Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Graz / Explosiv / Austria
Concert date: November 5, 2016
Attendance: 550
Ticket price: €34.00
Overkill, old-school thrashers from New Jersey, are one of those bands that don’t understand or accept the word “break”. The guys already have the new studio album »The Grinding Wheel« in the can, but they’ve pushed its release to February 2017, when they hit the road for a US tour! Still, before the year is out they announced new tour dates for Europe. The band, which visited the Slovenian capital last March, invited along sludge metal pioneers Crowbar for these new dates, plus two bands much younger in years of activity but hungry to prove themselves: Desecrator from Australia, regarded as thrash metal revivalists for modern times, and the groove deathcore-laced thrash metallers Shredhead from Israel.
For our visit to a show by this lineup of four, the most fitting 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 luring better-known and more prominent names from the general metal map back to the club. The packed schedule demanded a strictly kept timeline, so Shredhead took the stage as early as 7:30 PM. The Israelis, active since 2009, have a debut studio album, »Death is Righteous«, released last year, under their belt. The quintet’s polished stage show strikes the pose of a modern, stuffed-to-the-brim mix of extreme styles, combining elements of thrash with some metalcore madness. Most of the attention went to the gnarly vocalist Aharon Ragoza, who got a good hundred heads in the room to participate more actively during a set of barely over half an hour, even wringing a bit of neck-vertebrae stretching out of a few individuals. Shredhead also add occasional rhythmic tribalism and Oriental-sounding touches to their metal formula, which of course stems from the band’s geographic origins. Interesting, solid, heartfelt, tight, confident.
Next up were the Australian thrash metal revivalists Desecrator from Melbourne. The quartet, whom we skipped three weeks ago at Ljubljana’s Orto Bar, on October 20, 2016 to be exact (apparently the venue was too close, joking aside), when they opened the night ahead of Venom Inc., has been promising a new studio album all year, which is reportedly in the final stages of production. In half an hour the band delivered an extremely convincing show. They’re a ferocious, superbly tight band. You can tell the guys have serious live mileage. A constant dose of black humor in the banter with the crowd from frontman and singer/guitarist Riley Strong, who has an incredibly well-oiled tongue, kept things lively too. As for looks, in 2016 the guys look pretty “funny” on stage, 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 metal legacy is palpable, and Riley’s piercing vocals lodge in your ears. A hot-blooded performance, full of hooligan fire and the untamed adrenaline rush of Aussie stallions. As expected, no “revolutionary breakthroughs” in musical character. Heard it before, but as far as conquering stages and crowds goes, a more than convincing show from a great, tight band.
Crowbar need no detailed introduction. They’re among 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 that greedily and greasily gnaw at the bleeding rhythmic undercarriage of a ten-ton mortar. Kirk Windstein has lost some vocal breath over the years, but got support from the mixing desk, so his recognizable, for-the-band rudimentary hoarse madness kept firing off a steady crop of relentless strings of emotions: alienation, disillusionment, personal confinement. The band, which delivered a real séance of gloom in Graz, of first-class sludge serving, was bolstered by the returning and actually (far too long) “missed” bassist “Sexy T”. That’s Tedd Strange, who, like the short and stocky Kirk, doesn’t skimp on incredible charisma. Crowbar have thus regained physical mass too, and with the exception of the burly drummer Tommy Buckley, that puts them at the very top of the planet’s lineups. The band presented its new studio effort »The Serpent Only Lies« with a big swing, playing the title track, then Failing While Rising, followed by the excellent Plasmic and Pure and I Am the Storm. The older ones were To Build A Mountain, All I Had (I Gave), Existence is Punishmenet, Planets Collide, I Have Failed, so the older fans’ criteria were satisfied too. The band is of course static on stage. When hasn’t it been, in its career? But its riffs and execution grab you with the intoxicating hypnosis of old-school finery of true NOLA sludge pedigree. A solid battalion of people gathered in the hall, packing the front rows, and the band visibly enjoyed playing the show. Kirk kept in contact with the crowd throughout, as did Tedd, who didn’t skimp on occasional outbursts of enthusiasm. Crowbar are a first-class choice in combination with Overkill, since they raise the appeal of attending this tour. Both in terms of genre and as a complete atmospheric turning point of every concert night. The new album’s material works superbly, and with what they showed, Kirk and company demonstrate great creative and performance focus and tenacity even in the mature years of the band’s existence.
