I once sub-let some rooms to a couple of Swedes who were around the same age as me and were studying at a local university for the year. This led me to joining in on a lot of the uni’s Scandinavian Society “activities”. It was a really great year!
A Norwegian guy I befriended, handed me a couple of “Turboneger” CDs. I was slightly concerned at first, but then I deciphered the Norwegian humour and really got into it.
Fast forward 3-4 years, and I found myself in the front row at a couple of Turbonegro gigs, high-fiving the sweaty, sweaty leather glove of former lead singer, “Hank von Helvete” (RIP) and marveling at the licks of lead guitarist “Euroboy”, both seen in this vid of a set at a German music festival. Fun times.
Yewtube link
Turbojugend unite!
💀
Well, any Norwegians here can probably comment more accurately/from their perspective. From my own perspective, the humour I derived was in:
- the antics that riffed on all of the guitar band motifs like, guitar solos behind the head while sat on the bass player’s shoulders, fake blood, capes, double denim
- the irony they point out in the hard rock/metal community being so homo-erotic but also -phobic
- their light-hearted takes on the music industry
- their regular self-deprecation e.g the subject of this song, or having an opening song to an album that was all about the pizza shop the keyboard player owned
- poking fun at nationalist tropes. This was the main thing that I was concerned about, but then I realised that it was satire and was able to enjoy the other points listed above, which are all mostly some form of satire/parody/burlesque.
ah, back in the days when we thought everybody understood irony
Quick! Let’s PC-fy the name before the Yanks wake up. I’ll start:
Supercharged Darkness
Fast to Black
