Gama Bomb is hell-bent on having fun. The band from Newry, Ireland, happily bangs out frenetic '80s-style thrash while tapping into their geeky side without a care. The pop culture worship of “We Respect You” off Tales from the Grave (available as a free download at Earache Records) effectively communicates the idea that these guys are probably awesome to hang out with.
Philly Byrne's warped, speedy preacher shout pays tribute to a few filmmakers (like Richard Donner and John Carpenter) and a cavalcade of actors, including Steve Guttenberg, Christophers Lee, Lloyd, and Walken, Bill Paxton, Kurt Russell, and Michael Biehn. (The latter gets the best shout-out: “Here's looking at you, Michael Biehn/When we go drinking, we shout about you/Outlining your career, pumping my fist/Aliens is amazing, it's true.”)
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All of Tales is gushing with a similar kind of personality;
bassist Joe McGuigan has described the record as a “thrash comic book.”
In keeping with this freewheeling sensibility, Byrne called for an
unexpected interview at 8:30 p.m. last Sunday after playing a sparsely
attended show in Amarillo, Texas, with Evile and Bonded by Blood.
The
three bands will bring the same tour to Chain Reaction in Anaheim this
Sunday, Dec. 12. (Intruder, enRot, and Madrost will also be on the
bill.)
Admittedly, Byrne had a bit to drink before this
conversation, but he remained entertainingly incisive. Although this
transcription strives for accuracy, forgive us if it isn't 100 percent
accurate; Byrne's brogue moves at the speed of your average NASCAR
driver.
The vocalist dished on costume changes, punk, and the band's style.
OC Weekly (Reyan Ali): In Gama Bomb's early days, you used to dress up
in various costumes and covered the Ninja Turtles theme. Things seemed
a lot jokier. Why'd the shift in dynamic happen?
Philly Byrne: We've
been together since 2002 so those were very gradual. We stopped doing
the costumes after a while because we couldn't be bothered.
At the
start, I had short Tintin hair. At the time, I wouldn't have admitted
it, but the costumes were a way of appearing more committed to the idea
of the band. Dressing up was my way of saying, 'We don't take ourselves
seriously, but we're quite metal.' I still dress up, but not in the
same way. Before every show, I put on a pair of skintight black jeans,
a pair of high tops, a black T-shirt with no sleeves on it, and a
Washington Redskins jacket. I'm still dressing up; I'm just dressing up
as myself.
We may not do covers now, but we're a much more gimmicky and
interactive and theatrical band than we ever were. It just doesn't
extend to make-up and tights, that's all.
Did you dress up as
anything besides a chef and a pirate?
Yeah, I had a lab coat. The lab
coat was the classic one. Among the 20 people who remember us from that
time, it was a lab coat with bloody handprints all over. It had studs
on the collar and drawings of different symbols all over it. It was my
madman jacket. I'd dress up as a cardinal as well; I had a full
costume.
I was a chef: I had the proper checkered trousers and the hat
and everything. I only ever did that once or twice. I still have the
lab coat in my wardrobe and I imagine if there was ever the appropriate
time, I might actually bring it out on tour with me.
In a review of a Gama Bomb show, a writer mentioned that the band looks
like it stepped out of a time machine, with the jeans, the long hair,
and the vintage T-shirts.
Do you purposely try and emulate '80s thrash
fashion or is that just how you happen to dress?
It's pretty much how
we dress, but whenever it comes time to do the gig, you have to dress
in a way functional to the music. Generally, that's going to be a
T-shirt that's loose with no neck and no sleeves so you can sweat it
out. You're armed when you're wearing tight jeans. I'll generally be
wearing high tops anyway.
I suppose in a way, we are the typical
dressed thrash band, but that's what we look like. When you see Luke
[Graham, guitarist] offstage, he is wearing denim cutoffs with studs
and patches on it. When you see Joe offstage, he is wearing a baseball
cap with a Ninja Turtles logo on it. I suppose we can always reassure
ourselves that we were into this sort of thing before it became
popular. There weren't skater kids dressed up like thrashers or
whatever else. We were pretty much the only people doing it where we
came from.
Vocals-wise, you don't do straight metal screams, but you don't really
sing either. How would you characterize your style?
I'd probably say,
wobbly, whingy. [Laughs] We were talking about this tonight. On our
first album, which we made, like, five years ago, I'd just kind of
roar. I'd make this Lemmy-ish barking noise. The screams never sounded
right. The singing was always too hoarse. It took a long time to
develop into anything approaching a real singing style. [Now,] whenever
it comes time to deliver a high note or a scream, I always make sure
that those get delivered.
The rest of the time, it's a combination of
pronouncing things razor sharp–a big thing that Dio, Bobby Blitz [of
Overkill], and all my favorite singers do. Their pronunciation of
things was unbelievably spot-on. When it came time to sing whatever
insane lyrics I've written, I always find it valuable to enunciate
well. Other singers mumble and grumble through a set, whereas I'm just
talking with a very loud voice. I never thought I was in any way a good
singer until I heard people hating the way that I sang.
People who
sound unbelievably generic never get pointed out as a problem with a
band. In metal, that's actually a bonus point most times. As soon as
you have your own personality, someone will hate you for it and that's
how you know you've got one.
