With an incredible twenty full studio albums over a career that spans five decades, Overkill remains one of the most prolific thrash metal bands ever. Way back in the summer of 1990, Logical Dinosaur’s Michael Mercadante, along with Anthony Secreto, interviewed lead singer Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth and then-guitarist Bobby “Gus” Gustafson. At the time, Tony and I were halfway through high school, and we were doing a public access TV show through our high school’s Media Center. Our instructor, Matt Porter, helped facilitate the interview and rolled camera for the action. I transcribed this interview from the original VHS master probably 20 years ago, and haven’t watched it since. Eventually I’ll digitize it. 34 years later, I don’t remember which of us (me or Tony) asked which questions, and so all of our questions are simply identified as “logicaldinosaur”. Although Tony was a great friend to me for many years, we’ve lost touch over time. I hope he looks back on this work as fondly as I do – it was a fucking great afternoon and evening! Overkill was touring following the release of their breakthrough fourth album, “The Years of Decay”. We sat with them before their live show at The Airport Music Hall in Allentown, PA. As of 2024, Ellsworth remains the lead vocalist for the band, who released their most recent album just last year. Gustafson split with the band within a year after this interview, and went on to perform with Cycle Sluts From Hell, Skrew and Satan’s Taint. He is currently a permanent member of Vio-lence.
Cool side note: the opening act for this show was Soundgarden, who put on a fantastic show touring to support their second album, Louder Than Love. It was the only time I ever got to see Soundgarden live.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: How did Overkill get started, and where did you guys come up with your name?
ELLSWORTH: The band started recording in ’85, the birth of the band happening in ’83, when we started writing original material. That’s when Bobby (Gustafson) joined the band. Prior to that, we were a cover band. “Overkill” really just fit it, you know, it was just one of those things where all of us, when we got together, we wanted energy, and something to describe the energy we wanted onstage.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Why did (drummer and founding member) Rat Skates (1983-1987) leave the band?
GUSTAFSON: Why do I always get this one? He left after the second album, and he just really wanted to pursue regular marriage and family life, the stuff we were doing as a band didn’t really live up to what he wanted, and he just said, hey, it’s time for me to give it up, so we said fine, he left, and we got a new drummer, Sid Falck (1987-1992).
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Between the albums Taking Over and Under The Influence, there’s a change in the sound of your music. Does this have anything to do with Rat leaving, or is just a change for the better?
ELLSWORTH: Every album, to us, sounds different. We don’t go by a standard formula, we go with a production sound that matches the music. Sid also played on Under The Influence, if that’s what you mean. Between Under The Influence and Years of Decay, or between Taking Over and Under The Influence?
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Taking Over and Under The Influence.
ELLSWORTH: Okay. Well, it was a production thing that matched what we were doing at the time. The band doesn’t want to stay locked into any one particular formula. Sid’s input into the record really didn’t have anything to do with the sound, it was more of a band decision, not just an individual’s playing changing the sound.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: How did you guys hook up with Sid?
GUSTAFSON: We had heard about him. We had a lighting director that worked with Paul Di’Anno’s (band) Battlezone, which he was playing with. After he finished touring with us, and he had heard about Rat leaving, it was about that time when Paul Di’Anno’s Battlezone was breaking up, and he had this drummer who was living upstate by him, and he said, while you’re doing auditions, why don’t you give him a try out. So, we went through quite a few drummers, and he was the one that really stuck out. So, we called him back, and he fit, and that was it. About two-and-a-half years ago.
ELLSWORTH: Plus, he owes us a lot of money (chuckles).
LOGICALDINOSAUR: What were some of your major musical influences?
ELLSWORTH: This band has many diverse musical influences. We like to explore different things, so I can’t say it’s one or two bands. I’d say the band whose attitude and overall feel about them, like the aura of the band, would be Black Sabbath being the main one. But we’re not just locked into Sabbath. You might detect that in certain songs, like “Skullcrusher”, but it’s not like we have to be like Black Sabbath. We take things from energy, is the way we look at it. Like the ’70′s punk explosion, even up to modern-day stuff, or even older than them. To be locked into one thing sort of limits you, and the band doesn’t want to be limited, and that’s one of the things we tried to do with the new record. With Bobby coming up with acoustic parts, and me singing more melodic melody lines on some of the songs, it’s not just this. It’s many different things is what Overkill is.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: What do you guys personally like? Like, when you guys go home and turn on the stereo, what do you listen to?
GUSTAFSON: We like different variations of music, you know? I go from some of the early stuff I grew up on, like Judas Priest and KISS and AC/DC and stuff like that, up to whatever I hear in the car, when I’m driving. FM, whatever’s on. You know, it’s just diverse. I mean, everyone has their own individual likes, you can’t even put a finger on it. Whatever really has a good catch, or some energy to it, it doesn’t matter who it is, as long as it has that, we kind of like it.
ELLSWORTH: Not the “Humpty Hump” (Digital Underground’s “The Humpty Dance”). Anything but the Humpty Hump.
GUSTAFSON: Yeah, definitely not rap.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: There are a lot of bands exploding onto the metal scene right now. Which ones look the most promising?
