Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Overdrive
Label: Soulfood
Release date: 25.08.2014
Runtime: 45:23
Rating: 4/5
After eight years, Britain’s Overdrive are back on the scene with their fifth release. Don’t mix them up with the Swedish melodic rock revivalists of the same name and a much younger birth certificate. The British Overdrive played their first gig back in 1974 in their hometown of Grantham, under the name Upex, and the lineup already included founding members Tracey Abbott (guitar) and Ian Hammilton (bass), who later declared 1977 as the band’s official birth year. Overdrive are a band whose career has been marked by a heap of ups and downs. They first split up back in 1982, so all they managed to put out was one single, solitary single, »On the Run« (1981), plus two demo recordings. The band reactivated in 1988 and, with erratic gaps in between, racked up four studio albums to this day.
And now, at long last, comes the fifth studio album »The Final Nightmare«, produced by none other than Chris Tsangerides, a man who lived and breathed the NWOBHM movement with his band More. This is the benefactor who, for instance, shaped the sound of the Judas Priest classic »Painkiller« (1990) and of the Y&T album »Mean Streak«. That’s despite Overdrive having gone through a serious shake-up of the lineup two years ago, when a new vocalist joined the ranks, one with a suitably seasoned, »Moses-like« name: Dave Coulter. He replaced Steve Farner, the man with whom the band recorded and released the aforementioned »On the Run« in 1981, as well as the third and fourth studio albums in 2005 and 2006. Judging by what Coulter serves up on »The Final Nightmare«, we can conclude that Overdrive chose brilliantly. It’s an incredibly close approximation of Farner’s vocal characteristics!
The album »The Final Nightmare« is the most honest imprint of what the NWOBJHM delivered with its revolutionary arrival. An album where time stands still for the listener. Lost in time and space. As if it had been made in the first half of the eighties. Sounds odd, and yet. Even though the phalanx of modern-day revivalists from Scandinavia and Germany isn’t creating anything we haven’t heard before, their activity is hugely important, because they’ve rallied the ranks of bands I never would have thought would ever be kicking around again. From Blitzkrieg to Weapon (UK), Tokyo Blade, Battleaxe and of course Overdrive. On »The Final Nightmare« they cling to their tried-and-tested recipe like a drunk to a fence, the one they master best, and so they deliver the best they can. And because they’re utterly sincere in every move, the album gets under the skin of any true lover of old-school heavy metal »erotica« in no time! This is an excellent heavy metal / heavy rock album from the first second to the last, wrapped throughout in an ominous atmosphere, full of gloom, the tolling of the hour of judgment, doomsday! Tsangardies is no Sneap, so don’t expect the ominous theatrics of the new Hell albums, but still. Dave’s voice is the bringer of ultimate doom. It sounds mildly »hollow«, muffled, howling, and brilliantly brings to life the agony of a web of madness and pain. Coulter is far from a vocal acrobat, more of a »uncle of vocal charisma«. The song Twisted in Mind says it all, as Coulter sails through the higher registers with an unconvincing use of falsetto, wavering in vocal power. But he’s got the »venom« and works phenomenally within the structure and sound of the songs. He recalls a cross between Ozzy and Mark Shelton (Manilla Road), two vocalists who can hardly boast athletic vocal training, yet both possess exceptional charisma in the timbre and delivery of their voices! The band builds an exceptionally compact vise of a wall of sound, formed by top-notch guitar riffs from the primordial old school of heavy metal, back when all the pioneering riffs of rock and metal were being struck like sparks.
The songs are full of dark, pompous epic grandeur. It’s a complete drama, steeped in the occult, temptation, a web of madness and pain, where the central hero is condemned to final doom. Nobody escapes the hand of fate, the old hag with the scythe. Over the eight years since the previous album, the ideas were tempered to exceptional maturity. Chris Tsangerides provided an excellent production. Cunning, pissed-off, apocalyptic. The snare is cannon-like, the extra-thick bass line rips tightly across the soundscape, the riffs grip menacingly and roughly, and the keyboards thicken the background of the sound and give it a touch of »chunkiness«. And ruling over all of it is Dave Coulter’s distinctive voice, which adds that atmospheric dot on the »i«. The real punk »dirt«, which only those who developed metal in the days when punk was also in full bloom know how to deliver in sound. Keyboards and guitars work in remarkable tandem. Of course, both keyboards and guitars deliver solos. The keyboards often reach for that Hammond sound, and in the song Taken Young (Ben’s Song) they bring in the ominous feel of »church organs«, which may well give you goosebumps.
If you want the experience of primal heavy metal character without any embellishments, without any kitsch, polish, touch-ups, added symphonic arrangements and chirping synths, without »sound-glossing«, and you’re looking only for the »honest, holy« power of a guitar riff that smashes teeth and sticks your head on a spike, then »The Final Nightmare« is an album that will undoubtedly make you happy. The revived monster has roared again, bristling its spikes! In the glow of the moonlight, the enamel of its sharpened teeth glistens, ready to carve up its victims. Down to the last nightmare from which nobody ever wakes up again :That’s how heavy metal was made once upon a time. And it sounds damn proud in 2014, which means the teeth of the Overdrive beast are by no means chipped!
Lineup
Dave Coulter – vocals, backing vocals
Tracey Abbott – guitar
Tim Hall – keyboards, backing vocals
Ian Hammilton – bass, backing vocals
Scratch Padgett – drums
Production
Chris Tsangerides
Tracklist
1. Invited to Hell
2. Twice Shy
3. Glass Game
4. Twisting My Mind
5. Wasted
6. Lost on a Mountain
7. Nightwalker
8. Taken Young (Ben’s Song)
9. Final Nightmare
