Them Overkill guy might not have been too musically influenced by Kiss, but they sure seemed to have learned a thing or two from Gene Simmons' marketing skills (and fortunately not from his gift for shooting amateur adult video).
For their new album, Immortalis, the old-school thrash band recruited happening Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe to provide guest vocals, then roped him into shooting the video with them (which we've debuted below). As if that's not a major enough selling point, Overkill also interspersed footage from their performance at last year's Wacken Open Air Festival. Not so coincidentally, the band's new DVD, "Live at Wacken," was shot at the same concert.
Says singer Bobby Blitz Ellsworth, "The track comes to life with the Wacken footage. It is like a slasher engineering a runaway train with 40,000 witnesses, mixed with the location shots we did with Randy and I. The video brought the song to visual life."
The narrative segments of "Skull & Bones were directed by Kevin Custer (Hatebreed, Madball). "I packed up the cameras in NYC and headed down to Virginia to rock out a slamming shoot with Bobby and Randy," he said. "We had a blast - everyone was on point. The vid looks sick!"
Blythe, whose appreciation of Overkill goes back to the days they still had guitarist Bobby Gustafson and drummer Rat Skates in the band, was thrilled at the invitation to join his childhood heroes. "There's nothing more fun than drinking beer and lip-syncing along to heavy metal for 10 hours in a 20 degree warehouse with Bobby Blitz," joked Blythe before giving us a straight answer. "Getting to make a video with f--king Overkill in my home town wasn't just cool, it was my sacred duty to help them crack some skulls and break some bones." Amen to that.
Click on "read more" to watch the video for Overkill's "Skull & Bones." and see it again on Headbangers Ball on March 4 at 4 a.m. EST on MTV2.
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