Old school overkill - A review of Over Kill's Live in Overhausen

Good evening, Overhausen! Thanks for calling your city similar to our band name. Overhausen, I like that! I will repeat this joke at least twenty times tonight. Let's rock, Overhausen!

Alright, so you know that we have recently signed a worldwide deal with German label Nuclear Blast which is the reason why we record a live album in Germany and why I will try to say some stupid things in German from time to time. Alright, I've got a German joke for you: ''Es gibt zwei Sachen, die riechen nach Fisch. Eine davon ist Fisch!''

Okay, back to topic, Overhausen! As you know, the first thing Nuclear Blast did after the signature of our worldwide deal is to release a highly expensive collection of mediocre records from our middle years, the stupidly titled Historikill. We thought we were done with living in the past and released a quite decent new studio record The Grinding Wheel. We wanted to record a live album with songs from our last four outputs but our label disagreed. People like living in the past, they said. You should play more classics, they said. In fact, you should only play classics, they said. So, we randomly chose two popular old records with Horrorscope and Feel the Fire and decided to play them in their entirety, one after another in anti-chronological order. 

I know, this sounds sleep-inducing, Overhausen, and it is, but I also have good news. Apart of our groove metal years in the nineties and early years of the new millennium, we have always played ferocious thrash metal. No matter which album we're going to pick, it will always sound like Overkill. If this concept here works well, we will play The Years of Decay followed by Taking Over next time. Hell yeah, Overhausen! Tonight's show will include plenty of tough riffs, fast guitar solos, dominant bumblebee bass guitar passages and precise drum patterns. My band mates will deliver plenty of raw background vocals. Don't you worry about my vocals, I still sound like a mixture of Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, AC/DC's Bon Scott and my own grandmother. I will make you bang, cheer and sing along to our classics. And I will of course make some jokes and speak some German to make you go crazy: ''Ich bin ein Overhausener!''

So, if you like our signature thrash metal style with a raw and authentic live production, you are going to appreciate this record and get almost two hours of ferocious and timeless music. ''Kauft diesen Scheiß, Overhausen!'' Thank you and good night!

Final rating: 60%