I don’t know about you, but I really can’t remember the last time New Jersey reprobates Overkill released a bad album. That doesn’t mean, however that you can approach their new album with carefree nonchalance; everyone can have a bad day and we owe it to ourselves as serious metalheads to treat every release on it’s merits, good or bad.

(wakes up with a start)… My word that was a weird dream. What was I thinking? Overkill are back with a new album, Scorched. And of course it’s a top-shelf, ripsnorting triumph of a record.

Seriously, Overkill don’t make bad records. But in the rarified atmosphere of ‘no bad albums’, Scorched stands as absolutely one of the best. Produced perfectly, mixed to perfection by long term metal master Colin Richardson, and performed with the sort of dead-eyed brilliance only the truly Godlike can summon forth, this is American metal at it’s absolute apogee.

I don’t want to keep the hyperbole engines running any longer than necessary here, I promise – but tracks like Goin Home and The Surgeon are absolutely fit to join the ranks of this band’s historical best. Doyens Verni and Ellsworth deliver on their longstanding promise, as always, but that’s only part of the allure. Guitarists Dave Linsk and Derek Tailer have quickly become a formidable axe pairing, and percussive battering ram Jason Bittner uses his impressive ability to mix groove and heads down battery with practised ease throughout. Throw all this together into your metal thermomix – an the result is pretty damn delicious.

Ellsworth, in particular, continues to defy belief on Scorched with yet another lesson in batshit crazy vocal vio-lence; Remarkably after all the man’s health trials and tribulations, he stands in 2023 as just about the best in the business when it comes to no-frills, wild-eyed belting. The pure metal nirvana of Won’t Be Coming Back, for instance, is just out of this world; a combination of great vocal melodies underpinned by the chug of Verni and Tailer, Linsk’s ever-present lead wizardry, and Bittner’s swing, it’s just about perfect in every single respect you can think of.

It’s not all tight-trousered thrashing – the Ozzyish Fever takes things down a notch or two, intensity wise, but at the end of the day we come to Overkill for our headbanging jollies and once again they’ve satiated our cravings in spades. If there’s a better veteran band out there currently dong the rounds, I’d like to hear them. But we all know that’s not going to happen, don’t we?

Scorched releases on April 14th.