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27 ноя 2025
Former OVERKILL Members BOBBY GUSTAFSON And JASON BITTNER Are Working Together On New Project
Gustafson went on to say that he is still in process of putting together a full lineup for PAINWARD. "I've got a couple of bass players floating around," he said. "I did a lot of pre-production with my usual drummer, Jim McCourt. He helped out getting the songs together. But we're gonna try and search out a singer, I guess, once we get this demo. But these songs, they've been written for a while, and they're still strong. I still like them all. But I'm continuing to write, just in case something magical happens."
Asked if he thinks 2026 will be the year when we will get the first music from PAINWARD, Bobby said: "Yeah, I'm hoping, because I really wanted it to be '25, but this year's gone. It all depends on Jason and his availability. I've got the songs. He hasn't heard everything yet, so I'm gonna try and sit down with him and say, 'Hey, these are all the songs I have. If you're cool with these 10, or if there's one you don't like, we'll grab another one.' I've just got a whole list of songs, and that's kind of new for me, 'cause I used to just write, 'cause we had no time back in the day. I wrote what went on the albums, and that was it. There really wasn't much extra. But now I'm writing a lot and now, and I'm picking the best from them. So as soon as he can get finished up with that stuff, get into these songs with me, we can try and get a singer from those four songs. If it's quick enough, early enough in the year, we might have something out by the end of the year in '26."
Gustafson joined OVERKILL in 1982 and played on the band first four albums — "Feel The Fire" (1985),"Taking Over" (1987),"Under The Influence" (1988) and "The Years Of Decay" (1989) — before being shown the door in 1990 amid growing tension between him and OVERKILL bassist D.D. Verni.
Bobby told Metal Rules a few years ago that he was never officially asked to leave OVERKILL. "It wasn't something where they came out and said, 'Hey, you're fired!' It was more of a verbal fight between me and D.D. about doing a show where they wanted to do it strictly for money and I didn't want to do it because we had just sold out Studio 54 in New York, our biggest show, and they wanted to do a Halloween show that was kind of goofy," he claimed.
In a 2016 interview with Rock & Metal In My Blood, Gustafson said that he would "never play with [OVERKILL] again. They stole from me back then and continue to steal from me till this day," he explained. "They haven't paid me for the use of my songs for the past 30 years and now they are even re-recording 'Feel The Fire' live. I've never seen a band claim so adamantly that they don't live in the past, yet most of their set list is from the first four albums I was on. They have had so many albums after me and never play songs from them. I just can't play happily with backstabbers and liars."
Regarding the fact that OVERKILL replaced him with two guitarists, Gustafson told Noisecreep in a 2011 interview: "Some might say it was like a compliment. I would tend to agree. Plus every album after me, when they had two guitar players in the lineup, never topped what I did. 'The Years Of Decay' is still our best-selling album and I had a really short time to write it. I did it short breaks within a six-month period. D.D. had years to put together their next album ['Horrorscope']. So his opinion that two guitarists would make them heavier failed."
Gustafson joined VIO-LENCE in January 2020 as the replacement for Ray Vegas.
When Gustafson's departure from VIO-LENCE was first announced in October 2020, the band cited "logistical difficulties that weigh too heavy to function in a productive manner" as the reason for the split. He later told Into The Pit about his exit: "[The split happened] for the same reason all these bands are canceling tours. It's just gotten so expensive to do. Even within that three-short-year span, the price of plane tickets really shot up after the pandemic. They're not playing all the time — they're doing sporadic shows here and there — and to spend that much money to bring me out there, it's understandable."
Gustafson went on to say: "I thought it was pretty much a solid band when I had started. But I know Phil [Demmel, VIO-LENCE's founding guitarist] has his eyes on something bigger. So if other projects come along, he wanted to really be with something at the level he was used to, which is understandable. You get used to that level, and it's hard to go back. I wish them well. Whatever happens, happens."
Bittner joined OVERKILL in 2017 and played drums on the band's last two studio albums, 2019's "The Wings Of War" and 2023's "Scorched".
This past September, Jason told All Access Live! With Kevin Rankin about his decision to exit OVERKILL more than a year ago: "I'm not gonna talk anything negative about my old situations or anything like that. People leave bands for their own reasons. Let's just say I was stagnant in my old situation. I was not happy with where I was in a business sense with OVERKILL. I was basically giving more of myself than I was getting in return. And after almost eight years, I had pretty much had enough of that. And when I knew that there wasn't even any negotiation aspect to anything, I'm, like, 'Okay, well, it's time to start thinking about myself.'"
