Gama Bomb - Citizen Brain

This album is from last year. I realize that's an idiotic way to start an album review, but after I typed it out I found myself with nothing better to start with and denied my urge to delete it and start over. What's more interesting than the fact that this album was released in 2008 is that it is one of the best examples of the New Thrash genre (please, I hope I never see that spelled "nu-thrash") that includes bands like Skeletonwitch and Warbringer. Gama Bomb peddles a break-neck, in-your-face style of old-skool thrash (imagine a tasty brew of Slayer, Iron Maiden, and Megadeth ... then imagine drinking said brew from the skull of one of your enemies) tempered with fun, down-home lyrics about playing 32-bit vidja games and being buried alive by zombies. I'm tempted to call it nerd-thrash, but you know how I hate inventing genres. In all seriousness though, this is the metal band all those greasy computer nerds from high school wish they were in (unless they were the greasy computer nerds with long black hair who listened to Opeth, in which case I would have to say Opeth is probably the band they would wish they were in). The band tends to stick to songs with compact forms yet highly intricate structures, and the result of listening to one of their songs at full volume is a lot like being hit in the face with enormous Bucky Balls. (Sounds unpleasant, I know. But nerds love being hit in the face with Bucky Balls.) Regardless, the band's adherence to expert technical playing doesn't digress into needless wankery, and their sense of fun and humor doesn't take away from the impressive girth of the music itself. Even if their singer tends towards the laughable side of Dave Mustaine (if Dave Mustaine was occasionally full-force gripped by the balls by a jilted sorceress Gypsy (who is also a zombie) for no apparent reason), we are immediately distracted by the virtuosic guitar shredding and immaculate drumming of the band's instrumentalists. The band is also very much in touch with the punk influence behind thrash metal, and their speed and force are backed by gang vocals and politically-minded micro-songs about hating cops and global warming. Though it's never clear whether the band considers to be the greater threat to humanity between imminent global catastrophe via global warming or imminent global catastrophe via zombie apocalypse, they'll probably tell you, when the dust settles, that the government was behind it all. The main agenda for this group, however, is fun. Loud, fast, and hard. That's how I like my metal. Also zombies.

Try it here.