The Top 11 Albums of 2023 - D.M's List

Here we are again - we're at the end of another year, which means it is time for the most arbitrary thing of all, which is to recap the musical arts of the year in the manner of a concise, ten-item list!  Naturally, diligent readers will note that my list goes to 11, because Spinal Tap.  

I usually allow my editorial blurbs to speak for themselves as far as an individual album on this list goes, but I did want to pause to the make the following assertion - as recently as the fall, I was not confident in this list, and I was notably alarmed that I hadn't managed to determine what I wanted the number one album of the year to be.

This last four weeks of dedicated music listening and review to things that caught my interest over the course of 2023 has turned around my opinion of the year entirely.  There were a lot of strong efforts to be had in this calendar year, they just didn't happen to come from the usual sources.  That's probably my own hubris and lack of time that accounts for what felt like personal disappointment.  Luckily, hedging against my own laziness, I kept copious notes of what I thought was interesting this year, so it wasn't too terribly difficult to go back there and unearth what I feel now are the most valuable gems.

More than ever, in what was a difficult year in many ways personally, I found myself gravitating more towards albums that I simply enjoyed listening to, and away from ones that I found academically interesting or musically intricate.  Bear that in mind as you read on.

First order of business, the rules:
-All albums must be original studio content
-No live albums
-No covers albums
-No re-releases
-No anthologies of any kind

-No EPs (this is a little fungible, as if say, NIN's "Broken" came out this year, it is so good that it would merit inclusion.  But it would take an extraordinary effort.  Which is why I give away a separate EP of the Year Award.)

I first began reviewing music in a forum such as this in 2008, which is making me feel slightly nostalgic, so to catch up for new readers, here are all the albums I have ranked #1 over the years, beginning in 2011, when I did my first official year-end list:
2011 - Turisas - Stand Up and Fight
2012 - The Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovell - Don't Hear It...Fear It! (<--the only one on this list I regret.)
2013 - Turisas - Turisas2013
2014 - Red Eleven - Round II
2015 - Shawn James & The Shapeshifters - The Gospel According to Shawn James & The Shapeshifters
2016 - Destrage - A Means to No End
2017 - The Midnight Ghost Train - Cypress Ave.
2018 - Cancer Bats - The Spark That Moves
2019 - Destrage - The Chosen One
2020 - The Heavy Eyes - Love Like Machines
2021 - Cave of Swimmers - Aurora
2022 - Rxptrs - Living Without Death's Permission

A brief mention to some artists who put out albums that merited consideration, but didn't make the cut: Phantom Elite, DieHumane, Metallica, Asinhell, Kontrust, Jason Blake, Degrave, Smokey Mirror, Children of the Reptile, Glacier Eater and FLO (though this last was released this year, it was recorded in 2004.)

Alright, I've wasted enough of your time. Let's get to it:

HONORABLE MENTION: Blood Ceremony – The Old Ways Remain

Blood Ceremony’s stylistic shift toward the retro folk-pop they experimented with on “Lord of Misrule,” is a decision that I don’t know if I would have made, but after a long absence, the band proves that their unique mix of the occult, fuzzy guitar, haunting vocals and, well, flute continues to make them a force to be reckoned with.  Those who walk into this hoping for old Blood Ceremony may be disappointed, but if you keep an open mind, there’s a lot of well-constructed old-school rock to be had here.

EP OF THE YEAR: Hellevate – The Purpose is Cruelty

It’s been a long while since I enjoyed a sampling of thrash that reminded me so much of the golden days of thrash and the revival that Power Trip promised but was sadly never able to totally deliver on.  Everything about this EP works, and the very fact that it is an EP works in its favor,  As they say, leave ‘em wanting more, and Hellevate does exactly that.  The guitars are crunchy, the vocals are edgy but restrained, the beats are good but not obsessive – it all meshes into some of the best pure thrash that’s been produced in the new millennium.  This is also the best band from Kansas City since The Browning.

11 – Necropanther – Betrayal 

I published the review of this album a week after its release just because I felt I needed more time with the album to really digest it and try to make something of it.  It’s maybe the only review I’ve ever penned (typed? Word processed?) where I ended up scoring the album incomplete.  Some six or whatever months later, with a dozen more listens, I still don’t know if I really have a grip on everything good and bad that’s happening here.  But that sense of intrigue alone makes it a unique listen worthy of consideration for this list just because of its staying power.  Throw in the fact that the juxtaposition of rock guitar solos with modern death metal presents as novel a sound as exists in any quantity in metal right now, and this record is worth the time.

