“There’s some metal, punk, classic rock…..it’s all in there, from Queen to Green Day to Metallica, I think we covered all the basses!”, declares D.D. Verni of his first solo outing.
The album has a host of guitar players doing guest spots on the record. Jeff Loomis (Arch Enemy), Angus Clark (Trans Siberian Orchestra), Jeff Waters (Annihilator), Bruce Franklin (Trouble), Mike Romeo (Symphony X), Mike Orlando (Adrenalin Mob) and Steve Leonard (Almost Queen), all contribute whilst Andre “Virus” Karkos (Dope) contributed the rhythm guitar tracks. Rounding out the group is former Overkill drummer Ron Lipnicki. The record was mixed and mastered by Chris “Zuess” Harris (Rob Zombie, Queensrÿche, Hatebreed).
The first single Fire Up features guitarist Mike Orlando. D.D. Verni states “I’m psyched to get this disc out, we had a lot of fun and a lot of great players contributed”.
In addition to eighteen Overkill full length releases, Verni has four releases with his side band The Bronx Casket Co. The bassist continues “so why do a solo record….well I never really stop writing material, and after some time it starts to pile up and take shape and I wonder what it will be. In the past anything that was not Overkill material I would put aside for my other band The Bronx Casket Co, but when I starting pulling these songs together it was clearly not that, and I thought, OK I guess it’s a solo record. The material was kinda metal and kinda rock and kinda punk, so those really are my basic influences.
In Overkill I take all that background and funnel it into our thrash sound. But these songs were not thrash but a combination of the other stuff. I would never really have an interest in doing a record that was thrash sounding outside of Overkill, I just don’t think it could be any better. The fun is trying new shit and seeing where it goes for me. I could always do all the instruments myself as I have in the past on projects but thought this could be a good opportunity to try working with some new people. My wife was hearing me thinking out loud and basically said why don’t you just call some guys whose work you like and see if they would be interested, and so that’s what I did”.
The release date of the album is set to October 2018 and touring in both the US and Europe is currently being booked.
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