Interview with Philly of Gama Bomb 2008

By Bradley Smith

Your recent album Citizen Brain has been thrashing its way across the world as of late. How do you view it as an insider and how do you feel it shows growth from your debut, Survival of the Fastest? By the way, those are some crunchy guitars!!!

It's hard to have a perspective on the album, as it covers our whole 'career' so far: there are songs on there we wrote nearly five years ago, and some that were so new we were writing lyrics and changing parts at the last minute to make them perfect.  So basically, how do we view our career as a band?  We're pretty proud of it!  We knew when we were making the album that people would love it if they got the idea behind it, and we were right.  It's one of the strongest albums of this decade in metal.

Gama Bomb is undergoing an extensive tour with labelmates, Bonded by Blood.  What can the audiences expect from seeing Gama Bomb live and where are you looking forward to playing the most?  Were you ever able to catch any of the old school thrash bands live during their heyday?  If so, how will you compare?

The BBB tour is going to be massive alright, a full six weeks – that'll be the biggest tour yet for both bands!  When you see GAMA BOMB live, you get what you want: it's furious and fast and we have fun with it.  We're not pretentious; we just act like ourselves, talk crap at the audience and thrash out when we feel like it.  There's no blood-spitting or hard man attitude, because that won't wash in the real world.  We've collectively seen almost all of the classic thrash bands in the last few years: Sodom, Tankard, Exodus, Megadeth, Anthrax, Agent Steel, Death Angel, loads of others.  We can stand up to any of those bands live, although they clearly have more experience than we do.  Plus we're better-looking.

How does it feel to be on such a legendary label like Earache? What sort of differences do you see between them and Witches Brew who released your debut? Are they going to start up a whole sublabel dedicated to thrash with Gama Bomb, Municipal Waste, and BBB leading the charge?

When we released on Witches' Brew, it was a matter of distro and underground credibility, so it was a rather minimalist affair where they helped us out on a grassroots level around Europe.  They're an amazing label though, the first people we ever met who had confidence in thrash metal, and in us.  We owe them a lot.  Earache, of course, is a much bigger deal: there's press promotion, tour support, international distro, licensing agreements and the pull of the name – it's a 'proper' record deal, if you will.  A sublabel would be a cool idea, but Earache are more interested in diversifying their stock than pushing it into brackets, I think.  Joe and Luke have their own vinyl imprint that releases thrash double-singles, starting this autumn, so keep an eye out for that.

You guys are out there putting a different face on the Irish metal scene.  The Irish scene is more known for pagan and black metal acts.
How do you see the scene changing and what impact has Gama Bomb had on the direction of the scene?

Yeah Ireland is better known for pagan and black metal and there have been some really strong acts coming out of those scenes, which makes people really surprised to hear a thrash band come blasting out of there!  We've never been interested in a lot of that stuff, and we've never been part of those scenes, so it's hard to compare.  We're supported by metallers from every scene in Ireland though, which is amazing.  People can get over the whole too cool divide to enjoy it, and that rocks.  The scene has changed dramatically since we started out.  There wasn't another thrash band in the country for us to gig with, so we played with punks, skins, ska bands, hardcore bands, indie bands for about two years.  It was a good education.  Now there's a pretty strong thrash metal scene there, with a whole crop of bands and the cut-offs and everything, and I'm sure we had an influence on that by being around.

It seems that the current Thrash revival is not located in any one place.  It has a large sort of international flavour to it.  Do you see this and how do you think myspace/the internet has helped?  Is there a sort of brotherhood despite the geographical separation?

It couldn't have happened on this scale without myspace, that's how we discovered all the bands we're into right now.  It's class.  Even without record labels knocking, the thrash thing still would have been alive and well.  We were touring the UK to packed clubs before we were signed because there was a scene.

With the old thrash scene it seems like they lost their way as you noted on Bullet Belt. What do you think was the cause of this and how do the current acts intend on avoiding falling into the same trap?