Overkill hit the stage at 10:30 PM. In an hour and twenty minutes, they confirmed the Ljubljana experience from a year and a half ago, when they played at CUK Kino Šiška. The stage turned into an uncompromising march of the one-of-a-kind screamer Bobby Blitz, who once again took the bulk of the attention in the band’s concert theater. With his incredible charisma, of course! The lineup underwent a mild “correction” for this tour, as drummer Ron Lipnicki had to stay in the US due to family obligations, and for the European tour his own drum tech Eddy Garcia stepped into his shoes, which of course didn’t shake the quality of the thrash metal legends’ new live show.
The band was in superb spirits. Could you expect anything else from a band like Overkill? Besides the extremely jagged Bobby, with his typical stage pose of hanging off the mic stand, planting his right foot on the monitor and all those gestures that of course include raising the middle finger of his left hand skyward, the full-blooded crowd teasing came from bassist D.D. Verni, and Derek Tailer joined the two of them, though he was incredibly reserved in Ljubljana, if not outright absent and practically unnoticeable throughout the entire stage show. Only Dave Linsk looked out at the crowd a bit shyly during the show, but he shared friendly glances. Well, his guitar knows no such “friendliness” at all. Linsk is an excellent shredder and of course again carried most of the responsibility for all the solos and harder guitar passages, of which, luckily, there aren’t many in Overkill.
What’s very good about this tour? Actually the fact that Overkill haven’t yet gone into full-blooded promotion of the upcoming new album. That means they played just one new song, titled Our Finest Hour, for which they released a single and video this October, while they opened the show with Armorist, just like in Ljubljana, when they were presenting the album »White Devil Armory«. So the band brought back a heap of classics to the set list that it hasn’t played in a long time, like Coma, Feel The Fire and Infectious, while with the staples of the iron repertoire, Rotten To The Core, In Union We Stand, Hammerhead, Hello From The Gutter, it kept the level extremely high throughout, coaxing the little devil himself out of the lairs of the underground in that eruptive atmosphere. 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 end of the show. Then came Bobby’s announcement that the band would play one more song, which counts as a surprise, and it really turned out to be one when he mentioned the famous rock’n’roll band from Dublin and Overkill tackled the Thin Lizzy classic Emerald (the Overkill version rips without compromise, and let’s hope it finds a place on one of their officially released records). After that superb Overkill version of 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 naturally returned for the obligatory encore, which they opened this time with the evidently very popular newer Ironbound. The packed venue was lifted into the air once more. As if someone had thrown real explosive into Explosiv. The uncompromising wrecking and tearing thus continues, and the band shows no signs of calming down, being worn out, let alone aging. On the wings of the untamed and exceptional Bobby “Blitz”, whom the years just can’t get a grip on and who once again stunned with an incredible vocal performance, the band saved one more surprise, namely the song Elimination from the album »The Years of Decay« (1989), followed by the “everybody’s favorite” and universally demanded cover of The Subhumans’ original, Fuck You, which squeezed the last quanta of energy out of the thoroughly drunk and smoke-cured crowd.
What to say in closing? An incredible concert get-together. Mood building from act to act, minute by minute. With the atmospheric peak, of course, on the arrival of the night’s headliners, the one-of-a-kind Overkill. That was of course also reflected in the crowd’s participation, since most people came to Graz primarily for Overkill. The event brought together Austrian, Croatian, Italian and of course Slovenian metalheads, mostly aged thirty and up. There were a few “youngsters” in the crowd, but decidedly too few to hope that the 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 to keep that magic alive.
Judging by Overkill’s set list this time, the band will likely return for another European tour next year, one dominated by songs from the upcoming new album »The Grinding Wheel«. The band heads out on a North American tour in the spring of next year, and for next summer is gradually confirming appearances on European festival stages; among other things, we’ll be able to see Overkill again at the new edition of the Bang Your Head!!! festival, on July 13, 2017.
Setlist
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
Photo Gallery
