Overkill ranks among the fastest and heaviest thrash bands on the planet, but there’s more to the bandmembers than hyper-kinetic riffing. Take bassist D.D. Verni, who owns and operates Gear Studios in New Jersey, where the band’s next album, The Electric Age (due out March 27 on eOne), has been taking shape.
As you can see this behind-the-scenes video, Verni has been toiling over his 32-channel Neotek Series III console, recording into Steinberg Nuendo software. Singer Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth’s vocal mic in the clip is a Shure SM7, but for tracking, they used a Neumann U87. And, as always for the band, the mic used to record Derek “The Skull” Tailer and Dave Linsk’s guitars was an everyday Shure SM 57 on the guitar cab—just one, as they don’t combine microphones for guitar tone.
In the video, Verni discusses the band’s production process, why they’ve chosen Greg Reely (Sarah McLachlan, Frontline Assembly, Fear Factory) to mix the new album, and how they see their sound: “We’re a thrash band, so we tend to like sounds that are not too soft, but not to hard. We don’t really want to totally be on a Neve console; we’re more of an SSL kind of band.”
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