Turbonegro
Retox
Cooking Vinyl, 2007
There is a school of head-bangin’, hard-rockin’ yet pleasingly melodic metal that once thrived in the late 70s and early 80s, which has lain strangely dormant for the better part of a quarter century. I say “strangely dormant”, because there are still lots of Iron Maiden posters around, and if the success of 2002’s Fubar is anything to go by, it never really went away. Amidst the onslaught of dour grunge in the late 80s and early 90s, it just sashayed on back to its wood-paneled basement and retuned its Flying V.
Specifically, it went to Sweden, where Turbonegro has loudly been carrying the torch for British Heavy Metal for nigh on twenty years now. In Retox, their eighth album, you can hear traces of, well, every single icon of British Metal ever, from Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson to Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins. Oh sure, they can label themselves “death punk” on their web-site, but we know better. They’re metal through-and-through.
When you first put on Retox and “We’re Going to Drop the Atom Bomb” begins its synchronized-guitars, bum-wiggling journey to fist-pounding fury, you think “Have I put on Number of the Beast by mistake? My, but this is so very clichéd.” Then it hits you. Of course it is. That’s what Turbonegro is all about: a loving pastiche of the music that pasty white boys of a certain age grew up on. Music that we secretly love but are no longer allowed to listen to in mixed company (not that there was any mixed company for us when we were bopping to the ‘Priest first time around). Turbonegro’s tongue is firmly in its (other) cheek and for that we must raise the heartiest of Bronx cheers.
Songs such as Stroke the Shaft, I Wanna Come, and Hot & Filthy ply a clever line in puerile jokes and innuendo. Teenage boys will likely be banging heads to lines such as “This is the pipe that you cannot smoke / This is the beast that you may stroke”, and then giggling. Hell Toupée deals gracefully with the travails of aging, and Everybody Loves a Chubby Dude gets its hands on some heavy Randy Rhoads-era Ozzy, while encouraging a positive self-image. The best part is, it’s all yodelled in Hank Von Helvete’s faintly Swedish accent, which gives it that crucial second layer of irony.
As I’ve been making devil horns with my fingers, I was just now thinking about how much I miss my good ol’ mullet. Heck, on Retox there’s even an eight-minute long opus called What is Rock!? replete with synths and interesting time-changes. What is rock? What is rock!? As if Turbonegro didn’t already know…
Review by Greg Hood-Morris
Agree? Disagree? Email Greg at criticizegreg@gmail.com
Turbonegro is from Norway, NOT Sweden.
Posted by: Hank | November 04, 2007 at 09:15 AM