No style of music is immune to change.  Of course that's part of what's great about music: there are really no rules and it takes on its own life when people get together and play it.  Bands went on tour, lived the hype, got famous, spent money, fell out, grew up, had families, drank and screwed about, until suddenly they didn't want to be thrash anymore – or their idea of what was thrash had changed beyond recognition.  Fair enough.  However, the new ideas invariably sucked.  The new wave of thrash bands will of course do the same with time, and you can already see it happening, as some of the biggest new bands talk about being 'death' or 'heavy metal' because they're afraid of being pigeonholed.  We're not afraid of that.  Pigeons have a lot of fans.

Do you think that there is too much seriousness within the metal community?  A lot of the older bands were having a great time and I see the same enthusiasm and spirit of fun exhibited by Gama Bomb and several others.   Do you feel that same sprit of fun when playing your music?  Is it acceptable to be somewhat on the unserious side when it comes to playing thrash?

Of course it is.  Where, I wonder, is the secret Rulebook Of Metal?  Is there a chapter about how dour and miserable you have to be to be credible and cool?  People believe the hype about metal too much, that you've got to gurn and scream and make evil gestures to really mean it, and that my friend is a load of steaming leper shit.  Dio was enjoying himself, ditto Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, Anthrax, Megadeth, everyone worth listening to.  They were playing with words, painting pictures of goblins in their fans' heads, having fun with it.  Being in a band, especially on a small level, is largely a miserable and unforgiving existence.  You spend a lot of time bored, angry, sick, skint, pissed off and hungry.  If you can't have fun for the brief minutes you're on stage after all that what's the point?

On the song Global Warning a sort of plea is made to pay attention to environmental destruction that man is causing. Do you feel that there really is a problem and is humanity the cause of it? If so how do we fix it?

The world is clearly screwed, you don't need us to tell you that.  Remember what the weather was like when you were ten, and compare it to today.  It's different. We're not offering solutions, and we're not going to preach about separating rubbish and never flying transatlantic again, because we quite enjoy the mindless consumption that makes life so comfy these days.  Global Warning is a socially conscious song, and its message is entirely self-contained.  Let's headbang the world cooler.

I was watching the DVD that came with Citizen Brain and you guys came up with an interesting program, Needles for Heroin. And I was wondering what would your ideal program like that be? What would you want to be able to trade in and what could you get in return?

You'd hand in old knitting needles, sewing needles, hypodermics, record styluses, safety pins and the like, and they'd give you a lovely bag of refreshing skag in return.  Dublin has a massive heroin problem, which is probably where the idea came from.  They have needle return programmes at a lot of drug clinics.  What a lovely world.

I know the cover art for Citizen Brain and what it means, to a degree but do you really feel that Politicians have a brain in them? If so, why do they get so many things wrong? Is there anything else to them besides the brain in the jar and do they have any parts that us "normal" people don't have?

Here's the most important thing you'll learn in life: everyone is faking it.  When you're a child you assume adults are intelligent, sensible, smart, wise.  Their decisions are mystically smart and on-the-ball.  When you get older, if you have a brain, you realize everyone is a con artist, a sham and a salesman just muddling through.  Doctors, politicians, lawyers, pilots, policemen, priests and chefs are all as stupid as you are, but they know how to make it look good with a bit of applied knowledge.  Politicians are exactly as smart as the man on the street, they're just more clever about it.  Their decisions are bad because they're distracted by greed, sex and stupidity like everyone else.  Hand over control to super computers, we say.  The album art was just a lark to go along with an EC comics idea of the title.  The next one will have a hammer coming out of a man's
fly, smashing a woman in the face.  It'll be called Taste The Hammer.

Besides touring with BBB, what are the Current Plans for Gama Bomb? When can we expect you to start laying down tracks for a new album?

We're writing new material right now, marshalling old riffs together and stuff. There'll be a new album when we've flogged this one to death, probably next year.

I'll leave any final words to you and make sure you drink TEQUILA!!!!

We prefer whiskey actually!  We'd like to say cheers and faster is gooder – watch Predator 2 and email us your thoughts.