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GD's Most Dominating Albums Of The 1980's (70-61)

12/09/08 || Global Domination

70. Overkill: Taking over
^{Released: 1987}

Overkill may never have been as popular as their contemporary thrash colleagues, but that shouldn’t be held against them. In the eighties they released a handful of solid records, in the nineties they released a bunch of solid records, and in the new millennium they’ve released some solid records as well. And yeah, I fucking dig ‘em.

“Taking Over” is their sophomore album, and it’s fine fucking one of those. Right from speedy opener “Deny the Cross”, you know Overkill means business. The album contains plenty of songs that would become classics: “Wrecking Crew”, “Powersurge” and the truly blue-collar, brotherhood-of-metalheads anthem “In Union We Stand”.

-Banesupper

69. Obituary: Slowly we rot
^{Released: 1989}

This album reminds me of a seriously sick rhinoceros. It’s big, heavy, brutal and, well… slowly rotting. While deprived of the awesome guitar skills of James Murphy that were to lift “Cause of death” to a new level, this is still an essential death metal album. The trademark sound of Obituary started here: low, rotten cries of John Tardy? Check. Frequent tempo changes? Check. Heavy, down tuned guitars? Check. It’s all here, submerged in the muddy, lo-fi production. When listening to this album, you get the idea that it’s not just music. It’s a plague that corrupts your mind, weakens your body and devours your soul. And it feels fucken great.

-Max Von Laibach (ex-staffer/cocksucker)

68. Helstar: Nosferatu
^{Released: 1989}

An unjustly overlooked classic! Now, if you’re like me (i.e. intelligent), that phrase should set off the “WARNING: Contents May SUCK” alarm in your head, but if there’s one album that deserves the lengthy titles of “unjustly overlooked classic”, it’s Abomination’s first album… but if there’s two, I’d have to go with that one and Helstar’s “Nosferatu”, which is an absolute speed metal classic. I guess you could call it power metal, but this really is a bit too heavy outside of the ethereal vocals and flashy solos. It’s more like Yngwie covering Slayer, but with some of the best and most original riffs and songs ever penned by metalkind. I don’t know why people even bother with Testament when neo-classical thrash like this exists, and you won’t either if you can manage to find this damn album! Also, the lyrics are top-notch, concerning the events of Bram Stoker’s vampiric classic in gory detail, as well as some other fantastic stuff.

-Seker

67. Repulsion: Horrified
^{Released: 1986}

A nasty, crusty riff snarls over disgusting bass ooze. A slight pause. All hell breaks loose! One of the first blastbeats erupts, sounding like a machine gun hosing a greenhouse. Pissed off, painful grunting with lots of “Uuuuaaaaghhh” and an occasional dive-bombing micro-solo. Grindcore fights its way out of the womb in spectacularly violent fashion. Nothing about this is pretty. Punk gave wankery the middle finger. Repulsion takes it home from the bar, fucks it the wrong way, and won’t call it back.

DO NOT FUCK WITH YOUR SPEAKERS, the bass is supposed to sound like that.

-Lumberjack (extra rad special guest/whore)

66. W.A.S.P: W.A.S.P
^{Released: 1984}

The White Anglo Saxon Protestants of W.A.S.P. will forever be remembered for their family friendly, Christian concerts where they served fresh meat, right off the bone, to anyone itching for a taste. This got them into some serious trouble, with bomb threats and hundreds of murder threats; Blackie even got fucking shot at, though he was never hit.

All of this has served them well as an attention-getter but it has also, without a doubt, drawn much attention from Blackie’s songwriting, which, for lack of a better word, is sadly underrated. Blackie’s lyrics were not perfected as of yet (listen to “The Headless Children” to enjoy that) but the music on this albums screams for itself. He gets the ladies shivering with one of the most beautiful ballads ever written: “Sleeping in the fire” and the gentlemen headbanging with just about everything else, earning W.A.S.P. a spot at 66(6).

-Bobby Peru

65. Venom: Welcome to hell
^{Released: 1981}

I remember the first time I walked into a music store and found Venom on the shelves. I was still newly converted to the blacker musical arts and had just learned of this seminal satanic metal band from England, a veritable legend in its own time. I skipped school and drove 90 miles from Jamestown to Fargo with little more than a prayer in my heart that maybe, just maybe, there might be a Venom album to be found. I had a calling, and I had to heed it. And there it sat, a shiny and new CD copy of Welcome to Hell. My heart leapt in my chest, and I recall very briefly worrying that listening to the album might actually damn me to eternal torment. The simplicity of that album cover (clearly designed to mimic Anton LaVey’s notorious Satanic Bible) was overpowering. It seeped evil, for real; or at least it did to my 17-year-old eyes. And while some of the songs contained within may reek of cheese, there are still plenty of classic anthems of evil to be found as well. The band and the album both ascended to godhood on the strength of “Witching Hour” alone. That this album still had the power to have that effect on me a full 15 years after its release, and still has that power now a quarter-century on, makes it essential listening.

