Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Turbonegro Record Review

Turbonegro
Retox
(Cooking Vinyl)
Hartford Advocate August 02, 2007


Have Turbonegro come to praise rock or to bury it? Are they trying to be Motorhead or Spinal Tap? Jack White or Jack Black? On their new record the Norwegian butt-rock MVPs rock it out like they have something to prove, with snaky intertwining guitar lines and shout-along choruses. It's fierce and fun, with seemingly no potential for irony. But then they have crazy funny song titles like "Everybody Loves a Chubby Dude" and "Hell Toupee." The second song, which actually seems to be about hair, contains the near perfect post scum rock couplet "Other day I was doing a bump/and then I found myself taking a dump." Are these the words of a candid, depraved rocker or a committed, convincing satirist? Does it matter when the riffs approach the level of Appetite for Destruction? Well, it does, sort of, and I have a feeling I'll be unraveling this mystery at top volume for the next couple of months.
— Adam Bulger