10 – Overkill – Scorched

Another couple years, another Overkill album.  Overkill may well be the thrash version of AC/DC – if you have some concept that you like Overkill, you may well like the overwhelming majority of their catalogue, and if you don’t, you probably won’t like this either.  But that’s overly dismissive and doesn’t address the fact that Overkill, some twenty albums into their career, still sounds dedicated and vital.  It’s hard to find that amount of professionalism within any band that’s been around so long, let alone among Overkill’s thrash contemporaries.  “Scorched” stands out because Dave Linsk, long undervalued in the metal community as a guitar player, finds new avenues to control the pace of the band without losing any of their famed teeth.

9 – Lord of the Lost – Blood and Glitter

I’m so glad that Chris and I had the conversation at the end of last year about how we define a ‘year’ for the purposes of these lists.  We came to the joined conclusion that any album released after the publication of the previous list should count toward the next year’s list.  Lord of the Lost released this record on December 30th of 2022, and I would have been loathe to leave it without any further consideration.  I’ve long been a tangential follower of the band (who’s popularity seems to only be growing after cruelly finishing last in the Eurovision song contest 2023,) but they’ve never put together a full album that made me say ‘wow’ until this one.  (That said, I still don’t know if they’ve ever written a better single than 2018’s “Loreley,” but this record’s “Dead End” comes close.) Every song on this record pops in some way, finds a way to be interesting or catchy or both, and culminates in the best LotL album to date.

8 – Hellfreaks – Pitch Black Sunset

What a strange record, and I mean that in the best possible way.  It’s one part pop-punk album, one part rock sing along and one part screaming hardcore anthem.  While those idioms are all related, none of that sounds like it should work on paper, but listen to “Old Tomorrows,” which throws in a quasi-metal breakdown, and pureblood metal solo, and you’ll see how this genre-bending, swirling mass of an album becomes so much more than the sum of its parts.  This is like if Cripper and New Year’s Day tried to write an album together, but, you know…good.

7 – Royal Thunder – Rebuilding the Mountain

I am not a typical musical listener in that I have very little emotional attachment to any of the music that I enjoy.  I don’t associate songs or albums with any particular feeling one way or the other (with the exception of the Destrage song “Rage, My Alibi,” for reasons I’ll keep to myself.)  I say that though, to say that the emotions of an artist that they press into their music is not lost on me.  And “Rebuilding the Mountain” is a deeply painful and cathartic album for Royal Thunder, and while the circumstances of the record are serious and dire, the record is so much better for the raw infusion of genuine frustration and pain and hurt and ultimately forgiveness that permeates every moment.  “Now Here – No Where” will live in my head for a long time. 

6 – Powerwolf – Interludium

Power just writes fun records.  There may not be a metal band that does that with greater skill or sense of adventure than Powerwolf.  That’s really all there is to it.  The fact that they live on the outer orbits of power metal without succumbing to the cookie cutter that’s disfigured that genre forever is even better.

5 – Lucifer Star Machine – Satanic Age

A new-age Misfits?  Well, no, because the songs are more than forty seconds.  But that’s the vibe, and I’m here for it.  To go one level deeper, there’s also a healthy dose of the Dropkick Murphys mixed in here, and I mean Dropkick Murphys from back in the “Do or Die” era, not in the last fifteen or so years.  It’s the rasp in the vocals that sells that latter aspect, but this whole record bops along with gross lyrics set against the kind of accessible rock that gave birth to the entire punk movement in the first place.

4 – Robots of the Ancient World – 3737

As good a slow burn as there’s been since the first Mothership album, or Sundrifter’s “Visitations.”  Less direct than the best works of The Heavy Eyes, RotAW succeeds in that this is a full-on stoner doom record that never retreats into minimalism or gets lost in jam-like wandering.  That’s not an easy feat when all your songs are 6-plus minutes.  “3737” is aided by the fact that it’s limited to 6 songs, one of which is a throw away interlude, so all the band’s good ideas were mashed into a few packets, rather than spread out unnecessarily.  (Subtracting the throwaway, this has the same number of tracks as Hellevate’s EP, but because it still runs more than thirty minutes, qualified as an album.  For those scoring at home.)

