Regretfully Endorsed by Senor Diablo

This group of goddamn lunatics started to get the hang of things on their second release, adding about 3 minutes to the length of the first EP and developing their character enormously, not to mention turning out better musical chops. The revamped vocals make a great difference, yelling in mildly amusing punky style that could also be an exaggerated impression of an angry neighbour. In the first place, I can hear a lot of the lyrics, which are absolutely fucking ridiculous, and those lyrics work with the songs to drive them into fits of good to great crossover thrash. I could come up with more examples, but it speaks volumes that 'Wumbology' is about Spongebob (common for these guys) and uses the spoken phrase, "Is mayonnaise an instrument?" as a break to set up a slamming riff change. Regretfully Endorsed by Senor Diablo sits at the butt end of joke thrash.

I can accept the wackiness though, because that's what Belushi Speed Ball are good at. They can indeed make some good music in relatively normal fashion, as proven by the quality of that slam riff I just mentioned, but they can also pull off the tongue in cheek intro to 'Gnome Chompski', which extends a cliched heavy metal chant (and ridiculously wanky solo) beyond any measure of decency. In this case I can't tell who they are making fun of, but the fact that I think briefly of several bands who might be the target of the lampoon convinces me they were onto something. Unusually for a record where songs average 2 and a half minutes, BSB seem content to pursue musical ventures fairly long, 'Sir Droolington' building up for nearly half its length with creative tempo and melodic ideas, before unleashing another savage thrash riff.

The main reason this gets a pass where I'm sceptical about the band on certain instances relates to the communion of music and humour. Almost none of the content exclusively pursues jokes at the expense of songs, barely containing any samples (rather overdone on subsequent releases) and actually using the musical style to highlight the funny side of things, such as with the chuckle-worthy pairing of rhythmic crossover riff with gang shouts of "Four - fried chickens - and - a coke", or even the party piece 'Devastation Nation', which I think takes the piss out of hip-hop, death metal, hardcore, and country. I'm willing to be proven wrong about that last one. In any case, if you think that Gama Bomb play music for suits, you'll like Regretfully Endorsed by Senor Diablo a lot.