Gama Bomb: Speed Between The Lines

Gama Bomb formed in 2002, bonding over a shared love of retro comics, movies and old thrash metal cassettes. There’s quite clearly some thought behind the whole concept and packaging of the band. The album’s cover is inspired by sci-fi and horror paperback novels of the 70s and 80s and they have some good people helping out. The album was produced by longtime collaborator Scott Atkins (Cradle of Filth, Savage Messiah) with cover art by Jarred Hageman AKA Chrome And Lightning and Rory McGuigan (Villagers). McGuigan has also brought the aesthetic of old paperback novels to bear on Speed Between the Lines creating a tattered retro ‘dust jacket’ for each song in the album’s booklet. However, the whole thing has to stand and fall on the quality of the music.

So, does Speed Between the Lines succeed musically? Yes and no. It’s definitely entertaining if not always in a good sense. Some of the lyrics are a little too puerile at times and the vocals could definitely be a bit Marmite (for our American readers that means they are somewhat love ‘em or hate ‘em.) I quite like them. It struck me after a while who Gama Bomb remind me of more than any other band…Anvil. That’s right, Canadian thrashers who never quite made it…Anvil. I’ve always had similar problems with Anvil �" when they are good they are utterly magnificent, when they aren’t they stink the house out. I find Gama Bomb to have the same effect on me.

What the band and album do have going for them in a big way is the lead guitar work of Domo Dixon and John Roche and the amazing voice of Philly Byrne which, at times goes to places which only Justin Hawkins has thought of. I definitely mean that as a compliment and overall Speed Between the Lines is a good deal of fun and I imagine the band are very strong in the live arena where I hope to see them soon.

Track Listing:
01. Give Me Leather
02. A Hanging
03. 666teen
04. Bring Out The Monster
05. R.I.P. U
06. Motorgeist
07. Alt-Reich
08. Stay Rotten
09. We R Going 2 Eat U
10. Kurt Russell
11. World Gone To Hell
12. Faceblaster

Added: November 8th 2018
Reviewer: Simon Bray
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 959
Language: english

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