Every band needs to get a start towards greatness, and heavy
\nmetallers Overkill are no exception. Although their commercial
\nattraction has been on the wane for no good reason, their music has
\nremained challenging and progressive, raising metal to new levels
\nover the last ten years or so.<\/p>\n
And then, there’s
\nTaking Over<\/i>, their 1987 major label debut (and second
\nrelease for MegaForce). Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth and crew have some
\nsolid moments on this album, but the overall sound hurts the album
\n– making it, sadly, almost indistinguishable from some of the other
\ncutting-edge metal from that time like Slayer and Anthrax.<\/p>\n
At times, it’s almost like the bass work of D.D. Verni is
\ncompletely buried in the mix, and the “snap” of Rat Skates’s drum
\nwork has been washed out. This is a major disappointment to me –
\npossibly because I know now what this band was capable of, both in
\ntheir sound and their songwriting.<\/p>\n
Ah, the songwriting. There is more than glancing evidence that
\nOverkill was a better than average metal act. Cuts like “Wrecking
\nCrew,” “Fatal If Swallowed” and “Powersurge” all sound just as good
\ntoday as they did 11 years ago. But it’s on other songs like “Deny
\nThe Cross” that the songwriting shows that it needs to grow a bit.
\n(And, no, I’m not picking on “Deny The Cross” for its subject
\nmatter; this could have been a decent song with a little more work
\n– and, obviously, better production.)<\/p>\n
Ellsworth is in fine voice throughout Taking Over, and guitarist
\nBobby Gustafson sounds like he’s doing the work of three guitarists
\nthroughout this album. Check out “Overkill II (The Nightmare
\nContinues)” as proof of his six-string capabilities.<\/p>\n
Sure, some of the tracks have a little bit of rust on them
\ntoday, such as “Electro-Violence”. But despite the production
\nqualms I have,
\nTaking Over<\/i> is still kind of fun to listen to at times. I
\njust wouldn’t want to make this one a regular part of my diet –
\nespecially when I know that Overkill has tastier selections in
\ntheir catalog.<\/p>\n
Now, I do have to keep in mind that this was only Overkill’s
\nsecond album, and I’m a bit biased because I’ve heard a lot of
\ntheir later work. But I’m not saying that
\nTaking Over<\/i> is a bad album; it’s just one that shows the
\ngrowing pains a metal band can go through. It’s still worth a
\nlisten or two, if approached with a mixture of respect and
\ncaution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5912],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-36130","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-overkill","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36130"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36130"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}