Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: 02/22/2019
Album length: 56.38 min
Production: Chris “Zeuss” Harris
Genre: Thrash Metal
When Overkill, one of the longest-running classic thrash metal outfits on the planet, drop a new album, it’s always a good time. The undying elder statesmen of thrash metal, a genre that, worldwide, sits about as close to punk’s legacy as it gets, are back this year with, count ’em, their 19th studio album. Vehement and unbridled. Defiant and relentless. They return on the wings of war. Just like the album title says, of course.
Overkill have said their piece, of course. They’ve got nothing to prove, and when they put out new studio material there’s hardly room for surprises. The current lineup has been together for a good long while. Guitarists Derek Tailer and Dave Linsk know each other inside out, and Bobby Blitz and D.D. Verni are buddies going back to their school days. Overkill are therefore a musical constant that can’t and won’t disappoint. True, for the new album they had to bring a new drummer into the fold, Jason Bittner, which turned out to be an even better pickup than his predecessor Ron Lipnicki. Bittner is an outstanding technical juggler behind a drum fortress, and his body of work with Shadow Fall proves it. Playing with Overkill is a walk in the park for him, and if the band ever decided to stretch out their arrangements, Bittner has plenty of untapped reserves of technical skill and layering. But fans surely wouldn’t want that, and Overkill wouldn’t dare do anything of the sort in their wildest dreams anyway.
The vision stays firm and clear. Indestructible thrash metal fury from the first second to the last, with a few fun interludes of cheeky, joking sarcasm that show the guys were clearly having a blast in the studio while the new material was cooking (the self-parodying Batshitcrazy, and Welcome to the Garden State, a punk-soaked parody of their native New Jersey). The opening sixteen minutes are prime, furious Overkill, and the band serves up its modern-day “Ironbound” concept on a platter, one that simply can’t miss. The production stays venomous, hugely pumped and as metallic as it gets. In the middle of the album the band catches its breath by trying something a little different, with more dynamic arrangements, as on Distortion. Even though it’s stuck in that “already sold” mid-tempo and riff, it gets all its color from Ellsworth’s famous rabid rage and fury, which remains endlessly caustic. In the hunt for a dark, mid-tempo composition leaning toward classic metal, Overkill are a touch more convincing than on Distortion with Where Few Dare to Walk, where we again run into an ending that drags on too long and should have been cut dead.
Basically, this hell of an album has one clumsy flaw: its big arrangement ambition. The tracks are decidedly more like drafts. Shave at least a minute off each one and you get a shorter but far tighter package of ten first-rate wreckers written to the famous Overkill recipe, ones that would grab with way more venom and hellfire. The punch would surely come across stronger and more magnified on the new album that way. As it is, longtime fans, who over the years have become mildly “spoiled,” might get bored every now and then, since Overkill are really just recycling, more or less skillfully, a lot of the ideas they’ve already presented over the last decade of studio releases.
But the whining is pointless. The Overkill style is and remains one of a kind. As such it’s unique, and the band keeps its character and originality up very successfully on “The Wings Of War” too. Generally speaking, everything on The Wings Of War is exactly where it should be. It’s packed once again with semitone riff hooks that rip and rage relentlessly across the album, with bursts of wildly raging soloing from both guitarists, venomously piercing bass lines of metallic grinding, razor-sharp and precise transitions from the maniacal Bittner, and of course… there’s also that obligatory extra without which Overkill are unthinkable. His Excellency, the one and only Bobby Blitz, who at 58 shows incredible vocal power, dominance and defiance. The more the years grab at him, the more relentlessly he bites with his voice. Out On The Road Kill and Hole in My Soul should have been swapped. The former is venomously bristling and sonically fast, a classic Overkill thrash metal escapade that should have closed the album, while Hole In My Soul, with its more melodic chorus, would fit better in the middle of the album.
The ritual mass according to the Overkill recipe remains unblemished! “The Wings Of War” isn’t among the hardest, sonically sharpest and most possessed Overkill releases that remain burned into the minds of the band’s longtime devotees. The band reaches for arrangement detours, which doesn’t do it any particular favors, and the only takeaway is that the album runs at least ten minutes too long. Still, the new Overkill album in 2019 also delivers that special thrill of anticipation, where you never know where Blitz will snap in any given spot and what he’ll pull off with his voice. He’s already shown all his tricks, but it’s still fascinating where, when and how he’ll use them again and again, and where he’ll go off like lightning. In his growling, shrieking and screaming he remains phenomenal, and so does his one-of-a-kind vocal figure of the “swallowed circular saw.” With his indestructible vocal swagger, Bobby Blitz remains the main engine pulling Overkill onward and onward, even in their mature years. All the way up to the status of immortal legends of thrash metal.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 8.0 / 10
Track list:
01. Last Man Standing
02. Believe In The Fight
03. Head Of A Pin
04. Bat Shit Crazy
05. Distortion
06. A Mother’s Prayer
07. Welcome To The Garden State
08. Where Few Dare To Walk
09. Out On The Road-Kill
10. Hole In My Soul
Line-up:
Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth – vocals
D.D. Verni – bass guitar
Dave Linsk – guitar
Derek Tailer – guitar
Jason Bittner – drums
