With the imminent impact of their second album on Earache Records, it seemed like a good time for UK Thrash to set up a communicative channel with everyone’s favourite Irish thrashers GAMA BOMB. James Ashbey fired some questions in the direction of bassist Joe Mcguigan to discover what life is really like in the Fortified Zone…
Gama Bomb (by Ruth Medjber)
Hi Joe, tell us about ‘Tales From the Grave in Space’. The track titles seem to follow a cult horror sort of vibe; is there any particular concept running through the album?
Yeah, most of the tunes are based on shit-your-pants scary stuff. The idea was to do the album like an E.C. comic – lots of short horror stories and a comic design vibe. Obviously there’s some non-horror stuff in there too. We came up with the title first and figured out our own mythos around it (what the Grave is and where it came from etc). After that we kind of took a step back and started writing songs as we usually do. Cool ideas like ‘Mummy Invasion’ and ‘Escape From Scarecrow Mountain’ came from the central theme of the album being a thrash comic book, but there’s not really a big difference from our usual subject matter overall.
Talk us through the free online album give-away. Philly announced that this was a response to the way music is increasingly downloaded by the masses – is your philosophy that it’s best to reach as many listeners as possible regardless of whether they acquire the CD, or do you still think there’s merit in owning a record in the flesh (hence the album also being released on CD)?
Since we are a new or rising band we thought it could only help to release the album for free online, to bring in lots of new fans and give the more skint amongst us a chance to get the album without feeling like they’re robbing the band’s music. As you know we’re big fans of downloading music as a way of discovering new bands or checking out old or hard to find albums, but we’re also into buying albums from good bands. Having the album up for free download was therefore a no-brainer for us, but the double CD and 12″ was always an essential part of the plan.
I’m a massive collector of 12″s and CDs so I think owning great albums physically is a must, but having the opportunity to check out new albums before buying is a great plus of downloading, like checking out the new Megadeth or whoever before parting with the hard-earned bucks, you know?
Citizen Brain
You’ve opted for another Scott Atkins production job – does this indicate that you’re going for a largely similar musical formula to ‘Citizen Brain’, or have you thrown some extra ingredients into this latest “zombie brew”?
We’re fairly confident that the new LP is gonna blow Citizen Brain away. It’s in the same sort of speedy thrash style we’re known for, but with maybe a bit more of a Judas Priesty, Megadethy vibe about it too. It’s very hard to be objective about the songs – initially we thought they were exactly the same style as Citizen Brain, but as we got on with the recording we kind of realized that the songs really had more of everything. More speed, more firepower, higher insane vocals, you know? Scott has never had any input in the songwriting or arranging so the main reason we went with him again was because he did a good job last time and we knew there was gonna be a quick turnaround between recording and release so we needed a workaholic. Plus he’s a nice guy with a good encyclopaedic knowledge of C and D grade 80s thrash bands like me!
Could you give those of us who have never participated in a major tour a picture of life on the road for Gama Bomb? How do you spend your free time? What’s the typical food and drink intake, and do you try to ration yourselves at all?!
We usually tour in a camper van or a bus (depending on the line up etc.), so a day on tour in Europe would probably go something like this:
Wake up at 12ish driving down the road towards the venue; find out from the driver or Tour Manager how long it is to the venue and either go back to sleep or make a really shit sandwich.
Get to venue and check out the three most important things: is there a shower? Do they have wireless? What’s the deal with the rider? If we’re somewhere nice like Spain or Holland we’ll have a look around town; if not we’ll go on the internet or whatever till sound check (around 5pm).
Eat as much of the rider as possible (as it will be gone in an hour); start drinking booze and smoking weed; talk to fans outside about how “blackened thrash is the best” apparently; watch the support bands; write a set list.
Do gig; drink till the end of the night; find out if it’s a night drive or not and have a joint before bed.
Drive away ‘Into the Night’ as Enforcer say.
A vintage shot of Joe raging in London circa 2006
And how would you say your level of success has affected you personally or as a band? Have you found the amount of travel gets in the way of jobs, friendships or anything else back home, and do you think you have ‘grown up’ at all (haha!) as musicians or people?
I don’t think our moderate success has changed us as people too much – we’re still fairly nice people haha. As we’re only kind of like a semi-pro band we are usually only on the road for 4-5 months a year so we all have real full-time jobs the rest of the time (some of us have long-term girlfriends as well). Travelling and airports can get very annoying at times – e.g. if you have to go to Dublin airport at 4:00 in the morning four times in two weeks – but then you have to remind yourself that this is something that you want to do and lots of people would kill to be in our position. I guess we’ve all grown up a bit, we started the band when we were 18 and I’m 27 now so yeah lots of changes. Sometimes the band has been the only constant in life you know? As musicians too we’ve come a long way, our early stuff was definitely a product of a lack of chops.
Have your rehearsing habits changed much since your early days? How frequently do you practise as a band, and do you still use a trusty local establishment (if you ever had one), or have your rehearsals migrated elsewhere?
