Review: Gama Bomb – Tales From the Grave in Space
Gama Bomb – Tales From the Grave in Space (2009) [Earache] // Grade: B
If you don’t know me, you’ll figure out pretty quickly that although I come across a shit ton of music in my day to day, I really only listen to like 7 bands (specifically Weedeater, for like, 3 months straight now. It’s maddening really.) Amongst these bands are the staples of classic thrash, because let’s face it, shit’s the jam. Apparently, a bunch of other people these days feel similarly about Thrash and so was born “Neo-Thrash” or “Thrash Revival” or whatever the fuck you wanna call it. While I don’t know too many of these so called “Neo-Thrashers” I can usually tell it when I hear it, and can pick one or two names out of the crowd.
For the last couple of reviews (Alkoholizer and Aggression) I’ve dove into the unknown with bands I’ve never heard of. For this one, I went with Gama Bomb’s Tales From the Grave in Space. Although I didn’t know too much about them, I’d definitely heard the name around and knew that they were some sorta leaders of the revival. I never really gave them a listen before this but did some pre-reading, found out they were a bunch of comic book, horror freaks from Ireland who listened to a fuck ton of Anthrax growing up.
Anyways, Tales From the Grave in Space is basically a solid chunk of fairly standard thrash revivalism played by stupidly skilled musicians doing pretty much nothing original but yet still seem to satisfy. On the plus side: the riffs are solid, the playing is top notch all around, the recording is good (maybe a little too good even), and every song by itself stands pretty fucking strong.
Weak points of the album are: It suffers pretty damn hard from the curse of the 2nd half. You know that whole “goddamnit, my stoke is fading pretty fucking fast from hearing the same shit over and over again for 30.8 minutes” problem most thrash albums suffer from? Yeah, this one’s got it kicking in right around song 3 which is a little bit of a downer, but at least all the songs are pretty fun. They do a pretty good job of easing the tedium by keeping songs short and upbeat but either way it’s thrash and it is what it is.
My general impression of Tales From the Grave in Space leaned pretty heavily on the, “These dudes really like Anthrax and Overkill vibe.” It’s definitely a technical, crisp, sharp version of thrash. You can definitely hear some Slayer/Megadeth/Sabbaty nuggets thrown in here but where they were all more balls to the wall throw it all out there no matter how gnarly or sloppy, Gama Bomb knows exactly what they’re doing and comes off more like a scalpel than a mace. Clean high pitched vocals that you can understand, crystal clear production, razor sharp guitar tone, and a drummer who couldn’t miss a beat if he tried almost make it sound like they went to school for this shit.
I’d definitely go see these dudes live, and recommend giving this album a listen, but if anyone specifically remembers this chunk in 10 years I’ll be surprised.
