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OVERKILL – The great thrash machine
A star-spangled guarantee that thrashers Overkill, at least for this writer, are one of the most down-to-earth realities of the entire old-school scene. Always underrated compared to the big names, the New Jersey quintet has nonetheless earned esteem from peers and critics alike. With this brand new album Scorched, Overkill make us realize how much they have no intention of changing their style, although they manage to insert a modern twist to their stainless thrash metal. Talking with Bobby Blitz is always inspiring. A humble, cheerful person with an infectious laugh. A man with an iron memory and the enthusiasm of a young boy despite his age. Here then enjoy this interview of mine full of personal trivia and about the new work.
click here for the italian version 
Ok Bobby.. you have a brand new album going out today.. 21st if I am not wrong. So… we know that as it is the last one, obviously it will be the best ever, but.. tell me in few words why it should be the best and convince me or our readers to buy it.
Convince you?! Because I say so! Ahahah! Ohhh jeez.. yes you are right.. it’s hard to tell if the newest release in the discography it’s number 1 or number 20 but well I am excited about it. I think one of the unique things about this record, is that, right from the beginning, from the first note, from the introduction, it brings your head almoast to another Era and I think that if you are a metal fan, that Era is almoast on the day gone by. But when the band kicks in, it comes to more modern days. The most unique thing of this records is that you can almoast listen to two separate Eras at one time. Today and yesterday, and I think this is very important especially for metal fans because we are all comes from somewhere. We come from NWOBHM, punk rock, hard rock, rock ‘n’ roll or traditional heavy metal and we incorporated that, in a thrash package. So if you have an idea on a full metal scene, well you can find it on Scorched.
Let’s see the line up – We have you and DD since the beginning.. then Linsk and Tailer from the 2000 Era.. and Bittner, the youngest and new member. How and why this line up works so good from 2017?
I think that we obviously have a perfect chemistry, DD and I. Dave again like you said and Derek are there from more than 20 years, Jason Bittner is also a songwriter, he always tries to make thinks better. I think that it’s something that we didn’t had for long time with the band. We always had great members, good drummers like Sid Falk, Tim Mallare, Ron Lipnicki, Rat Skates, but I think that Jason bringed something new to the party. And this allowed the band to pushes itself a little bit further. He pushes us a lot within the studio or in the live situation.. it feels like we didn’t miss a beat by gaining a new member, but it feels like we really took a step up and we restablished our position with him.
I know you have a good memory as once I was telling you about first time I saw you at a Gods Of Metal in Italy in 1999 and you could remember the day, the bands, and feelings of that day so… which can you state as your best concert ever in Italy?
Ohh Jeez.. Italy.. well we had some memories.. very good. I forgot now the name of the show but we were like on top of a mountain in a sacred field and there was nothing. The whole things was creating while other bands were sitting on the bus watching. Little by little the stage came up, lights came in, food came in. So maybe Gods Of Metal was the biggest but this one was so memorable that I remember I walked out from the bus and it was so hot. I had my cigarette and a glass of water. I looked around thinking.. the show here is not gonna happen! No fucking way! But it was like in a movie and four hours later everything it was on place and worked out perfectly. It was in Potenza!
Ahh you are talking about the Agglutination Metal Festival, the biggest in south of Italy since long time and you was there in 1997 for sure!
Ah well probably it was that.. well everybody really was trying to do its best and the show happened, and it was really fun and great!
Which best live memories you can tell me about your carrier with Overkill through all these years?
Best live memories? Well it can be connected always to the first time. First time we’ve been in Europe, it stays in your mind. As well like the first in Japan, Asia, Russia, California, so all the first times, first tours but I think one of the best memories was in 1994 (but as we checked out it was 1993) we played our first festival, and that was in Europe in Denmark, at Roskilde in such a diverse line-up. There was Anthrax and Overkill from metal, Midnight Oil from Australia, Chris Isaak from USA, Ray Charles, and it was fucking crazy. It was 100,000 tickets sold and maybe 30.000/25.000 was watching Overkill. This is the most people I’ve ever stud in front of at one time until this point in my life. It takes your breath wide away. You don’t know even how to respond to this amount of faces looking at you. It was a start for me to join festivals. It was cold, but so hot and shaking that I took out my shirt at the second song because my body was coming from the inside out and that’s the most amazing and memorable live in my carrier.
Which has been the lowest point and time, the worst memory with Overkill?
I don’t know, it’s hard to say because… I can say this. It was a time when things looked as if they were going to get sour. Go bad. We were between record companies. We had a contract with Bodog but they wanted nothing to do with us anymore so we put all our eggs in our basket. Dave Mustaine was doing his Gigantour in those times and he called me personally and I asked me to be on. We’ve known each other since the early days and we had nice conversations on tours, so I told him that of course we wanted to be in. So he told that he only asked to have our own record company for promotion for the gig. And I said him ok.. but sure.. we had no record company! Sure it had it all happen. It was at the perfect time when the scene come back healthy again and when we came back home from that tour we had 4/5 records company looking for to sign us. That was for sure an unusual moment that anyway turned out very positively that helped us to re-charged us during the darkest days of metal.
You started touring in Italy only in the 90ies.. if i am not wrong.. was it still difficult and expensive touring europe in the 80ies for you?
It was for sure but I had less to do with the understanding of the finances back in the 80ies. We were managed by outside entities, great guys. We were on Megaforce in the early days. There was more money at the end of the eighties to spend for tour support and promote the band. So it was expensive for us to give so many money to a record company, but they gave us so much opportunity. Then it changed a little bit and we started to go to Italy, Spain more often, so in the mid-ninetines it all changed. We were ready to understand that to this we needed to manage ourselves to have an extra income and extra revenue to put into our business and to tour Europe and Italy even when this genre was not so much popular in that time.