He added later in the interview, in reference to his OVERKILL gig: "When you go to a job, when you start a job, do you ever go to a job — I don't care what job it is; it could be McDonald's — do you ever go to a job and never get a raise after eight years? This is not a hypothetical situation. This is a true story."
Bittner previously talked about his departure from OVERKILL during a November 2024 interview with Pod Scum. Jason said at the time: "I hadn't been happy in [OVERKILL] for, like, two fucking years. It wasn't a surprise that I quit. I'd been dissatisfied for a long time, but I'm a team player. I don't like to leave things. I love the guys personally. So I just kind of just hung in there, but I was not happy where I was career-wise, let's say, within the confines of that band. I wasn't a bandmember. And that's the main thing for me to keep doing this at this point in my lifetime. That's why for SHADOWS FALL to be back together, I'm 20 percent owner-member. I'm involved in the decisions. I just don't get told what's happening. I hate that. I'm a Capricorn. I can't deal with that shit."
He continued: "For my whole career, for the most part, even like back to the early days, all the bands either I formed or I was instrumental in getting the guys together, or it was always just a one-for-all, all-for-one thing. OVERKILL was the only band I've ever played in where I was a hired gun. The only exception was ANTHRAX, but I was only a touring member with ANTHRAX, and with PRONG — only touring. That's a totally different animal than being, quote-unquote, in the band. Even when I was in FLOTSAM [AND JETSAM], I was a 20 percent member-owner. I was involved in the decisions. So seven and a half years of that was a long time for me.
"I know Blabbermouth is gonna take this and run the wrong way with what I'm trying to talk about," Bittner added. "My point I love the guys, I was a team player, I wasn't leaving, but I was dissatisfied and I was looking for something else.
"My whole career, I had my ears always to the grindstone and I'm always just in the mix to know what's going on, like, 'Oh, hey, someone's looking for something.' Not that I want to be a ship jumper or anything, but I've had a lot of downtime on my hands in the last number of years. So anything I can play on, play with, be a part of, I'm gung-ho to do. But for a while with OVERKILL, I wasn't like that anymore," Jason admitted. "I'm, like, 'All right, this is cool. I'm not looking for anything else.; But after a while, I was, like, 'All right, I need another outlet.'"
When Ruger pressed Bittner about the exact reasons for his dissatisfaction with his role in OVERKILL and whether he wanted "more involvement in the creative process", Jason said: "A little bit. For me, more so it was definitely on just being paid fairly for my time… Like I said, there's no animosity. I just went and saw everybody last Friday. [OVERKILL] just played in my backyard Friday night. I went, I knocked on the bus, Blitz [OVERKILL singer Bobby Ellsworth] opened the door: 'Hey, you coming tonight?' 'Yeah.' 'All right. Come on in.' Gives me a big hug, like I knew he would. I gave his girlfriend a hug. I said hello to a couple of crew people that I knew. I went inside and gave everybody a hug. D.D. [Verni, OVERKILL bassist] came up, slaps me on the back. It's got nothing to do with our personal lives. It's just a business thing."
Bittner added: "For a while it was fine, but I needed to make myself available for the bands that I'm a member of. That's really what it is. I couldn't be tied to OVERKILL anymore to be their drummer and only their drummer and 'this is the schedule for the year and you have to work in whatever you do in this.' Uh-uh.
"And I know that the people are already typing away, 'Yes, but SHADOWS FALL doesn't tour the way that OVERKILL did,' blah blah blah blah. Yes, true — very true. But remember, I have another band, CATEGORY 7. Between the two, we'll be working just as much. But also, the thing to keep in mind here, too, is I can play five shows with SHADOWS FALL and make more money than playing 30 with OVERKILL."
In September 2024, Verni told Capital Chaos TV about Bittner's departure: "We kind of knew that that was coming. He had told us a while ago that he was just kind of burned out on too many things and had his hands in too many pots. So I think we kind of knew that was coming."
When the interviewer noted that "it's nice to see he left on good terms" and that there wasn't "some sort of drama," D.D. concurred. "Yeah, it was nothing like that," he said. "He didn't leave us hanging. You know, he finished out his commitments with us. He was supposed to do this European tour, but he couldn't; he ended up not being able to do that, which worked out, because we have Jeramie [Kling, formerly of VENOM INC.] now in the band... And so it it all ended up working out."
The OG Bobby G!
Posted by Jason Bittner on Friday, October 31, 2025
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