Gama Bomb: Don’t Get Your Hair Cut
The new GAMA BOMB album ends with a saxophone solo. The last minute of the climactic Bats In Your Hair sees the Irish musician Gavin Kerins deliver a lively, yet irresistibly smooth instrumental finale. It transforms an enjoyably catchy thrash anthem about having flying rodents tangled in your hair into the perfect soundtrack for getting laid at a ski resort in the eighties. Imagine a group of drunken, long-haired guys in FLOTSAM & JETSAM t-shirts disappearing behind a curtain and re-emerging in smoking jackets and you’ll get the idea.
It’s a surprising way to close a metal album, but in some respects, it’s very GAMA BOMB. The Irish five-piece have been making thrash for decades now and have long been known for their sense of humour. Their songs are usually far more jovial than the average EXODUS cut and they have an unerring knack for poking fun at both themselves and the world around them. It’s let them get away with things that more po-faced metal bands wouldn’t even dream of, so why not put a saxophone in there? As singer Philly Byrne puts it, “it still sounds a lot like GAMA BOMB even though it’s a saxophone. Who knows what’s next? Maybe a glockenspiel. Or a slide whistle.”
Bats is their eighth full-length and another welcome addition to their impressive back catalogue. Like their previous work, it’s fast, energetic and very easy to like. It’s full of pop culture references and there’s still a youthful exuberance about them, even as their twenties get further away. But there’s a big difference about Bats; it’s their first entirely self-produced album.
“The last record we made during lockdown so there was a necessity to be very DIY about it. We sent Bats off to a guy to mix it and during the mastering, but Domo [Dixon, guitars] had done such a great job on Sea Savage, we just figured we’d be better off doing this on our own,” explains bassist Joe McGuigan. “We’d been doing it a lot longer than some of the people we could give it to. It’s something I’d like to see more of. In ten years’ time, I’d like us to be trying our hand at everything.”
“We’ve always wanted to have a stake in the more creative side of recording and all those aspects of the band,” adds Philly. “We’ve increasingly over the years taken more of a role in it. We sketch the designs for the merch before sending them to artists, we have input into the videos and we’re now producing and directing them. We’re gradually taking charge so to be at the point where we can produce our own albums makes sense.”
This DIY approach isn’t exclusive to GAMA BOMB, but it is an ethos that’s more associated with punk than metal. But when you remember that their formative years occurred long before the post-millennial thrash revival, it’s not surprising. “When we started the band, punks were the only ones who would listen to us,” Philly laughs. “Thrash seemed dead to us, it didn’t matter because it was our thing, but the punks accepted us. We played a lot of small, wet-floor shows in Belfast and I think they appreciated the levity and stuff. Punk was always there, BUZZCOCKS and THE POGUES were always there.”
“A lot of it comes from the fact the metal that was popular when we were growing up wasn’t particularly fast,” Joe elaborates. “Even bands like METALLICA were quite mid-paced whereas me and Philly were listening to Northern Irish punk bands and stuff like BACKYARD BABIES. It wasn’t like there were bands like TESTAMENT coming to Ireland for us to play with.”
Fraternising with the punk scene goes some way towards explaining why they’re not afraid to hold back and speak truth to power. GAMA BOMB might be jokers, but there’s a ruthless morality to them as well and they’re more than willing to punch up. They know several bands who refuse to get involved in politics out of a reluctance to limit their audience, but as Joe explains, there’s a certain degree of freedom in being a ‘smaller’ band. “It’s okay for someone on the scale of say, THE ROLLING STONES to be inoffensive and non-political and corporate-pleasing because they personally make huge gains from creating art. We don’t. So, if we’re going to do this, we’ve got to enjoy it, and we’ve got to feel like we’re not cheating on ourselves. I don’t make money like this, so why would I stand up pretending to be someone that I’m not?”
That said, don’t go into Bats expecting a patch-jacketed RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. There are politics in the record, but they’re not the focal point. The emphasis is on having a good time. There’s a lot of high-octane riffs, circle-pit-inducing slam anthems and a memorable appearance from underground hip-hop legend THE EGYPTIAN LOVER, lending his vocals to a song about a cybernetic Mummy going on a rampage. Having grown up against the backdrop of The Troubles, it’s understandable that GAMA BOMB might want to spend less energy singing about bombs and more on their favourite Kurt Russell movies. And on the few occasions where they tackle more difficult subjects, they’re not quite so blunt as they once were:
“I think when it comes to politics this album might be more nuanced. There are political songs on it but it’s more of a personal dimension, challenging people’s views and how they treat the world. The line has blurred a wee bit, it’s more how we respond to different opinions,” says Philly, “we’ve a song about healthy ways to help people get over their religion. It’s more ‘grown up’.”
If this is a new side to GAMA BOMB, a sign of greater maturity, do they have any advice for their younger selves? “Lose the baggy jeans kid,” says Joe. “Appreciate it,” says Philly. “The stuff that seems boring, when you look back on it, it was actually really fun. I was probably complaining about having to travel all the way to Scotland on a bus to do a gig, but in hindsight it was really fun. But we also made some terrible trousers mistakes in the first five years of the band. That’s why we’ve been making up for it with our incredible trouser game since.”
Bats is out now via Prosthetic Records.
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