Nah man, since Day One we have rehearsed in my garage! It’s actually a wicked set-up on the top floor of a 2-story building. Lots of 1/2 stacks and empty beer cans. We’ve got lots of vintage zombie movie posters up there too, along with all our flyers etc. We’ve also got a cool living room style joint for watching Bruno Mattei films up there. Rehearsals are usually based around what we need to do, as we’ve found out that there’s a big difference between rehearsing and working on new stuff. If there’s a fest or tour coming up we jam out two set-lists of songs so we can change it up. If we’re working on new songs then that’s all we’ll do, no running over old songs at all.
How is the typical Gama Bomb song composed? Does the new album represent ideas that have been on the back-burner for some time, or is it a product of an intensive ‘album writing’ period?
The actual song-writing is usually very democratic in the way everybody brings something to the table. So Domo will have ideas for a key that he’d like to solo over, Philly will have lyrical ideas and Paul arrangement ideas. Luke’s kind of like me in the sense that he’ll bring a whole song to the table or add riffs to someone else’s song. With this album I think we got the best out of everybody, which was a relief for me as I’m a worry-wart about writing and tend to “over write” for an album, so it took some of the pressure off.
Speaking from a musical point of view, I tend to write a lot around the year, whereas the other guys usually start coming up with stuff closer to the album deadline. As for a format for writing an album, I’ll usually write 3-4 songs to get the ball rolling, then Philly will come up with a list of song titles he wants to use, and as we get closer to recording, my stronger material will start coming out and Luke and Domo will start bringing song ideas forward, then in the last month or so 2-4 really great “totally collaborative” songs will come out.
Why don’t we write like this all year round? We just seem to work better under pressure. I can’t really speak for Paul or Philly as I’m sort of a ‘riffs only’ guy these days so we sort of leave arrangements and lyrics to them because they are good at their jobs. Although there are also exceptions to this rule.
Does any particular band member take a lead in the imagery or graphic concepts behind the band? Obviously you have some very talented artists to turn to, but do the initial ideas get brainstormed collectively or is there an ‘arty’ Gama Bomb member with all the crazed ideas?!
We’re very collaborative when it comes to visuals – everybody in the band helps come up with shirt concepts, album covers etc. Philly is usually the guy that produces sketches for that kind of stuff though, so he kind of puts everyone’s ideas down on paper. He actually did the covers for The Survival Option and The Fatal Mission back in the day. Everything from shirt concepts, what song to do as a shirt, artist choice and so on is fiercely ‘debated’ by everyone. Aside from having some great artists available we’re also very lucky to have a great graphic designer for album design and booklet concepts. For us the design of the album is just as important as the cover. It’s so sad when you get something like the new Megadeth album and the booklet looks like crap.
Philly invoking the spirits of old (by Stefaan Temmerman)
Do you get nervous before going on stage? There is some great backstage footage of Gama Bomb taking to the stage at Hellfest ’09, and the scale of the venue and crowd is stunning – that must have felt like living the dream! Are there butterflies before major gigs like that or would you say you’re used to the festival experience now?
It’s always amazing to get to play to really big crowds but I think we’ve done enough now to not get the shits about doing big shows.
Where do you personally prefer playing, in small intimate venues or on huge open air stages? I imagine both have their merits…
Well playing fests and doing supports to big crowds is great but I kind of prefer playing clubs. When you’re doing big gigs you get big crowds, but you tend to get dicked about a lot; no sound check, crappy monitors and what not. If you’re doing small club shows it’s easier to be in control of that kind of thing. Another big difference is that when doing your own small gigs the crowd is there to see you, which isn’t the case when supporting someone like Soulfly.
What are some of the bands/albums you’ve been listening to lately, and do you find thrash/speed metal remains your predominant diet as a listener?
The new Megadeth and the new Evile album are the main culprits, as well as The Best of UFO. I do still listen to an awful amount of thrash but I’m also a big fan of things like Bob Dylan, B.O.C, Tears For Fears and Mansun as well as the usual classic rock suspects. I try to keep up-to-date with all the new thrash releases, be it demos or albums.
And finally, tell us what’s next for Gama Bomb. Can you reveal any new song ideas or lyrical themes that are in the pipeline, or is it too early to say?
Here’s the track-list for the album:
Polterghost
Skeletron
Last Ninjas Unite
New Eliminators of Atlantis B.C
Escape From Scarecrow Mountain
Return To Blood Castle
We Respect You
Slam Anthem
Mummy Invasion
Three Witches
Mussolini Mosh
Apocalypse 1997
We’ve got a week in the UK then 3 weeks in Europe coming up, then another UK/Euro run for the start of next year. Fingers crossed we should have some South American dates lined up by then too.
Thanks for the interview, and keep up the good work!
No problem dude, we’ll see you guys in a few weeks at The Underworld!
GAMA BOMB – Faster Is Gooder
www.myspace.com/gamabomb
www.earache.com/archive/gamabomb
Gama Bomb (by Ruth Medjber)
