right? (I later learned that they almost named themselves “Virgin Killer” after the Scorpions classic.) Their logo was Iron Maiden-esque and they looked totally evil in the xeroxed photo on the cover. And they were from New Jersey! That was a hell of a lot closer than San Francisco. The first sound I heard on Power in Black (or “power in blacks” as we liked to say in New Rochelle) was tape hiss. Lots of it. Heavy tape hiss and then the sinister riff for their theme song, “Overkill,” played by guitarist Bobby Gustafson. A big thud from drummer Rat Skates and bassist D.D. Verni introduced the lead-screech vocals of Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth. If the fidelity on No Life til Leather was primitive, then Power in Black is ancient. It sounds like these guys were playing so loud that the only way the condenser mic on their boom box could record them was if they set it up across the street – thin, trebly, wooshy sound made even worse from being dubbed so many times only added to the appeal. And by the time the song wrapped up with Blitz screaming “KILL!” five times, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to rewind the tape to listen to it again or check out the rest of the songs.

I decided to let the tape play and was rewarded with a pummeling Judas Priest-influenced song called “The Beast Within.” Blitz does some nice Bela Lugosi-ish bellowing on it and there are a few killer time changes to accommodate a variety of headbanging speeds. It’s been suggested that this is one of the very first thrash metal songs ever written since it dates back to 1981. Side one of the tape wraps up with the very fast “There’s No Tomorrow.” After about a minute and a half of mega-speed boogie, things slow down for a metal waltz part. Blitz lets out a bloodcurdling scream and things go back to rapid-fire tempo for a scorching axe solo from Bobby G. The rhythm section is pretty much buried in the noise, but Rat Skates gets some tasty Clive Burr-style fills audible from time to time. Flip the tape over and there are twp more thrash classics – “Death Rider” (not to be confused with Anthrax‘s “Deathrider”) and “Raise the Dead” (not to be confused with “Raise the Dead” by Venom). “Death Rider” has a Sad Wings/Stained Class-style Priest intro before blasting into faster territory. This song later wound up on Metal Massacre V. “Raise the Dead” follows a similar metal template and later turned up as the opening song on their debut album, Feel the Fire.

This tape really blew me away. And when I finally got to see them at L’amour in Brooklyn in either late ‘84 or early ’85, they literally blew me away. Not only were they really fucking loud, they let off these massive explosions that really shook the rafters. Holy shit, that was scary. That wasn’t the only thing that was scary. Overkill had a huge following of really delinquent fuckups. The club was packed with dudes riding the mescalator and/or dusted out. Add Budweiser and Jack Daniels to the mix and you’ve got a really great time. They were also the first metal band that I ever saw where headbangers were slam dancing and stage diving. I was used to being pressed up against the stage, head banging and fist pumping, but now you had to look out for hopped-up degenerates with spikes getting thrown into you. When they covered D.O.A.‘s version of the Subhumans song “Fuck You,” things got even crazier. After that assault, how could I not buy a t-shirt with the catchphrase “Blood Metal Donor” on the back?

In a perfect world Overkill should have released their debut album in 1984. Their epic song “Feel the Fire” was one of the few highlights of the pretty crappy NY Metal ‘84 compilation (Long Island’s Frigid Bich were my other favorite). They released a killer four-song EP called Overkill also in 1984 but the label was lame and it was out of print almost immediately. It contains one of my all time favorite Overkill songs, “The Answer.” Doom metal freaks should track it down. Not many thrash bands really did slow, heavy, Sabbath-style songs back then and it’s a great “Wheels Of Confusion” rewrite. By the time Feel the Fire was released in late 1985 most of their fans knew the songs inside and out and there was suddenly a lot more competition for a headbanger’s limited attention span. A similar thing happened to Exodus. By the time Bonded by Blood was released, most hardcore metal maniacs had all the songs on tape for about a year.

Anyone interested in the early days – of not just Overkill but early thrash metal as a whole – should check out the DVD that Rat Skates put out a few years ago called Born in the Basement. The highlight is when he talks about how a member of the band was kicked out of the group for showing up to band practice wearing a white leather jacket. Say no to white leather, say yes to the Power in Black!