«The Years of Decay» is Overkill’s fourth album. It came out on 13 October 1989 through Megaforce and Atlantic, produced by the band together with Terry Date, and was recorded in June and July 1989 at Carriage House in Connecticut. It is the last Overkill record with guitarist Bobby Gustafson.
“`Country: USA
Genre: Thrash Metal
For fans of: Anthrax, Testament, Exodus
Bobby «Blitz» Ellsworth handles the microphone and D.D. Verni the bass, with Gustafson and Rob Cannavino on guitars and Sid Falck on drums. Overkill were one of the defining names of East Coast thrash, based in New Jersey. The sound here is heavy and at times slower than on their earlier albums, with sharp riffs and a sense of menace that already looked towards the groove metal of the following decade.
«Elimination» is the best-known track and was issued as a single, its video in rotation on MTV’s Headbangers Ball. Next to it stand the charging «Time to Kill» and «I Hate», while «Playing with Spiders/Skullkrusher» runs past ten minutes and shows their more experimental side. The title track, nearly eight minutes long, leans into the slow and heavy, and «E.vil N.ever D.ies» continues the «Overkill» song series from the earlier albums.
The album reached number 155 on the Billboard chart and remains a favourite among their fans. Terry Date’s production, who would later work with Pantera, still sounds loud and clean decades on. For many it is the peak of Overkill’s first era — one of the records that stand beside the old school thrash albums that laid the foundations of the genre — and the one that closed that period in the best possible way, before the changes that followed.
See also: KREATOR – Krushers Of The World and Tankard – Chemical Invasion.
