Speed Ball 3: Another EP?

Given that opening track 'Hash Slinging Slasher' has just made a comeback on the new album, now seems a good time to look back at Speed Ball 3: Another EP? Yes, naturally it was released before the one with '2' in the title. Anyway, BSB deal with a slightly limited production here which robs power from the guitars and makes them either quite punky or quite melodic when 'Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen' plays about with (ironic) heavy metal harmonies in a manner that Sum 41 fans might remember with pleasure. However, primarily the 20-ish minutes sticks to crossover thrash with a heavy dose of humour, occasionally interrupting the songs entirely to introduce the jokes but mostly putting them into the lyrics and very OTT style swings, particularly in the vocals. I'd recommend this for people who think Smash Potater are too heavy and Gama Bomb are too serious.

That said, I didn't buy the whole BSB discography for the Spongebob jokes. Even here, when I'd say the methods were still sorting themselves out, the (probably) quartet had nice songs to recommend the experience, 'Sega Chord' taking the prize in terms of memorable riffs and musical evolution, as it really just keeps going with great guitar concepts, breaking the box of regular crossover stuff for some catchier moments and another cool melodic break. The breakdown sounds like something White Wizzard would drag out for 2 minutes, though here it's done in a few seconds. 'The Bleeps, the Sweeps and the Creeps' comes in on the punkier side of things, figuring as one of the earlier points where BSB successfully made the jokes into the song's hooks, which 'You Can't Rock Steady Without a Little Bebop' starts off by doing before ending up going 7 minutes(!) mostly with one recurring joke about "the moral of the story". You can listen to it if you desperately want to find out, but it's not really that funny.

I don't think it's any coincidence that Another EP? and the releases that followed all run roughly as long as the average cartoon show, and that might be the perfect premise for trying these before one of the (marginally) longer recent full-lengths. 'You Can't Rock Steady' wastes a lot of time depending how you think of it, though we don't get that many spoken skits in this release either, meaning that you can concentrate on the actual music most of the time. And the actual music is pretty good.