Overkill are back in Paris behind the excellent Scorched, almost exactly four years after their last appearance in the same room. D.D. Verni is absent, with former Kreator bassist Christian “Speesy” Giesler filling in, but otherwise the machine is intact. New material sits comfortably alongside eighties and nineties staples like “Horrorscope,” “Coma” and “Hello from the Gutter,” and the band attacks all of it with the same blunt-force conviction.
At nearly 64, Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth remains one of metal’s great characters: abrasive voice, abrasive attitude, permanently looking as though he might either start a fight or tell a filthy joke. That personality has always been central to Overkill, and age has done very little to soften it.
There is something reassuring about that. Death, taxes and Overkill turning up every few years to make a vicious racket. More than four decades in, the mean, green killing machine is still running exactly as advertised.
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