Zombie Ghost Train - GladRags & Body Bags

Fri 6th May, 2005 in Music Reviews

This album’s been a long time coming for Sydney three-piece Zombie Ghost Train. From inception to release, there’s been a multitude of problems throwing themselves in the way of the rockabilly trio’s hearse – from budget blow-outs to producer arguments to band member sickness to the horrifying prospect of having to mix the album yourself with only a little experience. And yet, for all this drama, they’ve produced an album that’s effortlessly enjoyable, and freakishly fun.

The band’s sound is an attitude-laced stripling of rockabilly, via way of The Cramps, though they’re not quite as louche as that bunch of degenerates. Rather, Zombie Ghost Train are a little more day-glo in their approach – adopting their crypt-decked personas (not quite as garish as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) with less horror and more good-times in mind. But no matter how much the costuming and makeup affects the show, there’s one thing that can’t be denied: the band’s musicianship. It’s superb. Obviously, pulling off speedy rockabilly/psychobilly with some aplomb takes skills, but these guys are one of the tighter units out there. Guitarist and lead singer Stu Arkoff, bassist Captain Reckless and drummer AzzA-T certainly know when to pull out the chops and when to lay back – or, in Reckless’ case, when to ride his doghouse bass like it’s some kind of wooden bronco. It’s a facility that pays off in spades across Glad Rags & Body Bags. The high-octane nature of this type of music leaves little room for musical mistakes, and so it’s exhilarating to hear the quick stop-start nature of the solos here – very Eddie Cochran, in places, though there’s some tasty jazz riffing to be found also -and the locked-in nature of the slapped bass and the heavy-beat drums. There’s a sense of curled-lip sureness here that’s particularly edifying.

Interestingly, the vocals on the disc were recorded while guitarist/singer Stu was struggling with a heavy dose of laryngitis. Aside from a slightly nasal cast, you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of this, though: certainly, it seems he’s stretching his vocal range a little further than previously recorded. Black, White & Dead features some pretty nice stentorian declamation, followed with a little hillbilly yowl, and it’s pretty cool to hear that sort of reaching, even if it occasionally comes across as a little too much Vincent Prince and not quite enough Brian Setzer. 

The disc opens with the titular Glad Rags & Body Bags, a typically rockabilly-styled instrumental that’s done time as the opening number in the band’s live shows, a kind of Dick Dale-esque introduction to the creature feature to follow. But it’s the first tune with vocals, R.I.P., with its chunkily fat riffing that provides a good introduction to the sound of the album. The final mix, handled (after much argument with hired guns) by guitarist Stu is wonderful: bassy, full of watery reverb, and solid where it counts – in short, a counterpoint to the reedy production and sterility of sound of their Monster Formal Wear EP, something that worked against the band’s good performance on that disc. The album ends up sounding like the best parts of those Stray Cats and Cramps albums you know by heart, but without sounding like they’ve been lifted: the mark of a canny bunch.

One of the album’s standout tracks is the live favourite, Graveyard Queen, which opens with what sounds like an accordion and a slowly strummed guitar. “Lost my baby on a moonless night…” begins Stu, going on to sing of “her severed head sittin’ on my knee…” in a deep voice, lugubrious and longing. Then, with whipping intensity, the band kicks in – doghouse bass thumping away, drums beating a frenzy and guitar spiralling away in a wash of notes. It’s a galloping tune – replete with woah-oh-oh vocal backings! – about death, decaying girlfriends, and it typifies the sort of agile fun that the band specialises in. It’s the sort of thing that is hard to hear without smiling, subject matter aside.

Elsewhere, Deadcat Rumble and Night Time Crawling keeps the accelerator to the floor in an album of uptempo undeadisms, but I find that it’s tunes like the slow burning Alone that provide intrigue: there’s an inexplicably heavy ‘80s vibe through the track, but its creeping-death melody line – like something from that fucked-up nightclub in Fire, Walk With Me – provides a sort of gruesome magnetism. It sounds more eclectic, somehow working references to both George Thorogood and sci-fi soundtracks into the one tune, and it’s an interesting signpost for where the band could go next.

If you’re not in the mood for ZGT’s type of rocking, however, the paucity of subject matter might grate on you. That said, their output could be considered this way: most rockabilly songs revolve around either rockin’, or the ladies. This band adds the undead to the mix. It’s slightly stereotypical, but hell – I’ll take rockabilly with zombies over rockabilly without, any day. It gives it that sort of shroudy spice that makes the music enjoyable in a wonderfully b-movie kind of way. It’s a bit darker than a lot of other rockabilly or psychobilly acts – the genres whose adherents are the band’s core market – with mentions of Frankenstein hearts and chain-swingin’ zombie fight clubs, but again, the sheer honesty of the band pulls them through. There’s no tongue-in-cheek irony here; just a lot of tunes you could really, really dance to.

Cover tunes have been pretty fundamental in the band’s growth. Their debut EP included two covers, and the band’s been known to gig as the makeup-free (and cover-version-heavy) combo The Bone Daddies from time to time, just to keep their roots-worshippin’ side exercised. So it’s no surprise that there’s two cover tracks in this album’s tracklisting. Attendees of the band’s school formal-styled gigs will already know their breathily seedy version of Devo’s geek classic Girl U Want, which injects a sort of surf-guitar chordal wash behind the new-wave tune’s angular main riff, but it’s the last track, the blown-bass version of Johnny Cash’s You’re My Baby that really captivates. In it, the band muster the sort of David Lynch atmosphere – all woozily-reverbed guitar and lurching, menacing bass – that gives a distinctly unhealthily hillbilly taint to the Man in Black’s tune of love’s serenade. It’s fabulous, and clearly marks out the territory that the band can nail precisely. They work better – to filch a line from another band – in the dark. This is the sort of line the band needs to pursue, I think, in order to ensure that they’re not caught in a recursive loop of shticks. It’d be easy to write these guys off as a one-trick pony, as far as their undead vision for the band goes, but that’s an act that would underplay both their musical ability and their dedication – they’re just too good to languish in the quirky band bin.

In its blackened heart, Glad Rags & Body Bags is a speedily fun album. It’s a vast improvement, soundwise, from Zombie Ghost Train’s debut EP, and is a testament to the relentless gigging that the group’s done over the last couple of years. That its sound was snatched from the brink of disaster is a testament to the band’s dedication to the disc. It’s a labour of undying (ha!) love, and it’s one that’s guaranteed to have you smiling. It’s ghoulishly good.