3 – Zardonic – Superstars

This is two years in a row now that a DJ has put out a metal album that cracks my year-end list (Dampf’s “The Arrival” last year.)  Maybe it’s time that I just admit that I was born in the 80s and a certain degree of automatic love for electronic programming is burned into my genetic code.  Still, you know why this album is here?  Not to go too deep into the reeds, but this has been a tough year for me.  Lot of adversity, lot of trial and tribulations that required patience to navigate.  And this album makes me smile.  The fun factor is even greater than the baseline for Powerwolf, since this album exists solely for the purpose of being a fun album.  There’s no story here.  No grand mysticism or mountain in the distance that holds the secret to the keys, or whatever the hell.  “Rock and Roll Tonight” is more or less a KISS song for the 21st century, but it's just so damn awesome.  In the end, if your music isn’t making you smile, or making you enjoy it on whatever level it needs to meet you at, what the hell is the point anyway?  Plus, a really banging cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” a song that was in desperate need of a kick in the ass anyway.

2 – Kiberspassk – Smorodina

When I first heard this album at the end of December last year (it was released in January of 2023,) I was convinced I had already heard the best album of 2023.  It’s been a long time since I had heard an album that was so different than anything I’d heard before.  The rarest of all gems in music journalism is an album that sounds like literally nothing else in the best possible way, and Kiberspassk (who, by the way, are the same folks as in the more traditional folk band Nytt Land,) have crafted an album that combines metal, industrial, dance, folk, mythology and throat singing into a stew that it totally without peer.  The single “Daleko” is as haunting and beautiful and strange and energizing as any song I’ve ever heard.

1 – Graveyard – 6

This feels a little bittersweet.  This is the fifth consecutive Graveyard record to appear in my top albums of the year.  And it’s the first to be ranked number one.  Which, to come around, is bittersweet because I don’t think this is the best Graveyard album.  “Hisingen Blues” is almost certainly better, and I think I enjoyed “Peace,” this album’s forerunner, more than I did this one.  That doesn’t mean, however, that this can’t be the best album of 2023, though I do think I’m going to mentally jockey between this and “Smorodina” for years to come, and there will be days that I’m sure I will regret my decision.  Still, as Chris and I talked about when we wrote the double review for this record, this is Graveyard’s most soulful, most cinematic album to date (I will cede the point that every song Truls Mörck sings, even the ones I love like “Sad Song” on this record, all have the same tone.)  Really, what this comes down to is that there are no songs on this record I have any inclination to skip – they are all not only enjoyable, but unique in their own right within the context of the album.  That kind of fluidity and consistency of songcraft has to count for something.

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.

The Voltage behind Overkill: A Conversation with Bobby Blitz

When a man becomes completely synonymous with with his own work, it's a sure sign of a career well-heeled in both quality and legacy.  Such is the case with Bobby 'Blitz' Ellsworth, energetic frontman and part and parcel leader of Overkill, the New Jersey thrash veterans who refuse to recognize that the game has rules beyond their own.  It's been a whirlwind career of high success and scary battles for Blitz, but always he has been a perfect showman at the front of the band, thrilling crowd nation and world wide over the course of nearly thirty-five years.  We sat down with the iconic thrash singer before a recent show and talked a lot about dichotomies - the man and his band, the man and his image, the passion and the business, even East vs West.  Read on:


D.M: Out of all the Overkill records there’s ever been, two of your five most successful records have been the last two.  Did you ever imagine that thirty years ago, that three decades later you’d have that kind of success?

BOBBY BLITZ: You know something, I try not to figure the shit out, because I think I’ll ruin it if I do.  I really moreso just enjoy it.  I do know when people say to me, that have been around, following this band or this type of a scene for a thirty year period, they say ‘it’s not like the good old days.’  I say ‘you’re just not paying attention.’  These days are pretty good right now, too.  And I think the success of those last couple records really proved that for us.  I suppose with age can come good things.  This was supposed to be a young man’s game, but experience is obviously trumping the young angst.

D.M: Not that long ago I spoke with Steve Souza, who said that if he’s gained anything, it’s a sense of perspective and the ability to step outside himself and enjoy his success for the first time.  Does 
that resonate with you?  Is it less work than it used to be?

