Band:	Overkill
Album:	The Grinding Wheel
Style:	Thrash metal
Release date:	February 10, 2017
A review by:	nikarg

01. Mean Green Killing Machine
02. Goddamn Trouble
03. Our Finest Hour
04. Shine On
05. The Long Road
06. Let's All Go To Hades
07. Come Heavy
08. Red White And Blue
09. The Wheel
10. The Grinding Wheel
11. Emerald [Thin Lizzy cover] [limited edition digipack bonus]
12. Sanctuary [Iron Maiden cover] [Japanese bonus]

Overkill is back! In fact this is the 18th album in a career that is now nearing four decades, meaning that this band has been around for more years than most of the people reading this review have been walking on this planet. The New Jersey thrashers made an impressive comeback in 2010 with Ironbound and since then they have sworn to leave us speechless every time they put out something new. The band is clearly going through its second prime and The Grinding Wheel is here to prove it.

The first thing I noticed when I got my hands on the new album was the track times. Half of the songs go over the six-minute mark, which immediately made me think that this was going to be another Hardwired? bloating experience with aimlessly plodding songs. Luckily, this is far from the case here. The album just flies, being a riff fest of high standards and offering the familiar badass thrashing madness that we know and love from Overkill. What is different is that they tried to make the songs a little more progressive, but without adding any unnecessary extras like silly interludes, never-ending intros and boring fillers (something that many bands do nowadays, in order to stretch song times and thus be classed under the "progressive" category). In The Grinding Wheel there is more space for the music to evolve, which is uncommon for this genre and it is also rare for a thrash act to succeed in such a venture. But this band triumphs, without compromising its "no bullshit" attitude in the slightest.

Performance-wise, it's impossible not to notice the unstoppable, pummeling drums of Ron Lipnicki, whose departure shortly after the album's release leaves his replacement, Jason Bittner, with big shoes to fill. The guitar duo of Linsk and Tailer produces riffs and solos to satisfy every headbanger and D.D. Verni's dirty basslines are immediately recognisable; if Overkill were a group of people ready for a bar brawl, D.D. Verni's bass would be the tough guy standing in front of everyone to scare the opposition away. To round off the musicians' efforts, Bobby's vocal delivery in this album is simply awesome. Despite the too-ridiculous-for-words choice of sporting a moustache that makes him look like something between Fu Manchu and a Mexican drug dealer, this man's voice gets better with time. He sounds as pissed-off, furious and driven as ever and Overkill's strong point is most other thrash bands' weakness: the vocals. Last but not least, Andy Sneap's mix is near perfect, with each instrument getting the volume and sound it deserves and the whole album comes across as dynamic as it should.

There is essentially nothing subpar in The Grinding Wheel, but of course some tracks are better than others. "Our Finest Hour" is exactly what the title suggests, having one of the best choruses the band has ever crafted and playing on repeat while this review is being written. "The Long Road" with its fantastic introductory solo and the Black Sabbath influenced "Come Heavy" are also high on my list as is the punk-fused "Let's All Go To Hades" and the epic title track that closes the album. Bear in mind that there is also a limited edition bonus cover of Thin Lizzy's classic "Emerald" and a Japanese bonus cover of one of Iron Maiden's best songs, "Sanctuary". Both of them are enjoyable and if you can get your hands on these editions, they are worth buying.

As a final note, I'm going to be blasphemous and say that the quality of Overkill's output in the current decade is very close to, if not on par with, the stuff they released in the 1980s. With the thrash revivalist movement being quite strong at the moment, it is really spectacular and unexpected to see Overkill blowing not only most of their contemporaries (Big Four, etc.) to smithereens, but also almost every single modern band of this genre. Expect your neck muscles to suffer.