I'm happy with the way I'm singing these
days. On this tour particularly, I've done the best singing in my life.
Everything's there. Plus, I stole Bobby Blitz's moves. [Laughs] We've
toured with Overkill twice and I've stolen every move and note he's
ever held, so in the long run, I'm just going to be a mixture between
Bobby Blitz and Joey Ramone.
[
Have you ever wanted to do something more traditional such as a whole
album where you're screaming in a way closer to black or death
metal?
I'm not a fan of black or death metal. This year, I was talking
about making a solo album. If we do get around to it, it would
definitely be something a bit different. It would be like speed metal
crossed with Turbo by Judas Priest–that kind of high camp, glossy,
1980s synth-metal stuff that's so out of fashion.
Turbo, to me, is a
glittering testament to what you can do with heavy metal if you're
willing to put a pop sheen on it. It doesn't need to be fuckin'
Backstreet Boys vocals. You can actually do something creative and
awesome and sexy with metal.
I couldn't picture myself grunting or
griping on a record. It's got loads and loads of power but not enough
heart or personality.
Your mention of Joey Ramone brings to mind you
noting that punk played a major role in shaping Tales from the Grave.
What punk bands are especially important to shaping this sound?
When I
was 13, I got a hand-me-down T-shirt with Sid Vicious' face on it off
my brother. I was raised listening to classic British punk–the Sex
Pistols, The Pogues, Generation X–because my big brother, Gavin, is a
punk. Luke, our guitar player, is very much in the punk camp. He loves
D.R.I., Agnostic Front, Minor Threat. I would listen to a bit of D.R.I.
and Black Flag. Me and Joe, as teenagers, are even into a bit of
glam-punk, like Backyard Babies.
These days, crossover and a bit of
hardcore are where we take a bit of influence from. I like the idea
that we're not a glossy metal band. You need a bit of punk in you to be
something else. It's okay to just be into those five heavy metal
albums, but the edge we have on other people is that we have a bit more
balls, a bit more grip. I want to be a bit of a punk; I just don't want
to smell like one.
Do you ever imagine the band making a punk album that's influenced by
thrash versus a thrash album that's punk-influenced?
Luke and I have
talked about having a side project. The side project is tentatively
called G.F.O. and we're going to hopefully record an EP. That's going
to be political anarcho-punk with a bit of Clash-type reggae thing
going on. I would love to sing on a straight-up punk release, but I
don't think it would happen under Gama Bomb. One of the big things we
have with the band is that we say that if we ever start changing this
style of music, like if we go to rehearsal and start playing something
that sounds like Radiohead or Aphex Twin or The Killers or whatever
else, we'd just not call ourselves Gama Bomb. We wouldn't sully
our–here's a bad word–brand. We wouldn't wreck our recognition by
foisting that on people, which is something that bands like Anthrax
did. They effectively weren't the same band anymore.
What's G.F.O., the band name you just mentioned, stand for?
It stands
for “George Fucking Orwell.” I'm a huge Orwell fan, and the whole joke
we always have is that if you're being politically right on, you go,
“George fucking Orwell, yeah! Right on, man!”
Joe described Tales from the Grave as a “thrash comic book” in an
interview. Elaborate on this idea. Are there themes to the record?
Would you call it a concept album?
It's a concept album loosely in that
the concept of the album is that it's like a Tales from the Crypt comic
book, where you open up the comic book and there are six stories in a
row. The idea was [that] each one of [the songs] would be a considered
a story from this book. In the past, we've been big into referencing
other people's ideas.
We'll write a song about Robocop. We're still
into that, but our whole thing with this was, 'Let's write our own
tales. Let's write the theme songs to the horror films that were never
made.' There's “Escape from Scarecrow Mountain,” which was like a
B-movie.
The idea is that you're looking at a book of stories. Other
bands stretch two or three ideas across an entire album, whereas every
song on our album is jam-packed with the most musical ingenuity and
acrobatic playing and concepts we can come up with. I'm proud that you
can zoom in like a high res photograph and still [find] things that are
worth seeing in every part of every song.
Have Gama Bomb started plotting the next album? Do you want it to have
a concept, too?
Recording [Tales] was quite difficult personally and
professionally. Afterwards, we were all like, 'Stand back, we're not
going to do anything creatively for a while,' although this year has
really turned us around. In the past, we've made albums and had to ramp
up to make it whereas right now we're on an all-time high. I'd say
we're going to exploit that next year.
I like the idea of another album
with a concept, but the only concept I really adore is that compendium
of stories. I don't know where I could take it from there, but at the
same time, our whole reason we gave Tales away for free was because you
can't just do something that's been done. The music that we do is music
that's already been done. We sound like a thrash band from 20, 30 years
ago.
Anything we do beyond what we sound like has to be original. I've
toyed with the idea of making an album that's more political, but as
soon as you do that, you put your neck on the chopping block for people
to criticize. It's something we're not even sure we can do, but we
wanted to make a movie and write a soundtrack for it. I don't know how
possible that is. It would be nice to make our own sci-fi apocalyptic
short movie and soundtrack it with an album's worth of material. If we
can get away with the last thing we did, maybe we can do that, too.