BB: I can’t necessarily say that, but I suppose with experience you know where you can take your shortcuts, where you can’t take your shortcuts.  D.D [Verni] and I manage the band, too, so we’re involved with this on a daily basis whether we’re touring or not touring.  It’s a multi-faceted thing, where it’s not just our careers, it’s our life.  I’ve never not enjoyed it, though.  If there was something for me that I thought of as stressful – I mean, I still get nervous before I play, I suppose that’s a good sign because it means something for me, those nerves are not because I’m afraid, those nerves are because I want to win.  I think that as time has passed, I’m not going to say I enjoy it more because I always have, but for sure I look at it a little differently as time has passed.

D.M: Is there a point at which you had to separate the music as your career versus the music as your passion?  Or have they always been one and the same?

BB: Boy, that’s a good question, and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been asked that.  I think it’s always been one and the same for me.  Doing this, we came from a different era, we were pre-Internet.  You physically wore out your sneakers promoting yourself.  You would knock on doors, you would shake hands.  So, there was a passion in that, too.  But the music was the catalyst for all it.  So I can say for sure that I can separate the two because I love playing, that’s really my drug.  I really think of myself as selfish when I’m playing because I know that on some level, I’m doing it for myself, not doing it for anybody else.  So yeah, I can separate the passion from the business side of music.

D.M: After everything you personally have been through, what makes that passion continue?  Has there ever been a point when you said ‘I can’t do this anymore’ or ‘I don’t know if I should?’

BB: I was knocked down a few times, and it’s not good things, but everybody’s got a cross to bear.  If those things didn’t happen on the road, I would never have made them public.  When I got cancer, we had to cancel tours afterwards.  When I had a stroke it happened on stage.  When I got pneumonia, it happened while I was going to a show.  Otherwise I would keep those as my private life.  But I think that probably the testimony to that answer is that we’re in the process of releasing something called “Historikill,” it’s from the ‘90s, up until about 2007 and it’s really from the darker days of metal.  It’s never been an issue to D.D and I about stopping doing it.  It was ‘how could we do it now?’ and that’s when we decided to manage ourselves and start cutting our own deals and cutting down expenses and we still knew there was a market for us out there where we could exploit our passions.  So I think “Historikill” is a good statement to the fact that sure, it was hard but it was never undoable, and we never had a conversation with regard to stopping.

D.M: Speaking of “Historikill,” do you divide Overkill into different eras of its existence?  For example, ’81 to say ’91, then ’91 to ’07, and then ’07 to now?  You’re sort of recently revitalized, are there phases to Overkill to you?

BB: That’s a good point there, sure there are.  Because I kind of categorize them with regard to lineups.  That first lineup, minus Rat Skates did four records together, and that’s the first chapter of our existence.  Then in came [Rob] Cannavino and [Merritt] Gant, and that was the second.  Then two more guys, [Sebastian] Marino and [Joe] Comeau, and now Derek [Tailer] and Dave [Linsk].  These are all different chapters.  But probably, as time goes on, one of the things I enjoy about touring is the people I tour with.  When you get together with these guys it’s not heavy, so this chapter, or this segment of the band is really kind of fun to be on the road with.  Not that the others didn’t have great points to them, and there’s always something charming about the startup, but there’s also something charming about today.  And I say that probably because I like being known for the moment or for the day as opposed to the past.  If you’re relative in 2015, it’s testimony to doing the right thing all the way through for yourself and for your career.  So sure, there are chapters, but this most current one is probably one of faves.

D.M: You and D.D have been the only two constants in this band since 1981.  How is your relationship, just you and he, as two people?  It’s rare in music as a whole but in this genre in particular that two people can coexist peacefully for that long.

BB: You know something, his wife brought it up once, she’s very insightful.  I’ve known her as long
as I’ve known him.  She was his girlfriend in 1981.  So maybe that says the kind of people we are, you know what I mean?  She says it’s amazing but it’s not un-understandable because you come from the same background, you come from the same type of families, you both come from brothers and sisters and doing the right thing for them.  And I think that’s why this relationship works with D.D and I.  You put the guy before the band, the band takes care of itself, it’s really simple.  It’s great to have that relationship.  I’ve known him longer than I’ve been married.  I mean, the only people I’ve known longer than him are my brothers and sisters and my mother [laughs].

