Album Review: Overkill - "Scorched"

Twenty albums.  That’s a hell of a long time, and a hell of a lot of music composition, to say nothing of the sheer span of years.  It would seem impossible to conceive that any group of musicians would have enough content to span that period of elapsed life, let alone to deliver music that is idiomatically consistent both with the genre and the band.

And yet, here comes Overkill, the tireless wonders of the second stage of thrash, presenting their new album “Scorched” with a fresh face, but the same virility and biting rasp of all the albums that came before.

“Scorched” is, in short, the best we’ve heard the band since 2010’s excellent and transformative “Ironbound.”  Normally, there is a journalistic challenge in writing about a new effort from such an established property, because it’s hard to describe the band in a new way.  The too-common road is simply to say “if you like Overkill, you’ll like this album; if not, you won’t,” and moreover, even with the greatest of effort, it can be difficult to explain why one album is better than another than to say simply “it just is.”  

We told you that story to tell you this one; Overkill has presented us an album in “Scorched” that avoids all of those trappings by incorporating some new elements into the fold.

Now, when we say ‘new,’ that might be a slight misnomer.  It may be more appropriate to say that Overkill is expanding their efforts into uncharted territory for Overkill, which is similar, but not the same thing.  Overkill has always had in their back pocket the ability to slow down the tempo, as we so gratefully remember from 1989’s “Skullkrusher.”  It’s a card they seldom play, though, until we come to “Scorched,” which is, by and large, a more measured and deliberate effort than the customary smashing and banging for which Overkill is so beloved.

Dave Linsk has been underappreciated by the metal media at large for years, and he delivers again, especially as it relates to this change in tempo.  Look no further than the new album’s best offering, “Won’t Be Coming Back,” where Linsk very simply but effectively creates a deep dynamic with a fragile melodic lead line that belies a feeling of tension and unease.

“Scorched” is Overkill, surely, but also fitted with accoutrements from contemporaries like Metallica and those who followed in the aftermath of thrash like Pantera.  Shit, you can hear both of those things in “Fever”: the lofty openings of “Ride the Lightning” and the stutter-step of “Vulgar Display of Power” both ring true.

Yet there is plenty of meat on the bone for Overkill purists, most for the better.  If “The Surgeon” doesn’t positively scream with the signature of Overkill, then no song ever has.  D.D Verni’s bass sings, Blitz’s ground-glass voice chants out memorable lines, it all sounds so familiar in the best possible way.

There are, parenthetically, some Overkill callbacks perhaps best left behind; “Goin Home” cuts awfully close to “In Union We Stand,” which hasn’t seen the light of day in an Overkill conversation in thirty years, and was better off that way.

To try and loop all this together in summation, is there anything here we’ve never heard before?  No, but there’s plenty that Overkill hasn’t done before, and perhaps that’s the magic secret to a band’s longevity that Chris and I have spoken of so many times on these pages; do unto yourself as others have done similar but differently before you, or something like that.

The changes in pace throughout “Scorched” lend needed depth and creative space to a band that has always prided itself on professionalism and consistency of quality.  None of that changes with the introduction of new influences, nor should it – Overkill has more than enough inertia to bend trends to their will, rather than the opposite.

At the same time, on the other side of the country, the band’s most famous contemporary has also released an album…listening continues in earnest, but as the race develops, Overkill holds the crown for this album cycle.