ELLSWORTH: Well, you know, there’s a change in metal as of recently. There seems to be a new wave of it, with the influx of the Faith No More’s and the Soundgarden’s, stuff like that. And my personal opinion is that Soundgarden is one of the best new bands of the year to get exposure. But there’s also a lot of other stuff that still has style, and I think that anything that comes out with heart. But my personal favorite are Soundgarden, stuff like that.
GUSTAFSON: Biohazard.
ELLSWORTH: Biohazard, out of New York. I think they just got signed to MuseAmerica. All those guys are plugged, they gave me free shirts. Biohazard out of New York is really great. I like anything that’s original. I don’t know who’s going to be here two years from now. I can tell you Overkill will be, you know. We’re one of those bands who have longevity. It’s in our veins. But there’s a lot of bands out there starting something new just for the sake of starting something new, and that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to hit. But it’s good to hear some different stuff.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: What was your absolute best experience while you were on tour?
ELLSWORTH: You mean, besides this interview?
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Right, right.
Ellsworth enjoys a cigarette during the interview
GUSTAFSON: Best experience? We just did something – oh, playing in Japan, was one on this tour we really liked. We wanted to go there since album one, we always wanted to go to Japan, and we just played some great sold-out shows there, the kids were fanatical about it.
ELLSWORTH: They showered us with gifts.
GUSTAFSON: Yeah, we got gifts. Playing outside for the first time, we played down in Florida, our first outdoor show, that was kind of cool.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: What was the absolute worst experience you guys ever had while playing?
GUSTAFSON: Was it the crash?
ELLSWORTH: Yeah, we got into an RV crash in Wyoming, it wasn’t too happening. We hit the side of one of those 1956 Hayhaulers, which are made of solid steel, and we hit it with an RV made of toothpicks and held together by spit. It was unbelievable, the thing just disintegrated. Everybody got hurt, we were laid up there for a couple days, and, um, what did I do? I ended up after the governor’s mistress. The governor of Wyoming came in.
GUSTAFSON: He tried to pick up the governor’s wife! That was about four years ago?
ELLSWORTH: Yeah, ’87. ’87 or ’88.
GUSTAFSON: Well, she was drunk, so…
ELLSWORTH: It was a horrifying experience. Especially after I saw her on TV the next day. She looked like Barbara Bush.
GUSTAFSON: Disguising her hangover. That was funny.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Do you guys have a favorite band you like to work with on tour?
GUSTAFSON: I guess it’s the band we’ve played with the most, Slayer. We’ve been on tour with them quite a few times, but we’ve opened for them. I guess one of the bands that’s opened for us that we’ve had fun with over the years could be Power Madness.
ELLSWORTH: Oh, yeah, they were great.
GUSTAFSON: Umm…Dark Angel, Biohazard. Who else? Did we miss anybody?
ELLSWORTH: No, we hate everyone else.
GUSTAFSON: Yeah, we hate everyone else.
ELLSWORTH: No, but those guys were a lot of fun, and we got along with them good. Dark Angel was cool because there was no friction between the two bands, nobody’s bigger than the other guy, it was more like, “hey, let’s go”. It was a lot of fun.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Where do you get the ideas for some of your songs and videos?
ELLSWORTH: The band as a whole has creative control. Whoa, I’m rhyming. Oh, god. Umm, yeah. The ideas come from day-to-day experiences. I mean, it has to come from the heart, or something that irks us, gets under our skin, or becomes a part of us. Something that you either experience, or something that you’re involved in. You know, “Skullcrusher”, the deep, hidden meanings in it, “Nothing To Die For”, “Birth of Tension”, “I Hate”. I mean, these are feelings that are heartfelt deep inside us that we make into a song. You know, we make it four or five minutes of music, but it’s emotions that have been boiling inside of us for years. And we take those emotions and try to make them into music. As far as most of the writing, we do it more or less as a team. I would say Bobby and D.D. (Verni) come up with the majority of the music, if not all, and I come up with the majority of the lyrics. Then what we try to do is make a marriage of the two. Like, the emotional kind of thing. It’s got to mix. If it doesn’t mix, it’s not a perfect song, as far as we’re concerned.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: A lot of the people back home have branded you guys with a new name called “hate metal”, because of the names of some of your songs. What do you think of that name?
ELLSWORTH: I hate it! (laughs)
GUSTAFSON: I hate it, man, I hate it! (laughs) Umm, hate metal, that doesn’t mean negative. You know what I’m saying? There’s a lot of things that you hate that are actually positive. Like I hate the way people treat the environment. I hate racism. I hate people who have faults within themselves. I hate people who don’t even try, who are too lazy, to change themselves. So, it doesn’t even mean that it’s negative. And that’s the problem that this band has run into. People tend to glorify what they read on the surface, which is maybe a song title or an album title, but it’s like a person. Don’t just look at his appearance, you’ve got to go and see what’s inside, you know? Talk to him for five minutes, see what he’s all about. And that’s the way we want to have people deal with our music. Read the lyrics, and you’ll find messages in there you can apply in a positive sense. But, you know, if they want to call it “hate”, then that’s just themselves not indulging into what we’re actually trying to portray ourselves as.
