{"id":4831,"date":"2012-03-27T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T00:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=4831"},"modified":"2013-06-01T15:56:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T15:56:23","slug":"album-review-overkill-the-electric-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-overkill-the-electric-age\/","title":{"rendered":"OVERKILL – The Electric Age (2012) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

OVERKILL
The Electric Age<\/strong><\/span>
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\nNuclear Blast (2012)<\/span>
Rating: 9\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The resurgence of thrash in the last few years has renewed interest in not only \u2018The Big Four\u2019 but also in some of the genre\u2019s \u2018also rans\u2019. Back in the 80s there were plenty of bands snapping at the heels of Anthrax, Slayer<\/a> and co, but they never quite made it to those dizzy arena-playing heights. Testament probably came the closest, but of all the other bands from that era Overkill have probably been the most consistent, churning out chug-tastic slabs throughout the 90s and the 00s when thrash was a dirty word (despite chart success from Machine Head, Sepultura and Pantera).<\/p>\n

The Electric Age<\/em> is the New Jersey quintet\u2019s 16th album in an amazing 32-year career, and although the band\u2019s early roots lie in punk, their thrash dynamic that they have come to be renowned for is as present in 2012 as it was in 1985. And with the opening one-two of \u2018Come And Get It\u2019 and \u2018Electric Rattlesnake\u2019 ramming the point home, it\u2019s quite evident that this may well already be a serious contender for album of the year. \u2018Come And Get It\u2019 in particular, with its Euro-style power metal sing-along chanting, looks set to be a live favourite and picks up from where the awesome previous effort, Ironbound<\/em>, left off.<\/p>\n

The album plays to the band\u2019s strengths perfectly; Bobby \u2018Blitz\u2019 Ellsworth\u2019s screeching vocal attack bringing melody and anthemic choruses to the fore, backed by frantic speed-metal riffing and D.D. Verni\u2019s trademark bass sound binding it all together. In essence, Overkill\u2019s sound has changed little over the decades, but their knack of writing a strong tune laden with hooks always lets them stand out from the crowd, and knowing when exactly to put their foot down on the accelerator in the right places ensures the album flows along and doesn\u2019t overload the listener with a full-on thrash attack.<\/p>\n

Some songs scrape the six-minute mark, but rather than seeming drawn out the riffs are given room to breathe and evolve, which is particularly evident in \u2018Drop The Hammer Down\u2019. \u2018Old Wounds, New Scars\u2019 starts with a Kreator-style riff, before the album closes on a high with the ominous-sounding \u2018Good Night\u2019.<\/p>\n

Overkill may not be in the same league as the likes of Megadeth<\/a>, but with The Electric Age<\/em> they\u2019ve proven that it may not be record sales that cement their place in metal history, but rather unleashing consistently solid albums. And after three decades of wrecking necks, that can\u2019t be a bad thing at all.<\/p>\n

Neil Not<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OVERKILLThe Electric Age Nuclear Blast (2012)Rating: 9\/10 The resurgence of thrash in the last few years has renewed interest in not only \u2018The Big Four\u2019 but also in some of the genre\u2019s \u2018also rans\u2019. Back in the 80s there were plenty of bands snapping at the heels of Anthrax, Slayer and co, but they never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-overkill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4831"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12196,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions\/12196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}