Overkill - "Horrorscope" (video)
Overkill – “Horrorscope” (official video)
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Overkill’s Horrorscope turns 20 tomorrow. It is one of my all-time favorite metal albums. The title track is one of my all-time favorite metal songs. Its video is one of my all-time favorite metal videos. I wrote about that video four years ago, but I could talk about Horroscope every day.
I still remember its CD longbox vividly, with its red lettering and white edges. Other longboxes from then: Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell (which, also produced by Terry Date, makes for a good comparison), Testament’s Souls of Black, Motörhead’s 1916. Those were exciting times for me.
That’s me, sneaking out of bed to watch Headbangers Ball. That’s me, transfixed while this band I’ve never heard of stomps around some desolate industrial landcape. That’s me, wide-eyed at seeing a double-necked bass. That’s me, with mind blown as I hear doom metal for the first time. (That’s right – a speed-turned-thrash metal band wrote one of the best doom metal songs of all time.) Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth is stamping his feet, his eyes are glowing, and I feel an electricity new to me
The solos seal the deal. I’ve never heard anything like them. That warbling sound – he’s banging on the whammy bar! That almost-neo-classical passage leading into rivers of chromatics! More whammy bar and streams of molten lava! This is not guitar any teacher teaches. One feels it and one channels it, no matter how off-the-wall. The guitars have the strangest conversation, but every word makes sense.
So sit back and enjoy a time when metal bands had long hair, every guitarist looked like John Christ, and negative video effects were really popular. I don’t want to return to this time, but it’s nice to remember youthful innocence. Heavy metal: the promise of the strange and unknown in every longbox and cassette.
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BUY HORRORSCOPE
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