Album Review: Overkill, "Horrorscope"

After a long hard haul, OVERKILL are back, but not quite as you will remember them. Gone are the days when they had Bobby Gustafson pouring out all the crunchy guitar licks. Bobby left the band last year for reasons of internal band disputes. His replacements (and there are two of them not one), Merrit Grant (ex-FAITH OR FEAR) and Rob Cannovino (a former Overkill roadie) do their best to eradicate his memory and firmly entrench themselves. Bobby 'Blitz' Ellsworth still sings with the same familiar intensity and volume and the drummer Sid Falck really keeps the pace racing along in the old Overkill fashion.

Horroscope is very guitar-orientated, the new approach with two guitarists has the album heading this way. That is probably the main difference between this and the old Overkill sound, there is a lot of guitars chasing each other and fast finger work. Though the technical sound has changed, Overkill have not slowed down in their old age; they still have the same straight-ahead. thundering approach they used in their past albums. As the band is still new as a working unit, some good ideas didn't come across, and some songs like "Live Young Die Free" aren't as memorable as they could be.

But there are some good solid numbers here: "Coma," with its background twang-twang-twang effect, while "Nice Day For a Funeral" has a great beginning and slips into machine-gun-fire bits. "Bare Bones" has a neat, tinkly piano intro not amiss in a slasher movie, and "Infectious" and the title track "Horroscope" are punchy thrash numbers that prove overkill has life in it yet.

I think the next LP will really show where Overkill is, as the new fellows find their space and contribute to the group effort more. Guitar hero worshippers will enjoy the EDGAR WINTER "Frankenstein" cover, a guitar instrumental showcase of the new members.

A solid LP but not outstanding.

Grade B minus

Marion Garden
Riff Raff
October 1991

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!