The Jim Powers YouTube channel has uploaded video of OVERKILL‘s entire May 31 concert at Mickey’s Black Box in Lititz, Pennsylvania. Check out the footage below.
OVERKILL will embark on a European tour in late summer. Support on most of the dates will come from Spanish thrashers ANGELUS APATRIDA.
Original OVERKILL bassist D.D. Verni, who was forced to miss the band’s Latin American tour while he was recovering from shoulder surgery, returned to the live stage on May 17 at the Milwaukee Metal Fest at The Rave/Eagles Club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
For the Latin American tour, OVERKILL recruited former MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson as Verni‘s temporary replacement.
In a recent interview with The Metal Podcast, Ellefson was full of praise for Verni, saying: “D.D.‘s amazing, man. Look, I may be David Ellefson, but I ain’t no D.D. Verni, man. I mean, that guy, he’s a masterful songwriter. His arrangements are killer and his parts are very clever and cool. And so, yeah, it’s got my thrash chops up and it’s an honor to just step in and help them out.”
Ellefson made his live debut with OVERKILL on April 11 at C3 Stage in Guadalajara, Mexico.
OVERKILL‘s 10-date “Scorching Latin America 2024” tour wrapped on April 28 in São Paulo, Brazil.
The band is continuing to tour in support of its twentieth studio album, “Scorched”, which was released in April 2023 via Nuclear Blast Records.
“Scorched” offered a new recording environment for OVERKILL as all members were able to record on their own. The mixing of the record was handled by Colin Richardson and his assistant engineer Chris Clancy. Johnny Rodd helped with producing vocals, and finally, Maor Appelbaum took over mastering and adding finishing touches. The band returned to artist Travis Smith to create the album cover art.
Richardson previously worked with OVERKILL on 1997’s “From The Underground And Below”, 2000’s “Bloodletting” and 2003’s “Killbox 13” albums.
Back in January 2017, OVERKILL frontman Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth was asked by Metal Shock Finland why he thinks OVERKILL wasn’t included in the so-called “Big Four” of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX. He responded: “First and foremost, I think it’s necessary to be concerned with your own house as opposed to what other people do.
“I think they’re for sure a great compliment to the metal community, because I think it shows the power [those bands have within] the industry, being able to play the size venues that they did,” he continued. “Obviously, METALLICA is worth the majority of those tickets, because they reinvented music on a heavy level by showing that a band out of San Francisco could make this happen at this large of a scale. And even the new record, the ‘Hardwired’ record, is, to me, back to, let’s say, that angry, aggressive approach that was [present] on ‘…And Justice For All’.”
Ellsworth added: “But when it comes to being selected and not selected, that’s a simple accounting issue. When you talk numbers, numbers make the world go around, numbers put food on your table, and numbers put the ‘Big Four’ in arenas. And they sell enough records to do that.
“For me, it’s not a concern. To even be asked the question from you is quite a compliment with regard to, let’s say, our longevity or tenacity doing what we like doing. But this is quite simply an accounting issue. He who sells the most gets the pole positions.”