OVERKILL: 'The Grinding Wheel' Track-By-Track Breakdown Part 2 (Video)

The second part of a video track-by-track breakdown of OVERKILL's eighteenth album, "The Grinding Wheel", can be seen below. Due on February 10 via Nuclear Blast, the disc was produced by OVERKILL and mixed by Andy Sneap (MEGADETH, EXODUS, ACCEPT). The artwork was created again by Travis Smith (NEVERMORE, OPETH, SOILWORK, DEATH).

"The Grinding Wheel" track listing:

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

Pre-order "The Grinding Wheel" digitally and receive "Mean, Green Killing Machine" and "Our Finest Hour" as instant-grat tracks.

OVERKILL frontman Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth recently told the Croatian metal portal NoiseEyes.com about the delay in getting "The Grinding Wheel" released: "It was simplicity. It was a matter of internal mix-ups. We thought we had the entire month of August to mix, when we really had none of the month of August to mix. When Nuclear Blast [OVERKILL's record label] called us, and said, 'Where's the music?' We said, 'Fifteen more days.' We were really close with the mix, but this was our first time working with [producer/mixer] Andy Sneap and he told us, 'Hey, man, it's close, it's 90 percent, but let's do another twelve days when I get back from a business trip. D.D. [Verni, bass], Dave [Linsk, guitars] and I discussed it, and asked: Do you take the great product? Or do you take the money? That's the way we thought about it. We took the dignity over the money with regard to pushing the release back. I always think of every record as your best opportunity to prove yourselves. If you go out pushing that record out, thinking it's 90 percent, then it fucking is 90 percent. It was a real simple mix-up with regard to time. We blame ourselves for 50 percent and Nuclear for the other 50 percent. No, 51 percent for them, 49 percent for us. [Laughs]"

Regarding the musical direction of the new album, Bobby said: "First and foremost, production. Andy has done some great work with different bands in the genre from ACCEPT to ARCH ENEMY. He's really the metal go-to guy. But we wanted to use his abilities, but we wanted to use them with regard to how we saw the record being. One of the things we saw in modern metal is a guitar tone that doesn't have a cohesive relationship with the drums. We wanted more organic drums to start with, and we wanted a guitar tone that came somewhere out of the high technology of the '90s. So it's really kind of a throwback with regard to our thinking, so if you're thinking a drum sounding like a drum and the guitars sounding more in the vein of 'Horrorscope' for us, where it wasn't just top end, but top end and low end with a little bit of mids carved out of them. I think that's the thing I noticed the most about it. "

He continued: "With regard to songwriting, we had done three records, 'Ironbound', 'The Electric Age' and 'White Devil Armory', that were for us, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. [Laughs] Or sisters! There's something about them where there was a formula that we were, I think in our opinion, neglecting some of the other tools that we've accumulated over the years. 'The Grinding Wheel' is much more diverse. There's an epic feel to some of the songs. There's a sludgy, slower feel. There is 'Our Finest Hour', which has been released, which could fit on one of those other three records but everything else doesn't seem like it would fit on these records. I think it's a wider OVERKILL, but press play when you get it. I think that's the best way for people to decide. Everybody has got to be a critic. That's the idea of being a music fan. I'm a music fan, but I'm also a critic. I love or I hate, or it's okay. It'd rather be loved or hated, not 'Ah, it's okay, whatever.'"

OVERKILL and NILE will join forces for a U.S. tour in February/March 2017.

Photo credit: Mark Weiss