-JD Provorse (extra rad special guest/whore)

64. Discharge: Hear nothing. See Nothing. Say Nothing.
^{Released: 1982}

Look at this list: Metallica, At the Gates, Anthrax, Carpathian Forest, Napalm Death, Nasum, Sepultura. What do those bands have in common? We’ll, they’re well respected artists from every corner of the metal world… and they’ve all covered Discharge songs. Aside from doom, there probably isn’t a genre that didn’t feel the impact of “Hear Nothing. See Nothing. Say Nothing” in some way. In the case of hardcore, grind and crust punk the lineage is a direct line from Discharge to whoever your favorite band is. If you’re into thrash, black or death metal, the influence is a little more blurry, but you can rest assured there’s a connection in there somewhere.

All that’s nice, but I guess it’d be a good idea to describe the music. Discharge was one of the first bands to layer distortion and fuck your speakers up. They kept it short and simple, like a hammer to your temple. They screamed, thrashed, rocked and simply pushed the limits of what was punk, what was metal and what was tasteful. They toppled just about every preconceived notion of “good music” and just kept pushing. In terms of grit and grime, they raised the bar and set a standard for ugly that even the nastiest of modern bands cannot match.

-Stephen Fallen

63. Terrorizer: World downfall
^{Released: 1989}

19-fucken-89, people. I despised Napalm Death. They were absolutely among the fastest shit I had ever heard, but they completely sucked. Blasts weren’t really what I was looking for in music. That’s why I never got into Morbid Angel at this time either. I had Slayer when I wanted speed, you know. To me, Slayer was the most brutal shit around. “Hell awaits”, “Reign in blood”… Man, that’s how you play fast while creating memorable songs. Then came Terrorizer and I had to revalue all kinds of shit. Not only were Terrorizer faster than anything I had ever heard, they also managed to compose such hit material one could do nothing but capitulate.

“World downfall” is a journey into brutality, catchiness and endless, endless groove. Oscar Garcia and his cohorts are at the top of their game here. This album is just one of “those” recordings where everything seem to have fallen into the right place (something we cannot exactly say about the second Terrorizer album). The bottomline is: they must have had a certain chemistry within the band to be able to come up with material like what we can hear on “World downfall”. None of the guys’ “regular” bands did/will ever come close to what Terrorizer achieved here. And believe me, I am totally fucken fine with that.

-Lord K Philipson

Class6(66) coverage

62. Rigor Mortis: Rigor mortis
^{Released: 1988}

The riffs on this album will devour your children! Mike Scaccia’s playing is so fast and riff-oriented that it’s almost blinding in its intensity, and Bruce Corbitt’s vocals are absolutely malevolent. Sure, when you say “80s Death Metal”, you think “Consuming Impulse” and “Seven Churches”, but Rigor Mortis’ self-titled debut is every bit as intense as those classics, if not more so. The production is surprisingly clear and listenable for the time it was released, and that echoey eerie guitar tone is absolutely classic and unique. An essential atmospheric and brutal classic.

-Seker

61. Coroner: Punishment for decadence
^{Released: 1988}

That Coroner, the obscure thrash legends that never received their due in life, are to be awarded every fucken accolade now that they no longer afflict the world with their punishing brand of the most kickass technical thrash ever played, is one of the saddest ironies of the metal scene. For records like “Punishment for Decadence”, Coroner should have had the world thrown at their feet. Armed to the teeth with the virtuoso’s skills of guitar god Tommy T. Baron, the technical bass lines and snarling vocals of Ron Royce, and the insane precision of Marquis Mark on the drums, the band started to alter thrash metal’s standards when they released this masterpiece, turning up a few notches the complexity and aggression levels. This is a record that went miles ahead of many of their contemporaries in sheer vision, technical prowess and uniqueness.

Full of hellish, thrashing mad grooves, wild tempo changes, and the circular, sweeping guitar riffs and solos that were a very identifiable trademark of the band, “Punishment for Decadence” sticks out as one of the best thrash records ever. Despite the somewhat shoddy production, Coroner lays out plenty of unbridled violence here. Classic tracks like “Masked Jackal”, “Arc-Lite”, “Shadow of a Lost Dream” and “Voyage to Eternity” serve as both evidence of the brilliance of the band at that stage and as ominous heralds of even better things to come. While personally I consider a fact that Coroner’s later records are even better than this one, there’s no doubt that “Punishment for Decadence” is fucken awesome, a firm favorite of many who appreciate the band for the misunderstood geniuses that they were. Let it play, and it will rip your fucken guts out and smear your face with the dripping blood, have no fucken doubts about it!

-Baalzamon666

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