D.M: After so long, what keeps Overkill passionate for this kind of music?  Plenty of your contemporaries have faded away or changed their style, but you’ve always been Overkill, it’s always been thrash, what keeps it fresh for you, what’s your inspiration these days?

BB: Well, you know, we never had an identity crisis, we’re Jersey guys, we keep our secrets to yourselves, we like playing.  This is my drug, this is where I get high, so I think that’s where that passion is always reignited.  And you’re in it to win.  I like the competition of my contemporaries, I like the young guys who come along.  I like the older bands.  I love competing against Exodus, for instance.  Sharing a stage with Exodus for me is like the perfect thing, because I want to bury them [laughs].  But If I’m going out there with that attitude, I obviously have passion for it, and I think that’s my point, I’m just trying to highlight your question with attitude.

D.M: A few years back, there was a big to-do about the ‘Big 4’ playing shows together [Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax].  Was there any sense of resentment on your part, like a ‘where’s my invite?’ because you guys were there, so was Testament and Exodus and Nuclear Assault.

BB: Yeah, fuck those guys! [laughs]  Didn’t expect that one, did you?  You know, not really.  I mean, we know what we are, and relating to the previous answer of not having an identity crisis, I think that that goes beyond thrash, we know what we are when it comes to business, too.  We like our business.  There’s not a resentment factor.  Would I have liked the opportunity?  Abso-fucking-lutely I would have liked the opportunity, but that’s the business side of me talking.  It has nothing to do with the passion, it doesn’t change a thing with regard to how you look at your day.  It’s not anything I’ve ever pined over, you know?  When somebody asks me something like that, I always go ‘who?’ Am I not paying attention, the big what? [laughs].

D.M: Going way back, when people think of the origin of thrash, I think they always think of the Bay Area, or just down the coast in Los Angeles.  But you and Anthrax and a couple others came from the New York area, what separated East Coast thrash from West back in then?  Was the world just bigger and it was harder to get stuff coast to coast?  Did that make space for two scenes?

BB: Well, that’s a good point, there was no instant information then.  You had to go by snail mail to get somebody’s tapes and trade them, but I think the Bay Area, as an example, they created a style, maybe Metallica, and somebody’s who’s a historian would tell me somebody else did it before them, but I think all the Bay Area bands used that as a blue print.  Where you see different approaches to Overkill, Anthrax, Carnivore, Type O Negative came out of Carnivore, Biohazard was kind of a thrash band.  All those bands are very different from each other.  I think the main difference is that in California, they were exposed to New Wave of British Heavy Metal and California punk, while in New York we were exposed to New Wave of British Heavy Metal and East Coast punk.  I was at Max’s Kansas City.  I’m nineteen years old, I’m in college and I saw the New York Dolls play.  I’d see the Ramones on the street, or I’d go to the Mudd Club and see the Heartbreakers when the Dolls broke up.  I think we were exposed to that, and they were exposed more to the Dead Kennedys.  To some degree, I think there’s that punky attitude and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and you mix that with a bag of methamphetamines, and you get thrash [laughs].  That’s probably the only different element, is that punk scene.  We were huge Dead Boys fans.  When the Dead Boys moved from Cleveland to New York, it was like they were ours now.  You’d go see them, and they’d do gigs without all the band members!  ‘Hey, we don’t have our bass player tonight, but we need the money.’ It was like ‘how fucking great is this?’ [laughs]   I think that was our difference between east and west and it gave us a lot more individuality as opposed to the West Coast blueprint.

D.M: It’s been much publicized that Black Sabbath is heading out for “The End” and Judas Priest kinda-sorta retired and other bands seem like they’re heading that way.  Do you see an eventual end of the line for Overkill?

BB: Well, we’re realists.  I certainly don’t want to die out here.  I’ve had three bumps in the road over thirty years, which is really not a lot when you think about it.  But it’s thirty fucking years, everybody’s gonna have something.  We all have crosses to bear.  But I really don’t want to die out here, that’s not my thing.  I’ve always enjoyed it, and part of the reason I enjoy it is because in my head it’s bigger, you know what I’m saying?  ‘Honey, I’m not gonna answer you unless you call me Bobby Blitz!’ [laughs]  You can picture an old man sitting around tattooed, right?  Watching old fucking videos, banging his fucking bald head and everything.  I got to be realistic about it, and being realistic says I just might not be able to anymore, and that’s okay with me, because I was able to do it.

