Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth recently had an entertaining and enlightening discussion with Overkill vocalist Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth about his band's new Historikill release, forthcoming tour dates, British fans and their sense of humour, plus lots more. An excerpt can be read below; listen to the audio interview here.

Talking about the Historikill box set, Bobby explained: “It’s an era of metal that was probably not the most popular with regard to being in any type of limelight or spotlight, it was the underground, darker days. Just prior to this, Metallica changed the world with a bunch of their music – they were picked up by Elektra Records and many of the other major labels followed suit. You were a horse for these big labels, you were supposed to make them cash. But the cool thing about this type of music and thrash in general was that it was really hard to be, kind of hard to saddle a wild horse you know. And what ended up happening was that a lot of bands didn’t follow suit with Metallica and a lot of labels started disposing of them when grunge came in, you know they couldn’t get rid of bands fast enough. Everybody either quit or went to smaller labels who started understanding we came from the underground, that’s where they should be and Overkill’s one of those bands."

"Because of that change we started managing ourselves, we started taking our business and bringing the fences in and understanding that if we were smaller, we’d be less penetrable by the outside. So we managed ourselves, cut some great deals and the Historikill period is that era for us. It was great releases from the underground, regardless of popularity. Just because it wasn’t popular didn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing, I mean this was something we loved doing. I think it’s that great crash course for the fan that has gotten on board in 2008, 2009, maybe our last three releases where popularity has not waned any more, but it’s exalted, it’s back to some degree. So here’s this era you can experience when it wasn’t the easiest thing to do and not the most popular, but still solid, really upscale, tight thrash releases.”