Free As A Bird

I was a pre-teen and teenager in the dark days of the mid-to-late 80s. For a kid that wanted his music loud, fast, and marginally offensive the powers that be wanted to make it as hard as possible for a 14-year old to get his slab of expletive-strewn metal. When I first started buying music myself it was pretty harmless glam/hair metal. Ratt, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, and Van Halen…those were my entry into purchasing my own music. Sure, Ratt was mostly singing about screwing groupies but it was hidden well enough to avoid detection from worried parents(side note: my parents weren’t worried about heavy metal or bad language.) Hell, even Twisted Sister had a song called “S.M.F.” on their platinum-selling album Stay Hungry which stood for “Sick Mother Fucker”.

There was questionable lyrics for a 12-year old to be hearing, but the songs were catchy and pop-leaning even so no questions were asked.

But as I got a little older there were bands putting pretty blatantly offensive and maybe even disturbing lyrics front and center. W.A.S.P. was a band I got into because my older brother bought their first album. I kept up with them and loved albums like The Last Command, Inside The Electric Circus, and later on The Headless Children(with the great Ken Hensley on organ.) But the album I was always looking for on trips to the mall or local record stores was the single “Animal(F**k Like a Beast)”, complete with the album cover of a codpiece with a circular saw attached to it.

This was the kind of stuff that caught the eye and ear of Tipper Gore who fronted the PMRC, or Parents Music Resource Center for those of you under the age of 40. A bunch of stuck up Washington housewives got together to complain about heavy metal, rock, and rap albums with lyrics about violence, sex, and lots and lots of four letter words. They went so far as to have hearings in Washington about this stuff, bringing up guys like Frank Zappa and Dee Snider to testify(justify) their questionable lyrics. What those ladies didn’t know was that both Zappa and Snyder were extremely articulate, thoughtful, and well spoken and made them all look like prudes.

In the end they decided that any album with bad language or lude lyrics would get an ‘Explicit Lyrics Parental Advisory’ sticker on them. To warn parents that this or that album wasn’t appropriate for little Johnny or Jane. What first looked like an affront to free speech was a means to sell more records. If an album had that sticker on it, I wanted it even more! Instead of it being a scarlet letter it was a badge of honor.

The 80s. Whatcha gonna do?

If an album had that sticker on it I was at least marginally interested in buying it. Unless it was a rap album. I wasn’t into rap, so that didn’t entice me to want to listen to NWA or Ice-T or 2 Live Crew. But Megadeth? SOD? Slayer? Sign me up! In late ’87 I’d read about a band called Overkill and their EP simply called !!!!FUCK YOU!!!!, complete with a big old leather clad middle finger on the cover. They were a Jersey speed metal band that came out of the early East Coast speed metal scene, along with Anthrax and Nuclear Assault. They weren’t trying to hide their disdain for the world. They were laying it all out for everyone to see and I instantly wanted that album.

So in the spring of 1988 on some nondescript Saturday morning I went to town with my older brother and we hit Butterfly Records. Much to my surprise they had gotten a copy of Overkill’s bird-flying EP on cassette and since my brother was 20 years old he was the responsible “adult” with me which let me buy this “offensive” album at such a young age. I purchased my musical contraband and we immediately threw the cassette into the tape player of my brother’s Mazda pick-up and headed home.

As far as 80s speed metal goes !!!!FUCK YOU!!!! is solid. Besides the infamous title track, the EP is a live representation of Overkill. It opens with the Subhumans cover which is like a cross between pure punk rock attitude and the 100 mile an hour speed music of bands like Motorhead, Budgie, and Diamond Head. Honestly, it’s a pretty funny song. Feels more tongue-in-cheek than menacing. It’s not until you got to the next song “Rotten To The Core” where you’re like “Oh man, these guys mean business.” “Hammerhead” is just classic thrash, a song that teeters between metal and hardcore punk with Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth’s vocals distinguishing it and making it a speed metal anthem.

There’s also the “love song” “Use Your Head” that comes barreling out of the speakers with some killer double kick drumming and a chugging rhythm guitar. You can almost feel the sweat forming on your brow while listening to this one. The Phantasy Theater in Cleveland, Ohio must have been sweltering that night as leather-clad metal fans banged their heads till whiplash or Tinnitus set in. “Electro-Violence” closed everything out in a full-on hardcore-meets-speed metal fury.

This was one of those tapes I’d pull out when friends would come over and we’d smirk and head bang in my room, like we were offering up our very own and personal “fuck you” to the world-at-large. Anarchy in the suburbs.

I did end up buying one other Overkill album, 1988s Under The Influence. It was a pretty good blast of punk-meets-leather and studs. They were never quite as intricate and instrumentally interesting as the “Big Four”(Metallica Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer), but they had a street tough vibe to them that I always really liked. Guitarist Bobby Gustafson was a pretty good shredder, his solos landing in the speed picking category of guys like Dave Mustaine, Dan Spitz, and Jeff Hanneman. And Bobby Ellsworth was a great metal vocalist.

Imagine my surprise when my local record shop got an OG Japanese pressing of !!!!FUCK YOU!!!!. Of course I had to get it. They also had an OG pressings of W.A.S.P.’s Inside The Electric Circus and LA Guns’ Cocked & Loaded. I was considering grabbing all three, but since they are OG import pressings and in good shape I wasn’t ready to drop nearly $100 on all three. Thought I’d start out with the Overkill and if the other two are hanging out in the near future I’ll reconsider. I would really like that W.A.S.P. album, as I made a light box in 8th grade Industrial Arts class with “95 Nasty” stenciled on the green plastic acrylic sheet.

Until then, I’ll enjoy my slice of misspent youth with Overkill. I don’t care what you say….