D.M: After so long, what’s separates Bobby Blitz from Robert Ellsworth?

BB: You know, a kid said to me once, he goes – he was eastern European, we’re doing this interview, and they’re so fucking stiff, these people.  They don’t understand our sense of humor.  I mean, I can tell you’re from the East Coast, you know, just because we’re getting each other.  And he goes ‘oh, finally I have my phone call with a legend,’ and I tell him ‘you got to see a legend on Saturday mowing his fucking lawn.’ [laughs]  Just blows the whole thing right out.  In reality, one of the reasons this band’s been able to continue, and we’ve been able to keep our secrets to ourselves and not air our dirty laundry because there’s not that much of it, is that we’re pretty down-to-Earth dudes.  We like doing this shit.  We’re family guys who love our families.  The only reason a guy can do this for thirty years is because he’s got a great fucking wife who says ‘do whatever you want, whatever makes you happy.’  So if you have that as the basis of your life or existence, it’s not hard to separate.  Bobby Blitz is on the stage, you’re talking to Robert Ellsworth, it’s totally different.  I could be having this conversation on my deck with a beer grilling burgers.  When I look at it in hindsight, that’s always been one of our assets, is that we don’t really care about all of that other shit.  If we have a problem, we face the problem, we go through the problem.  If we have problems with each other, we face them, obviously with kid gloves sometimes because D.D and I are managers, but if you’re grounded you can have that separation easily.

D.M: Switching topics – how do you protect your voice?

BB: I gave up tobacco, but I smoked like a fucking chimney for probably thirty-five years, about three years ago I gave it up.  I warm up a little bit.  I take two anti-inflammatorys right before I go on.  That’s probably the biggest secret.  And they’re just Aleves. The idea is that if you go out there with an anti-inflammatory in your system – it’s like if you take a couple before you work out, the muscles stay loose and don’t swell up or anything.  It’s the same idea here with vocal chords that if I take them before I go out there, even though I’m abusing them for ninety minutes, they’ll stay loose and be okay.

D.M: My wife and I are both big fans of The Cursed.  Is that done?  Was that a one-and-done project, or will we ever see that again?

BB: You know, Dan [Lorenzo] is a great guy to play with, he’s not like anyone else I’ve ever worked with in that he’s the only person I know who can just dream up a riff and then play it perfectly.  I’m in contact with Dan all the time, I hang out with him a lot, me and him and his wife and my wife go out to dinner as couples.  I talk to him all the time.  We had a ton of fun doing that record.  But will it ever come around again?  Maybe not.  But I had a great time doing it, and I would like to do it again.  It was fun, all that saxophone and me singing like a fucking crooner [laughs].  When I first played that for my wife, I played her “Evil in the Bag,” and she said ‘that is the sexiest music I have ever heard from you,’ I said hey, that’s great, I better keep this one around! [laughs]

Concert Review: Overkill, Symphony X

A combination of Overkill and Symphony X means a number of things for the fans gathered in front of the stage prepared to display their reverence for the acts to follow.  It means gold ole’ American thrash still lives, it means power metal and the theatrics of the metal keyboard still have a foothold on the audience and it means New Jersey is solidly ‘in the house’ as the kids say (do kids still say that?)  Most of all though, it means that two titans of their respective genres maintain relevancy and drawing power with the addendum that no one, repeat no one, is going to tell them that they’re done.

The night began with Within the Fire, a rowdy quartet of veteran players who exhibit the fundamental grit of metal in the classic sense.  No frills, no pageantry, no costumes, just jeans and boots and gritty dirt riffs styled no so different from recent releases from Attika 7.  Notable in the band’s performance is the vocal styling of Scott Featherstone, who carries a tune capably but without the pomp and circumstance of post-production smoothness.  His voice is authentic and loud, brazen enough to be heard in the back of the club and clear enough to be understood.  For songs like “Still Burning,” his voice is buffeted by a wall of powerful chords, presenting a single, solid chunk of music that the assembled patrons reacted well to.

A heavy testing of a considerable array of bright green lights between sets could only portend one thing – Overkill was coming.  The New Jersey thrash veterans, coming off the impressive chart performance of “White Devil Armory” and literally hours removed from the release of “Historikill,” their new retrospective box set, the quintet had two clear missions in mind; first, prove to all present that thrash never died and furthermore, cannot die and second, do their damndest in friendly competition with the other bands to put on the most impactful set of the night.