What’s the best things you like doing on tour and which the best things you do at home?
Well you see.. on tour I consider myself really on vacation. It’s enjoyable to do shows. I hate being sick because it makes you miserable, but if you’re healthy you can see things during the day, you take walks wherever you can be. In Italy, Spain, France or New York, California. When I am home on normal circumstances, I work for the tour. I live remote, not in the city, not in the town. I live on a mountain community that has a lake so I like spending my time relaxing, go on motorcycle and keep on travelling. I try to be in vacation even when I am at home!
Which relation you have with the fans when they meet you not only at concerts but in normal life if they recognize you at a bar or at a supermarket? How works the life of a celebrity like you?
I don’t consider myself like a high level celebrity. I don’t have problems with it. I’m not rich so I need to do things like the majority of people. I go to supermarket myself, I cut my own grass, I don’t have maids, I live in normal way, I also change my wheels on my car. I remember only one time that a person told me “fuck you” because I wasn’t nice with a fan. I was coming from the airport from Japan, and my father got very sick, so I was going from the plane directly to a shuttle to take me to his house. I saw this guy asking me if he could have a picture with me, but I need to be faster and so I told him no.. now I can’t!!! Sure I don’t blame him, but I think it’s just the only one time someone told me “fuck you”. But really you know me… I am not that different in real life the way I am talking to you. I don’t consider myself special. Sometimes you can see young kids becoming popular just after a couple of albums, sure they should be smarter than me, but in my head they are the same assholes they were on the first records.
So long time you don’t make a cover song in your albums. If Nuclear Blast would ask you to play a cover song for a bonus track.. which one you would pick up today?
Well I was streaming some music about some seventies and eighties music. I found on youtube a greatest fucking recent version of Manowar’s “Battle Hymn” played on a show in Germany with new guitarist Michael Batio Angelo. This song was really so important to me, so as the whole record. It’s so amazing that it still has the same feeling, so because of my recent refind of the song I would pick that one.
Overkill is not just a thrash metal band..! You have some doom metal, some punk, and many other contaminations that make your sound not only in an album, sometimes really a song can be totally different from thrash metal, so how you afford the creative process for the songwriting?
As I understand deeper as time goes on, and with more experience it’s really good to take two separate leafs and saw them on together to make a seemless change between one part to the next part. Even within a song. One of the things we like doing is this recording hills and valleys through the song. Lift them up to the top and bring them down so that you can bring them up again and this “down” can be in the center section. If you take “The Surgeon”, it is a thrash template that we’ve used for a long time but we tried to modernize that template, and dropping down to a very slow grinding, pounding type riff. so the dynamic is huge and I think those dynamics makes the song interesting for the band. So beeing able to leaf those riffs together, I think is the key to make a good Overkill song.
Scorched offered a new recording environment as all members were able to record on their own. How you used to record before and how different has been this time then?
Well before this we used to release at first the drum track. I like the fact that we have an old school mentality, but we still have the ability to encorporate modern technologies, beause it does make it easier and it gives you more time. It’s not like everybody has to get to one place. Maybe Dave is in Florida, Jason upstate in New York, three hours from the studio that we use. In my opinion it has to be a balance of the two. But I think that it kinda worked out because it was just different and we had opportunity to figure out new things. If you listen to this record, it’s deep or it’s painted with traditional heavy metal melodies. You know that you actually can sing a long to. This happen because of that change. Because I could sing along while I was making food, by myself with my dog, or having a beer in my own house, trying over singing singing and singing so the result was great. I don’t know if I want to go back to the other way probably because it seems this is the right thing to do is not always remote, but I think the results on Scorched, speck for themselves.
Tell me which track for you from this records will enter the setlist of the most played songs in live concerts!
Well two my favourites are right in the center of the record. “Wicked Place” for sure which is a dynamic song that we can bring it down to a big swing and a heavy rock kind of a groove. I think one other song I really like is “Twist Of The Wick” which is the fourth song, because there’s kinda of a progressive feeling. The drums lead to a death metal vibe, occasionaly it goes on with some parts similar to some blast beat. The feeling between these two songs is very special to me and we are learning these both for the live set. I would be ready to play both of them.
I would finish the interview with a curiousity on a song on the previous album The Wings Of War… Welcome to the garden state… seems like it’s a song with particular lyrics very strong that maybe I didn’t get it so well.. sure you like New Jersey and that’s clear.. there’s a particular passage when you say.. She said, this is Billy from Philly. Ok, get the fuck out of my state – is there a particular anger with Philadelphia?
It’s a friendly anger. ahahha! When I stayed on a stage in Philadelphia, even before this song, (I am a New Jearsey Devil’s Hockey fan and Philadelphia Flyers are one of our biggest rivals), I was standing for ten minutes talking about how shitty their team is to the point I was getting booed. So when I was doing lyrics for that song, well I just wanted.. to turn the knife.
So did you loose some Philly fans after this song?
Oh no.. I think we gained some. One of the things that people, specially from the north east of the United States, appreciate is sarcasm and humour and on the last show in Philadelphia I came out before going on stage saying “Where the fuck is Billy?” ahahha and I got again boooed..!
So you still use to play it when you are in Philadelphia?!
Oh sure man! Ahahahah!
Ok so time to close the interview with your words, maybe something that we didn’t say yet..?
Oh something I didn’t say yet is obviously that we are going to be back on tour soon. I am happy that we have a kinda of a underground package on this tour with Heathen and Exhorder and it’s good to be fucking back. It’s good to feel this vibe again after three years of studio around trying to make this new record, to get back to life and normality. I feel that we started to push people back and this is not the way we’re live our lives. I am stil proud to be part of the scene and part of this world so I am looking forward to be on the road. I missed it.
