DESTRUCTION — Infernal Overkill (review)

DESTRUCTION — Infernal Overkill album cover Album · 1985 · Thrash Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
voila_la_scorie
In Canada, we used to have a label called Banzai which was responsible for bringing in so many metal bands to my local record store shelf. They also stamped many an album with their “Speed Metal” logo, which looked like a black wheel of axes. Voivod I can clearly remember was marked with those rotating axe chops and so was Destruction’s “Infernal Overkill”.

Of course, I had to have the album, though I recall at the time not being duly impressed as I had with some other albums. The band played fast but was less heavy and more high-toned and speedy. And though they had some good riffs, there were none that stood out for me. When I sold off all my old metal cassettes around 1991, I did not miss this one.

More recently, I was checking out old school thrash albums and discovered this one showing up on a few lists of top old school thrash albums. I decided that it might just be worth it to bring this one home on CD.

I don’t know about the band’s history though I know that this was their first lp and that they had previously released an ep. The follow up album to this, “Eternal Devastation” (a theme here?), is also fairly well regarded. Judging from the sound of the band, I’d say they early on covered Venom tunes but decided to play even faster, likely inspired by the thrash metal movement. Vocalist Schmier doesn’t sound like Cronos but at times there are similarities which I can hear in “The Ritual” and when he sings “mayhem” in another song. Actually, there are two lines in “The Ritual” that I always felt were lifted from a Venom song, though since I only have one Venom album right now, I can’t confirm what song I think it is. There might be some Quorthon influences in the vocals as well.

Venom influences aside, this album is speedy and musically a good example of what thrash metal was trying to do at the time. However, the lyrics sound like they were written by young men who were simply trying to capture in lyric that kind of b-grade Satanic movie subject matter. If Venom could pull it off, then maybe these young German blokes could do the same. Lyrics like “Holy Satan”, and “Jesus Chris is gone” and songs that depict stereotypical images of Satan worship just sound like they were written for young teen-aged boys who think this sounds cool.

I give the band kudos for speed and dark lyrics, but the high-toned guitars and near lack of really heavy riffs makes this less memorable except for the cover art. Not a bad album but not a terrific one either. Good enough if you like early German thrash or speed metal.
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