A quick aside – Overkill spent much of the night fighting an uphill battle against a crowd who was appreciative and cheerful, but reluctant to get physically involved in the concert experience.  There were scads of perfectly capable young men and women in the offing, but a real mosh pit never broke out, which speaks to a disturbing observational trend of late: is it me, or are mosh pits starting to fade away?  It’s been a while since I’ve seen a convincing launching of bodies against one another, which bodes poorly for the practice as a whole.  C’mon metal fans, don’t stop doing what we do, keep this thing moving!

Back to it.  As if to drive the point of their continued and recent dominance over the genre home, the incomparable Bobby Blitz ran out and rolled into his idiomatic rasp for “Armorist,” pushing the band through the top track from the band’s top-selling record.  Overkill remains more than just Blitz though, as the venerable co-founder D.D. Verni stands always next to him on the stage, thumping out bass rhythms as though 1985 were just yesterday.

To that end, the set was a mix of new and old material, with the thirtieth anniversary of the band’s cardinal “Feel the Fire” release heavily represented, beginning with the classic “Hammerhead.”  The old guard of Overkill’s catalog sounded just as fresh and powerful as ever from a live perspective, which is a credit to the dedication and conviction of those playing the songs.  There was no favoritism from the band here; each piece was treated with the necessary respect and then pumped through hundreds of watts of amps to wash over the rejoicing crowd.

For all the joy of going through the new and old of Overkill, it was two albums in between those points which stole the show.  2010’s “Ironbound” contributed two fan favorites which have always provided the masses with instant, neck-breaking thrash rejuvenated in the new millennium.  “Bring Me the Night” has been a staple of the band’s repertoire since its release and this night’s recitation was of a heavier caliber than most, accented by the strong drum cadences of Ron Lipnicki.  “Ironbound,” with its cacophonous but intrinsically rhythmic breakdown, pushed the crowd into a nearly involuntary paroxysm of head-banging.  It couldn’t be helped, your body simply demanded that you do it.

Yet for all that, Overkill impressed most with an all double-neck version of the timeless nail driver “Skullkrusher” from 1989’s “The Years of Decay,” and as the churning waves of irresistible force eroded the fans’ resistance, heads moved in unison and throats rang in cheer as the shambling, threatening cadence rumbled into the set’s eventual conclusion.  Ever the professionals, Overkill wrapped up with “Elimination” and “Fuck You” and left the masses wanting more.

Symphony X began their set with a statement of continued support for their newest album.  The first seven tracks that Russell Allen and company cranked out for fans thirsty to hear their heroes were played in order from 2015’s “Underworld,” each one played with the appropriate amount of power and grace.

Allen himself is a bone fide showman, relishing his role as the central figure and face of the band’s performance, and his talent lives up to the billing.  No less an authority than Bobby Blitz says Allen has the best pipes in the business, and when encountering the sheer power and sustaining impression of the man’s voice live, it’s difficult to argue against the point.  Whether carrying a longing tune for “Without You” or raising the rafters with “Nevermore,” Allen’s consistency pairs with his versatility to add dynamic layers to Symphony X’s live profile on the whole.

He is not alone, however.  On this night, as it likely is on many nights, guitarist Michael Romeo was due equal billing alongside his lead singer.  With each passing song, Romeo’s solos got stronger, particularly as the band started delving into their back catalog.

In truth, the finest part of Symphony X’s set was the back half of it, beginning with a melodic and galloping “Of Sins and Shadows,” and the progression only got better as the set went on, flying through an excellent “Serpent’s Kiss” and an energetic “Eve of Seduction.”

Part of the secret of Symphony X at this point in their career is that this band has more or less been unchanged since the late nineties, and the band employs that rare chemistry that can only be seen when members trust each other and have a complete understanding of their music.  This was evident in throughout the entirety of the band’s performance, but never more than in the closers “Set the World on Fire (The Lie of Lies)” and “Iconoclast,” both high-flying songs and fan favorites that might well go very badly if a lesser band played them.

Leaving the venue, the irrefutable lesson gleaned from the remarkably adept performances of the two headline acts was this; there is no replacement for experience.