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Content warning: This review includes discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation as depicted in the album's lyrics.
SWEDEN’S POST-PUNK FREAKS
Since their breakout debut album Street Worms in 2018, Swedish band Viagra Boys have made a name for themselves as underground music’s premiere source of sludgy, nasty post-punk. Initially fueled by slow tempos, thick instrumentation, and unsettling vocals, Viagra Boys began flexing their instrumental experimentation and political symbolism on 2021’s Welfare Jazz. The band’s current era truly began on 2022’s Cave World, a dancy, humorous, and unflinching satire of conspiracy theorists and fringe politics filled with electronic instrumentation, absurdist songwriting, and an extreme heaviness in tone. Three years later, viagr aboys sees the band exploring how to live a healthy life in a world full of nonsense and gross indulgence. What it lacks in ambitious satire, it makes up for in grooves, absurdity, and reflection.
HEARING A BAND THROUGH SIX FEET OF MUD
As expected, viagr aboys is filled with both the distinctly deep and resonant sound of post-punk and the band’s own brand of sleazy, artistic punk. Tracks like “Dirty Boyz” and “Waterboy” pull from the classic Viagra Boys formula of nasty, buzzing tracks about getting into trouble. They feature rumbling, heavy bass and drums, manic, half spoken vocals, and strong lead riffs. This sound is the archetype for all of their music, with other tracks adding features on top of it. viagr aboys follows in the footsteps of Cave World by adding unexpected instruments, like the chorus-leading flute in “Uno II”, the dismal piano ballad of “River King”, or the synth and sax fronted “Medicine for Horses”. These extra additions to their grimy sound give the tracks the feeling of hearing a synth while another band is playing underneath it through six feet of mud.
Outside of instrumental choices, the album goes big on the band’s unwieldy compositions and mixing. Tracks like “Man Made of Meat” and “The Bog Body” are filled with squeaking and squealing background elements. Other tracks like “Pyramid of Health” feature slow, long phrases that resemble the feeling of psychedelics when paired with the deep tone. It’d be a mistake to leave out just how danceable this album is as well. Viagra Boys have always had good grooves and high-energy tracks, but the album’s ninth track “You N33d Me” is potentially their most danceable yet. Full of quick, staccato riffs, a bass-led melody, and a heavily rhythmic vocal delivery, a live show crowd could make a venue shake to this track. After all, the song opens with lyrics about stealing someone’s girl by doing a little dance.
LIVING HEALTHY IN A WORLD WITH ABSURD RULES
Viagra Boys have a reputation for featuring food and bodily imagery in their music, but viagr aboys takes this a step further and makes wellness and medicine part of the album’s key themes. They’re just…not very positive. The album references drug use regularly, and “Pyramid of Health” even explicitly states that drinking euphoric tree sludge is the key to reversing the damage of smoking cigarettes. “Dirty Boyz” depicts hard drugs as a gateway for turning oneself into a creature with gasoline for blood. Medical procedures also regularly appear. “Uno II” is told through the eyes of a dog whose teeth have been surgically removed — ironically going against the dog’s food-driven personality. “Medicine for Horses” is filled with unusual descriptions of ways to take one’s own life: crashing your car so violently it becomes two-dimensional, paying a guy to have his horse step on your head, or draining your spinal fluid. The album uses these depictions of drugs and medical procedures to portray the pursuit of normalcy and comfort. However, Viagra Boys are saying that the world pushes us to use harmful, body-altering means to achieve a mental flatline — whether it be drugs, altering yourself physically, or dying.
The band also touches on the issues that lead us to this pursuit of wellness. Cave World talked in length about conspiracy theories and devolution, but viagr aboys points more towards the general absurdity and unnatural feeling of modern life. “Man Made of Meat” satirizes our abundant access to low-quality food, cheaply made materials, and feet pics. “The Bog Body” plays on celebrity culture and beauty standards, telling the story of a literal mummy becoming more famous than a rival celebrity. “Store Policy” references unsavory activities like crypto trading, public indecency, and gooning, and vocalist Sebastian Murphy talks about these subjects as if he’s a psycho rambling to a store manager while actively getting kicked out of the store.
LIGHT AT THE END OF A STICKY TUNNEL
Despite the pessimism and unhappiness with how the world operates, Viagra Boys also feeds bits of hope into viagr aboys. This is primarily done through the depiction of personal relationships. Through the various descriptions of suicide on “Medicine for Horses”, the narrator states that his wife was the only thing keeping him from going through with these acts. “You N33d Me” shows an obnoxious man’s behaviors being driven by the need to impress his love interest with little dances and fun facts. Most importantly, the album’s finale “River King” sees the nasty world depicted across its tracks becoming so easy to navigate with someone by your side. The song’s soft piano and sounds of a restaurant in its final moments paints a picture of someone snapping back to reality after entering a ghoulish daydream — perhaps returning to a dinner date with their partner. Viagra Boys tell us that the key to health and wellness in this absurd world isn’t drugs, medical procedures or death, but having a hand to hold while navigating it.
SUCCESSFUL WORDS OF WISDOM
While certainly less politically biting than their last album, viagr aboys offers a full circle of questions and answers in its depictions of our world. With a strong post-punk foundation and the band’s signature artsy dance punk, the album excels at being a continuation of Viagra Boys’ growing catalogue of modern post-punk classics. Through a thin veil of crassness, absurdity, and vulgarity, viagr aboys offers wisdom and the means to achieve a healthy life that can only come from the minds of shrimp-obsessed freaks. It’s an amazing album that proves Viagra Boys likely has even more grime and grooves to unleash.
