Bombshell is a now defunct band that featured Var, the owner of No Idea Records. This was a very wierd cd for me. The music was excellent, but really hard to explain any other way but it was just plain punk rock. I really tried to think of a group that sounds like them and I failed.

This cd starts out with about two minutes of a repetitive beeping, feedback, and scrapes of guitar strings which remind of parts of the slower Crass songs or Dead Kennedys (think “Trust You Mechanic” “The Prey” or “Saturday Night Holocaust”) which really set a weird tone for me. The rest of the songs play through different styles, which range from comparisons to Crass, Dead Kennedys, Hot Water Music, Thursday, and many other weirder and slower styles of punk. The music seems to drag and then pick up, all while maintaining a standoffish stance which doesn’t let the listener get too comfortable, but yet does not scare them away. It is a release that begs someone to really listen and take their time deciding whether or not they truly like it.

My one complaint about this is that the vocals are really buried, when I first put this in I thought my headphones weren’t plugged in all the way, or that my discman was broken, but after putting it in several different stereo setups I found my computer made the vocals stand out the most. I don’t think that this is terrible, it adds to the mystery of this group.

Lyrically this band is kind of challenging, writing in a poetic fashion, which demands the listener to think about the songs a little bit. I recommend this to anybody who wants to be challenged by a group, or just wants to experience something that sounds different from the majority of bands out there today. The best thing about this CD is that it is 100% free to anybody. All you have to do is order something from No Idea Records and pay the extra postage. Not a bad deal for some really interesting punk music.