"All the burgers, all the fries, Daniels got tater tots for his eyes!" - Belushi Speed Ball
Formed in 2013 in Louisville, Kentucky Belushi Speed Ball unashamedly crashed the thrash metal crossover band wagon with their take on speed induced party metal.
To date What, Us Worry? is their second full length album. Prepare For Trouble was their first coming out in 2019 and before that they had 4 EP's released, the first being the hilariously titled Face Schmelted In 9 Minutes Or Less (2014), then another 2 EP's released in-between the full lengths.
What, Us Worry? has been described by the band themselves as "the Sistine Chapel of generic cliche crossover thrash. Not only is it our best work to date, but we tricked a plethora of talent to be part of the album". They are indeed talking about additional guest guitar solos from Jamison Land (Gwar), Tony Barhoum (Condition Critical) and Nicholas Burks (Savage Master). I don't quite know why you would need guest soloists when you already have 3 guitarists in the band but I guess they really wanted to push the boat out on this release. What, Us Worry? has been recorded and mixed by Chase Bensing, mastered by Joel Grind (Toxic Holocaust) and they got Andrei Bouzikov who designed Municipal Waste Art Of Partying artwork to create the art for this album.
What, Us Worry? is a continuation of the bands previous style with the first track "Ripping Off Municipal Waste" being just that. They have taken the track "Unleash The Bastards" from Hazardous Mutation and completely rewritten it in a kind of backwards homage to the band. It's actually really funny and I'm pretty sure that Municipal Waste approve of this. The rest of the album is a lot of fun and slightly less of a carbon copy of Municipal Waste thankfully. That shit is funny but an entire album in that vein would get tedious real quick. Stand out tracks for me are "Tattletale Strangler", "Butter and Pretty Dresses" and the final awesome grindcore ode "Belushi Speed Grind". "Dog Birthday" is super stupid but has a killer bass riff and takes the crossover element to another level from thrash metal to a kind of Psychostick does early NoFX mixed with The Ramones. The skits in-between tracks are highly amusing and add a lot to the entertainment value of the album. "Glass Bones and Paper Skin II" and "Super Saiyan Vegeta Is A Good Dad" are a kind of continuation of tracks of a similar name on their previous album Prepare For Trouble. The latter track has the funniest case of misheard lyrics I have heard in recent times but this might just be me and my ageing hearing!
This 8 track album from the Kentucky 6 piece with additional material and skits from their manager/seventh member Senor Diablo is a great combination of speeding riffage, pounding percussion and a smattering of grooves with a hardcore edge. None of it is wholly original but I can get over that. Their influences are clear, I applaud their style and enjoy their humour. The artwork on this and their other releases are really quite intricate, cheeky and vibrant. The artwork on What, Us Worry? is particularly hilarious especially if you like cats. It gets funnier the longer you look at it.
What, Us Worry? is available on CD through their bandcamp page.
