ALBUM REVIEW: Bats – Gama Bomb

It’s been 15 years since GAMA BOMB first came to wider attention with Citizen Brain and in some respects, it’s a miracle they’ve survived. Their punked-up party thrash is certainly endearing, but public enthusiasm for this type of music has dwindled since 2009 and plenty of their old tour mates have disappeared, quietly disbanding and returning to ‘normal life.’ There’s only so much mileage you can get out of songs about drunk zombies, so how exactly have they made it this far?

Simply put, it’s because GAMA BOMB don’t know how to write a bad album. They rarely trouble the end-of-year critics’ lists, but their records are always outrageous fun and packed with memorable tunes. 2018’s Speed Between The Lines was a right laugh, and their pandemic-era album Sea Savage was remarkably entertaining given that it was recorded during a massive global crisis. Their latest, the succinctly titled Bats, is no different.

Intro aside, it kicks off with Egyptron, a song that somehow manages to fly past despite being almost six minutes long. It’s fast, energetic and catchy and once again, the lyrics are a big part of the appeal. It tells the story of a cybernetically enhanced undead Pharoah, “mummified in circuitry” and returning to the world of the living to take revenge on humanity. NILE, this ain’t. It has so little to do with actual Egyptology that it makes Abbot And Costello Meet The Mummy look historically accurate, but that’s not the point. This is light-hearted metal music with an emphasis on enjoying yourself, and the scene-stealing cameo by DIY hip-hop legend THE EGYPTIAN LOVER is a very pleasant surprise.

Following this, Living Dead In Beverley Hills is classic GAMA BOMB, a turbocharged speed metal anthem with Halfordian vocals, while Speed Funeral squeezes as much witty wordplay as possible into a whiplash-inducing sugar rush. The majority of the tracks are written with all the excitable enthusiasm of eleven-year-olds who just saw DIE HARD for the first time, but a few moments of seriousness do peak through. Secular Saw for instance, is an indictment of organised religion (albeit with a few chainsaw references to lighten the mood), while Mask Of Anarchy is a paean to optimism in a world that seems increasingly right-wing with every passing election cycle. GAMA BOMB aren’t always renowned for their maturity, but they’ve got an undeniable knack for sounding like your mates encouraging you to re-think your life choices and not sign up for ‘Alpha Male Lifestyle Courses.’ Only in song form.

All of which serves to make Bats an easy-to-like blast of positivity. One rapper and one sax solo aside, it doesn’t do anything different from their previous records and is probably too short, but otherwise, we’ve no complaints. Saving the best song for the finish – the excellent Bats In Your Hair – might be a mistake, but as the smooth jazz outro brings things to a close, it’s hard not to feel like GAMA BOMB have a lot of life left in them yet. Six, seven, EIGHT! EIGHT BATS OUT OF TEN! AH-Ha, AH-ha.

Rating: 8/10

Bats is set for release on November 10th via Prosthetic Records.

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