Sounds From The Junkshop #97 - Turbonegro

 

"The day is black, the night is white/The disco sun it shines so bright" - Turbonegro - Denim Demon

Turbonegro are an odd one. I mean, the slightest look at them would probably tell you that goes without saying but I mean in terms of me discovering them. It's weird to think but there was a time in the early noughties where, after a decade of struggling away on the minors, splitting and then reforming, that they were briefly the darlings of the rock press in this country but it did indeed happen.

I think it was through Therapy? that I first became aware of Turbonegro - as I mentioned, I saw Andy Cairns and co live a lot around this time (on the Suicide Pact and Shameless tours plus their So Much For The Ten Year Plan greatest hits tour - it's a proper mindfuck to think that was over twenty years ago now and I recently went to see them on the rescheduled So Much For The 32 Year Plan tour!) and they'd often encore with a cover of Turbonegro's Denim Demon that absolutely ripped. I remembered the band name and about six months later, the group had reformed and were picking up plenty of press in Kerrang! and even the NME with their re-released Apocalypse Dudes album with Get It On providing them with a minor hit over here.

I seem to remember going out to get the Apocalypse Dudes album shortly after hearing Get It On on a Kerrang compilation and picking up its predecessor, Ass Cobra which had been released prior to the band's split in 1996 because it had Denim Demon on it. Although I liked the OTT glam-punk stomp of Apocalypse Dudes, it was Ass Cobra that was the one which properly reeled me in. One of the most brutally primal punk records you'll ever here, it's stuffed full of gleefully OTT sicko humour plus riffs and fury that sound like Godzilla levelling Tokyo. Songs like Bad Mongo, I Got Erection, The Midnight Nambla and Hobbit Motherfuckers still make me smile to this day. When they called it deathpunk, they really weren't joking.

However, Ass Cobra would turn out to be Turbonegro's last full-on punk album as Apocalypse Dudes would see them heading for a more glammed out sound - the fact that opener The Age Of Pamparius is six minutes long is probably a bit of a giveaway to that. It's still a top album but it's very different from its predecessor with a much more widescreen rock sound. They'd follow on down this road on the next album Scandinavian Leather and it was on this tour that I first saw them live at Download Festival (where I'd spend the weekend acting as an impromptu bodyguard to a group of goth models along with a guy who'd later become the lead singer in a couple of my later bands. Good times). Songs like Sell Your Body (To The Night) showed that they'd got the formula of OTT camp swagger mixed with rock 'n' roll bruiser heaviness down to a tee (even if Drenched In Blood was a pretty obvious rip-off of the Wildhearts' Just In Lust)

I would end up drifting away from Turbonegro after this though - 2005’s Party Animals (which had the excellently named Blow Me (Like The Wind) on it) was a solid effort if not quite up to the standards of its predecessors but their next album Retox seemed to get delayed forever and saw them losing their momentum (although they remain a band with an impressive cult following, the denim clad Turbojugend, to this day). I completely missed Retox when it came out but when I finally did listen back to it a few years later it seemed like the rot which had set in a bit on Party Animals was continuing. I mean, it's still okay (let’s be honest, it’s difficult to actively dislike an album with songs called No, I’m Alpha Male and Everybody Loves A Chubby Dude) but the band definitely sound a bit tired for a lot of it. It's maybe not a surprise that three of the band including Alice Cooper facepaint clad frontman Hank Von Hell would end up leaving soon afterwards. The group would eventually return with new frontman Tony Sylvester for 2012's Sexual Harrassment, probably their strongest offering since Ass Cobra with a much more raw and nasty sound. Although they'd then go completely the other way for 2018's brilliantly OTT Rock 'n' Roll Machine which saw them going full on '70s glam (Skinhead Rock 'n' Roll even sounding oddly like Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting!)

Hank Von Hell would release a couple of solo albums before his untimely passing last year which really knocked me back when I heard the news. The guy had never been shy about admitting his substance abuse issues but I think because he was such a force of nature he seemed almost indestructible which is why it was such a shock. RIP feller and thanks for the memories. In the meantime, we're probably due a new Turbonegro album either this year or next and given how random the last two have been, it's anyone's guess as to how it'll sound. One thing I think we can say for certain though, it certainly won't be boring.

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