Performers: Shredhead, Desecrator, Crowbar, Overkill
Location: Graz / Explosiv / Austria
Date: Saturday, November 5, 2016
Overkill, old-school thrashers from New Jersey, are one of those bands who don’t understand or accept the word “break.” The guys have already recorded their new studio album »The Grinding Wheel«, but they’ve pushed its release to February 2017, when they hit the road for a US tour! Still, before the end of this year they unveiled new tour dates for Europe. The band, who also visited the Slovenian capital last March, invited along sludge metal pioneers Crowbar for these new dates, plus two groups: Desecrator from Australia, much younger in years of service but hungry to prove themselves, regarded as a kind of thrash metal revivalists for the modern age, and the sharpened-to-a-point groove deathcore thrash metallers Shredhead from Israel.
For our visit to see this foursome of bands, the most convenient location turned out to be Graz, Austria, and its club Explosiv, which has come back to life over the past year thanks to an interesting program. It’s been pulling better-known, more resonant names from the general metal map back into the club. The packed schedule demanded a strict timeline, so Shredhead took the stage as early as 7:30 p.m. The Israelis, active since 2009, have a studio debut in their pocket, »Death is Righteous«, released last year. The quintet’s polished stage show strikes the pose of a modern, spiked blend of extreme hairdos, combining elements of thrash with some metalcore madness too. Most of the attention went to the gnarly vocalist Aharon Ragoza, who managed to get a good hundred heads in the venue involved in a barely half-hour set, and so coaxed neck-vertebrae workouts out of a few individuals as a result. Shredhead also add the occasional rhythmic tribalism of oriental-sounding moves to their metal format, which of course comes from the band’s geographic origins. Interesting, solid, heartfelt, tight, confident.
Up next were the Australian thrash metal revivalists Desecrator from Melbourne. We skipped this quartet three weeks ago at Ljubljana’s Orto bar, on October 20, 2016, to be exact (apparently the location was too close, joking aside), when they opened the night ahead of Venom Inc. They’ve been promising a new studio album all year, which is supposedly in the final stages of production. In half an hour the band delivered an extremely convincing show. They’re a bristling, brilliantly tight band on stage. You can feel the guys have serious concert mileage behind them. A pleasing dose of black humor in the banter with the crowd from frontman and singer/guitarist Riley Strong, who has an incredibly well-oiled tongue, gave things an extra boost too. As for looks, the guys come across as rather “funny” on stage in 2016, but that’s what old-school revivalism dictates. The “topless macho look” with painted torsos, skin-tight stretch jeans and high-tops. Sweat dripping everywhere. The influence of the Bay Area thrash legacy is palpable, and Riley’s piercing, penetrating vocals stick in your ears. A hot-blooded performance, full of the hooligan fire and untamed adrenaline rush of Aussie stallions. As expected, no “revolutionary turning points” in musical character. Heard it before, but as far as conquering stages and crowds goes, a more than convincing show and a superbly tight band.
Crowbar hardly need a detailed introduction. They’re one of the founders of sludge metal, grown out of the band The Slugs in the second half of the eighties. The quartet keeps its stage minimalism, a total rejection of kitsch and glitz, and Crowbar make up for it with an uncompromising insistence on down-tuned lumbering over musty, slowly rolling riffs, which greedily and thickly grab at the bleeding rhythmic undercarriage of a ten-ton mortar. Kirk Windstein has lost some vocal breath over the years, but he got support from the mixing desk, so his recognizable, for this band rudimentary, raspy madness fired off a pleasing helping of relentless strings of feelings of alienation, disillusionment and personal confinement. The band, who staged a real séance of gloom in Graz, served up first-class sludge, and were bolstered by a returnee and, honestly, (far too long) “missed” bassist “Sexy T”. That’s Tedd Strange, who, just like the short and stocky Kirk, doesn’t skimp on incredible charisma. Crowbar have thus regained physical mass too, and in that department, with the exception of the burly drummer Tommy Buckley, they belong at the very top of the bands on the planet. The band presented its new studio effort »The Serpent Only Lies« with a big swing, playing the title track from it, then Failing While Rising, which was followed by the excellent Plasmic and Pure and I Am the Storm. Older ones were there too: To Build A Mountain, All I Had (I Gave), Existence is Punishmenet, Planets Collide, I Have Failed, so the older fans’ criteria were satisfied as well. The band is of course static on stage. When has it ever been otherwise in their career? But their riffs and execution grab you with the intoxicating hypnosis of old-school treasure of true NOLA sludge stock. A serious battalion of people had gathered in the hall, packing the front rows tight, and the band visibly enjoyed pulling off the show. Kirk kept in contact with the crowd throughout, and so did Tedd, who didn’t hold back on occasional outbursts of enthusiasm. Crowbar in combination with Overkill is a first-rate choice, since they boost the appeal of coming to this tour. Both in terms of genre and as a complete atmospheric turning point of every single concert night. The new album’s material works superbly, and Kirk and company show great creative and performing focus and drive with it, even in the mature years of the band’s career.