ELLSWORTH: The uneducated.
GUSTAFSON: The simple-minded.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Where did you guys get the idea for the Overkill bat?
ELLSWORTH: Oh, I always get this one.
GUSTAFSON: I always get the Rat one, so he always gets this one.
ELLSWORTH: D.D. Verni showed up one day at rehearsal. We used to rehearse at Bobby’s parents’ house in Staten Island. He showed up with this cartoon character of a bat. It was like, if you can picture Popeye with wings. It was just horrendous, and we actually, at the time, printed it on T-shirts. We had our own little T-shirt factory down in the basement. It was D.D.’s drawing, and at the time we were like, “yeah, this is great”. But when we did the first album, we had given our ideas to an artist who knew the producer of our first record-
GUSTAFSON: Thank God.
ELLSWORTH: Right, thank God. And he came up with a new thing that we have. And we’ve had that, really, on every record. But prior to that, it was D.D.’s original idea, and he said, “boy, isn’t this great?”. And we said, “yeah! (hee hee hee)”.
GUSTAFSON: It was like a hamster with wings. It was really bad.
ELLSWORTH: It was incredible.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Out of the four records you guys have done, what’s your personal favorite?
GUSTAFSON: Personal favorite. Um, I guess the new one, all around, has my general vote. Everything came out the way we wanted it to, we spent a lot of time on it. Really indulged deep within ourselves to get that product out. But, people say, what’s your favorite song? It’s hard to, because you treat each song as an individual, and you try to throw a little something into each song that you like and is special. It’s like trying to pick your favorite kid, you just can’t do something like that. But, usually the newest product we have is our favorite. You know, you look back on the old ones and say, “oh, well that could have been better, and that could have been better”. But we haven’t really done that too much with The Years Of Decay, so I’d have to say overall that that’s my favorite album.
ELLSWORTH: I agree.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Is there any specific place you like to shoot videos? And do you get a lot of input into what goes into the video?
GUSTAFSON: There’s really no specific place. So far, we’ve done three different videos in three different locations. On the latest video, “Elimination”, we’ve had the most input that we’ve ever had. The band came up with the concept, and we used the same person we used for the previous video, “Hello From The Gutter”. And we said, “this is what we want, this is what the outcome should be”, and basically he said “fine, I’m here to serve you guys”. And it came out great. But we really can’t put a finger on one place, because it could be a different place each time. It all depends on the song, and how we want the message that’s in the lyrics to get across. So, our videos are subject to be filmed anywhere.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: Do you have any advice for young bands who are just starting out?
ELLSWORTH: The way we did it, was we basically stuck to our guns. I think ideals, and your own standards, are your biggest assets. You can’t really bend those ideals just because fads are going on, somebody’s sounding this way, somebody’s sounding that way. This band has always been developing a sound within our own spectrum, within our own way of doing things. That’s coming around to people now. I think if we bent along the way and said, “oh, well, these guys are doing this, and those guys are doing that”, that’s wrong. You’re here today, gone tomorrow then. Overkill’s longevity, the only thing we can attribute it to, is that, although we’ve changed things by looking at things and exploring new musical avenues, we’ve never changed the basis of what the band is all about. And that’s to basically speak the truth, and keep a core of power around the music. So, that was our standard for it. And, I think that if other bands do that, you know, not our way, but if you have an original idea, or a standard for a certain sound, stay with that. Even if a lot of people don’t accept it right now, it could come around next year, and you will have lost it if you bent to somebody else’s standard.
GUSTAFSON: I think the best advice I can give a new band is: remember, if she’s wearing spandex, you wear a condom.
ELLSWORTH: (laughing) I almost spit beer on the lens.
LOGICALDINOSAUR: What do you see in the future of Overkill, and metal in general?
ELLSWORTH: I’ll take Overkill first. Overkill will remain doing this as long as we enjoy it. And I don’t see in our future that we will not enjoy it. We’re doing it our own way, we’re basically writing our own rules. Our own rulebook on how to write songs, on how to perform, on taking stands on certain things. Like you were saying before, “hate metal”, and Bobby elaborated that it really doesn’t necessarily deal with general hate, but there’s a basis to the good world in our stuff, which I don’t think a lot of people really realize about us, and a lot of people don’t realize in general. But, I think that as long as we have the opportunity to talk to people through our music, that we’ll continue with that kind of honest approach. It’s not necessarily “thrash until death”. It’s “speak your mind until death”. So, it will always be an honest interpretation, both musically and lyrically, of the band. So far as metal in general goes, I always feel like metal is on a full-circle kind of thing. You know, like The Loop at Great Adventure. It is always rising to a pinnacle of popularity, then it always drops off, and somebody has to come in and give it a fresh shot of adrenalin, whether that’s a band that was already there, or a brand new band. So, metal will always be here. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. They listened to it until they were 23 or 24, then they had kids and said, “oh, hey, I never did it.” It’s like telling your kids you smoked dope. So, it will always be here, because it’s the basis of what the younger generations are all about.
