Kingcrimsonprog
W.F.O (Wide Fucking Open) is the seventh full-length studio album from the East Coast Thrash Metal legends, Overkill. It is an interesting bit of history for the band.
Their first five albums are all absolute classics of Thrash Metal, their sixth album was a diversion into Stoner/Groove Metal territory, but this seventh album is a quick return back to Thrash again, and yet, as it came out in 1994, it still has some Groove to it. It is their return to Thrash and yet it also isn’t pure Thrash all the way through.
The album is pretty damn good. There’s a good mix of fast and slow, modern and old school, familiar and variety. There are some real memorable songs, like ‘Fast Junkie’ ‘Supersonic Hate’ ‘Gasoline Dream’ and ‘Where It Hurts.’ Some of these ended up on the band’s later live albums. There’s also a weird bonus track where they jam out a few cover songs like Voodo Chile and Heaven & Hell.
Interesting fact; the third track uses the same ‘Here comes the pain’ sample that Slipknot use on their debut album.
The downside of the album however, is it has a really weird production job. It has a very loud clunky bass tone, muddy drums, muffled guitars and vocals too low in the mix. Some people can’t get past it. I don’t really notice it when listen to the album on its own, but if you add the songs to a playlist or hear them on shuffle amongst other albums, then it really does stand out as sounding quite unusual.
It isn’t an absolutely essential album like their first five albums are, but I would still recommend it to any warm blooded Thrash fan (or Fast Junkie), who is looking for more.