Overkill hit the stage at 10:30 p.m. In an hour and twenty minutes of playing, they confirmed the Ljubljana experience from a year and a half ago, when they played CUK Kino Šiška. The stage turned into an uncompromising march of the one-of-a-kind screamer Bobby Bltza, who once again took the lion’s share of attention in the band’s concert theater. With his incredible charisma, of course! The lineup went through a slight “correction” for this tour: drummer Ron Lipnicki had to stay in the US because of family obligations, and for the European run his drum tech Eddy Garcia stepped into his shoes, which of course did nothing to shake the quality of the thrash metal legends’ new live show.
The band was in excellent spirits. What else can you expect from a band like Overkill? Besides the extremely jagged Bobby, with his typical stage pose of hanging off the mic stand, propping his right foot on the monitor and all the gestures, which of course include raising the middle finger of his left hand skyward, it was bassist D.D. Verni who teased the crowd full-bloodedly with his flirting, and Derek Tailer joined the two of them as well, though he was incredibly reserved in Ljubljana, if not outright absent and nearly unnoticeable throughout the entire stage show. Only Dave Linsk looked out toward the crowd a bit shyly during the gig, but he shared friendly glances. Well, his guitar knows nothing of such “friendliness.” Linsk is a superb shredder and once again carried the bulk of the responsibility for all the solos and heavier guitar passages, of which there are luckily not many in Overkill.
What’s so good about this tour? Actually the fact that Overkill haven’t yet started full-blooded promotion of the upcoming new album. That means they played just one new song, Our Finest Hour, for which they also released a single and a video this October, and they opened the show with Armorist, just like in Ljubljana, when they were presenting the album »White Devil Armory«. So the band brought a heap of classics back into the set list that it hadn’t played in a long time, like Coma, Feel The Fire and Infectious, while with the standards of the iron repertoire, Rotten To The Core, In Union We Stand, Hammerhead, Hello From The Gutter, it kept the level of proceedings extremely high all the way, and in that eruptive atmosphere they drew the devil himself out of the lairs of the underground. Toward the tail end, the band lined up the bonbons Coma, Feel The Fire and Infectious, ratcheting the mood up to a peak right at the close of the show. Then came Bobby’s announcement that the band would play one more song, a surprise, and it truly was, when he mentioned the famous rock’n’roll band from Dublin and Overkill tackled the Thin Lizzy classic Emerald (Overkill’s version rips with no compromises, and let’s hope it finds a place on one of their officially released records). After that excellent Overkill take on the Thin Lizzy classic, the guys even more surprisingly said goodbye to the crowd and vanished backstage. The regular part of the show was over with that move.
The band came back for the obligatory encore, of course, which this time they opened with the obviously very popular newer Ironbound. The jam-packed venue was thrown into the air again. As if someone had tossed actual explosive into the club Explosiv. The uncompromising demolition and shredding goes on, then; the band shows no signs of slowing down, no wear and tear, let alone aging. Riding the wings of the untamed, phenomenal Bobby “Blitz,” whom the years simply refuse to touch and who once again stunned with an unbelievable vocal performance, the band saved one more surprise: Elimination from the album »The Years of Decay« (1989). That was followed by the “folk-hero” and universally demanded cover of The Subhumans’ original Fuck You, which squeezed the last quanta of energy out of a thoroughly drunk and smoke-cured crowd.
What to say in closing? An incredible gathering. The mood building from act to act, minute by minute. With the atmospheric peak, of course, coming with the arrival of the evening’s headliners, the one and only Overkill. That showed in the crowd’s participation too, since people had come to Graz first and foremost for Overkill. The event brought together Austrian, Croatian, Italian and of course Slovenian metalheads, mostly thirty and up. There were a few “baldies” in the crowd, but decidedly too few to hope that a new generation has properly grasped the point of the magic of rock’n’roll, and with it metal, and taken it into its own hands, along with the responsibility of keeping that magic alive.
Judging by this set list from Overkill, it’s safe to guess the band will return for another European tour next year, one ruled by songs from the upcoming new album »The Grinding Wheel«. The band heads off on a North American tour in the spring of next year, and for next summer it’s gradually confirming slots at European festival venues; among others, we’ll be able to see Overkill again at the new edition of the Bang Your Head!!! festival, on July 13, 2017.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
OVERKILL:
1. XDᴹ (taped intro)
2. Armorist
3. Rotten to the Core
4. Electric Rattlesnake
5. In Union We Stand
6. Our Finest Hour
7. Hammerhead
8. Hello From the Gutter
9. Feel the Fire
10. Coma
11. Infectious
12. Emerald
—encore—
13. Ironbound
14. Elimination
15. Fuck You
