Happy Belated 1991

During the big move from Chicago to Fort Collins, I skipped a month in the Year-a-Month project. So August is 1991, which is a mighty thin year indeed. But lack of quantity does not necessarily imply lack of quality. Read on.

Overkill: Horrorscope - This is a typical Overkill album: alternating between low & slow licks designed to make you feel like you're in a horror movie, and good old-fashioned speed metal. It's good stuff to program to, and the wide rhythm-guitar sound does a great job of blocking out background noise. I could do without the piano-noodling at the beginning of Bare Bones, but I'm a purist.

Motorhead: 1916 - This is a really good Motorhead album, with a lot more variety than many in the past. The last (and title) song, 1916, was a bad idea, though. It features Lemmy trying to sing a slow ballad about fallen war heroes, and it just comes off like the depressed babblings of a drunk. He's better with the heavy guitars and fast tempos of the life-on-the-road party songs that serve as Motorhead mainstays.

Ozzy Osbourne: No More Tears - I ended up listening to most of the tracks on this album 2-3 times, because for some reason my CD-ripping software decided to put the wrong songs into the wrong files, sometimes the same content into multiple files, leaving the proper inhabitants of those files to fizzle out into the ether. There are some really annoying songs on this album, like "Time After Time" and "Mama I'm Coming Home", but otherwise it's the best Ozzy album I've heard yet. He seems to be gaining confidence, and his songwriting reflects it.