Wrecking Everything - Live

This live album was recorded after the release of Bloodletting but the song choice isn’t focused particularly on that tour or even their recent albums at all. I think they picked the hardest songs to play from Bobby Gustafson-era and tried to balanced them with the other half of the album being a fine selection of their 90’s best songs, to show live how skillful their new guitarist is, because this is probably the first time they have a guitarist as good as him. At the same time they could try a different set from 85’-95’ Wrecking your Neck Live which was already pretty extensive. “Long Time Dying” and “It Lives” are the only mistakes, probably they were included because of the open air, “stadium gig” feel of those commercial mass-appeal songs, hoping they had some effect over the crowd but I don’t think they ever worked out studio or live. The set is one hour and ten minutes long and the transitions between songs are super smooth, Bobby Blitz´s spoken word intros aren’t very long and don’t take the attention out of the music, what a hell of a frontman! His vocal performance is top notch as well in both styles, clean and raspy.

“Necroshine” is the opener of the album, I always thought it had good riffs but the drumming wasn’t intense enough. The fact that “Thunderhead”, which has pretty much the same structure but is richer rhythmically and was placed right after; kinds of correct that and makes these couple of songs an excellent opening for the gig really. Then we have 4 straight songs from their classic material: “Evil Never Dies”, “Deny the Cross”, “I Hate” and “Shred”. These songs were performed neatly by the new lead guitarist Dave Linsk and the other guy that helps them out live also did a great job on the rhythm. The fast double bass speed metal riffs sound absolutely pummeling with this lineup.

Both guitars are sharp, the fast tremolo parts are nailed precisely as well as the calmed arpeggio parts, leads are gracefully interpreted. The bass guitar is fat, thick and crunchy, with a slight distortion to cut through the mix. “Bleed Me”, the second song from Bloodletting and “Battle” from The Killing Kind also show how good the groove/thrash songs can sound in this rawer, speed-metallish skin. “The Years of Decay” is the last nail of the coffin in loving memory of Mr Gustafson, the acoustic performance by Mr Linsk is as good and dramatic as Bobby Blitz interpretation and lyrics. Touching and smooth as fuck. The last song is “Overkill” from their first record, a perfect encore to close a near perfect live album.

Overkill's second live record was recorded in their native New Jersey turf, and featured a more compact set on one disc that was released alongside a DVD version. By this point the band had an entirely new pair of guitarists, Dave Linsk who had come aboard a few years prior, and Derek 'The Skull' Tailer, a more recent addition, so they've still got that extra rhythm guitar as with the previous live released in 1995. All told, the better selections here are superior in sound to Wrecking Your Neck Live, but that's also the catch: to get there, you've gotta ford a number of lame bounce metal tracks from some of the band's mediocre records, and the general quality of chosen material throughout the 13 cuts cycles back and forth between classic and nearly intolerable.

"Necroshine" (from the 1999 album of the same name) and "Thunderhead" (off Bloodletting) are a pretty poor choice to kick off this order, and to be honest with you they sound even more like lame examples of throwaway 90s groove metal in the live setting than their studio counterparts. Boasting some of the most uninteresting chord progressions in the band's entire catalog, which belong more to any random Machine Head/Pantera jump da fuc up bar band than the black and green, they hardly breed much anticipation for what follows. Thankfully, Blitz' presence is cutting and focused enough that you can, with some level of perseverance, make it nearer the middle of the disc where songs like "I Hate", "Shred" and "Deny the" fuckin' "Cross" await your attention. Hilarious to me that these oldies sound so much tighter and driven than the newer material here; it's almost like the band just knows those are the money shots, and are shoveling the crap out of the way just to push a few records they're actually touring on at the merchandise table.

Still, not all the classics get a great treatment here. "E.vil N.ever D.ies" seems a little limp, "In Union We Stand" a bit dry and repetitious despite the fans' love and involvement, and every time I listen to this I almost blank out by the time the eponymous closer "Overkill" arrives. There's another sequence of newer material with a few From the Underground and Below Tracks ("Long Time Dyin'", "It Lives") which has its moments, and the rare performance of "The Years of Decay" is not too shabby (if you like the original), but ultimately "Deny the Cross" and "Shred" destroy every other song on this several times over, even the rest of the oldies, and it makes me wonder if placing "Electro-Violence", "Rotten to the Core", "Wrecking Crew" and a handful of other goodies in the set in place of....fucking "Battle" or the lamentable "Necroshine" would not have improved it?

Despite my disdain at a few of the set choices, though, Wrecking Everything Live at least sounds decent. You get all of Blitz' great banter between the performances, and the guy sounds great singing. The backing vocals are pathetic, from the overbearing grunts to the flimsier single lines, but the bass is incredibly full sounding and the guitars juicy and thick, a double-edged sword as it makes some of the banal grooves on the newer tunes sound even more goofy. I'm just faced, once again, with the plain fact that my fallout of interest in Overkill throughout the 90s renders another of their live albums 'not really for me', while I'm sure some dude in a wifebeater and who crushes beer cans on his forehead while hailing W.F.O. and Necroshine as the greatest thrash albums of the 20th century will get his money's worth. You win some, you lose some, I just wish I hadn't bought the season pass.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

I actually saw Overkill live two days before they recorded this album. That was my 2nd time seeing the band, and I had always thought that they were the absolute best live band I've ever seen. Their first few live albums had done a decent job of capturing that sound, but somehow not quite as well as, say "Priest in the East" or "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith".

This is the album that gets it right. The production is absolutely impeccable - the mix a bit unusual, but very nicely done. The track selection is solid, though the DVD version does have Fuck You, among other things. Sorry, there goes 2 points right there. I love the official version, but I listen to the mp3s that I got ripped from the DVD more ;-) That one's got 23 tracks, which matches the setlist from when I saw them (except Feel the Fucken Fire and Hammerhead - I think they only played those two in Boston!), so that one I am guessing is complete (sort of, though the DVD also has Hello from the Gutter). Ah well, if you wanted the ultimate Overkill concert, it would be about 58 songs, at least.

Oh yeah, back to the album at hand. The official Overkill site has a sample (www.wreckingcrew.com) - it's "Evil Never Dies", and pretty much is a good representative of the whole album, so if you like that, you will definitely like the rest. Highlights: Deny the Cross (where did they pull that from???), Gasoline Dream (DVD only), Overkill, Bleed Me, oh the whole fucking thing.

Plain and simple, this is the best Overkill release yet. They join Slayer, Judas Priest, and others, in the big list of bands whose live albums are better than their studio efforts.