TS: So Scandinavia was like CORPSE PAINT central for a while...and now there seems to be some kind of mini-boom going on that is already being called the SCANDINAVIAN WAVE...What's going on? Ran out of churches to burn, or what?

HT: Well, all the wooden ones are gone now and most of the satan-kids either became nazis, ecstasy-casualties or Tolkien-interpreters. The smarter ones are Turbojugend now, however.

TS: Hmm, so tell me, how far do you see this Scandi wave thing go? Have the press made any conservative comparisons yet to the umm, say, Seattle thing from some years back perhaps?

HT: Not really that I'm aware of, but then on the other hand it seems as if the press really hasn't caught up on it yet. We recently met some people from Rock Hard, which is one of the biggest European glossy magazines, and they said that their editor had called a crisis meeting after he saw us play this festival with Slayer, and he was freaking out, "I pay you lazy losers to report about what's happening...but NOBODY HAS EVEN TOLD ME ABOUT TURBONEGRO!!! I should FIRE you!" He..he, music journalists getting their asses kicked. Nothing could please me more.

TS: Yaaayyy !! There you go. Holland has the WORST music press in the world. I mean it's really, really bad here. They should fire more people...

HT: Fire EVERYONE...

TS: Yupp! But anyways. The only analogy I can see is that where the flannel shirt crowd wanted to sound like hard rock bands from ca. 1972, the Scandi's take their lead from mid-70's stuff...Fuckin' Ted Nugent, KISS, what have you...Your influences are clearly Alice Cooper, Slade, Ramones, Dictators, and even though it takes sheer balls to wear them on your sleeves so obviously, APOCALYPSE DUDES still doesn't sound at all derivative, it's almost a paradox.

HT: We salute other bands who draw influences from classic acts, however there's a very fine line between using your influences constructively and doing some redundant retro-kitschy-post modern lame-ass two-step

TS: Certainly true. I agree. Do you see it your duty to make the masses of ignoroids i.e. the kids (not the band) aware of this by educating them, so to speak?

HT: Edutainment is where it's at, yes.

TS: Describe a 'classic night' at PAMPARIUS for the less informed Carbon14 readers...

HT: Well, "The Age Of Pamparius" is our ode to Pot's pizza wagon. (pianoplayer, percussionist and dancer) is quite the entrepeneur, and Pamparius Pizza is located in the darkness on the edge of town south-eastern Oslo. I think every night is classic out there. He caters to the patients at the local "open door" nut house, the local drunks, the hooligans, the bus drivers, cab drivers and the bikers, so it's a pretty vibrant scene. And they get loads of people calling in every night to order the pizzas mentioned in the song (Opera, Napoli, Pepperoni & Calzone), but they've pretty much figured out how to scan the callers (by singing the singalong-theme. If somebody sniggers and hangs up, they're fakes, if they get all quiet, they're for real).

TS: Jokers..Urrrgh! Man, "joke bands" tend to really, really, annoy me. They always confuse mix up acting GOOFY with being funny...The Dickies, NOFX, Toy Dolls, all that 'funny' crap just aggrevates me to no end...

HT: I read you loud and clear.

TS: But similar to, llike, the Dictators, Turbo have a royal dose of tongue in buttcheek, lyrically, without being goofy. Hank is probably the only vocalist who can wear a fuckin' top- hat WITHOUT looking goofy despite turbo's jocular aspect. This implies there must be some gennine SUBSTANCE here, and I fear it's color is brown. Please explain the Turbonegro rationale...

HT: Turbo has never been a joke / humour band. It's as simple as that. It's all a question of levels of reference. We like to play games, we like to play with words, and we like to play with fear, instinct, style and stupidity.

TS: In other words, you're exploring the fine edge between the animalistic, reptilian brain realm, and EUROPEAN CLASS?

HT: European Ass. We've got more in common with Leni Riefenstahl than with, what have you, The Tubes.

TS: Well, You know that Leni made a lot of wild nature, safari type of movies, AS WELL as the 'triumph of the will' propaganda ones.

HT: Yepp. She did a bunch of African films in the 50's, and eventually some Jacques Coustau-looking underwater stuff too.

TS: I always saw the Tubes as something like the Rocky Horror Picture show or some bullshit...Hm, they did a song called White Punks On Dope though...

HT: Nuevo Wavo.

TS: ..Music for new wave hooker girls, right? ..So, um, it looks like TURBOMANIA is taking Europe by storm, with sold-out tours, tv-appearances, heavy rotation on mainstream radio and even Top Of The Pops-type stuff.

HT: Yepp. It's all pretty unreal, but we're not complaining.

TS: Good for you! I heard the official dress code for the Hamburg St. Pauli soccer team fans is Turbogear... How the hell did that happen?

HT: The president of St. Pauli FC Supporters showed up backstage in Hamburg, with bodyguards and all, decked out in the team colors. They gave us an offer we could not refuse, so to speak, in form of variety of costly gifts. Then the fans of Schalke 04 (major league German soccer team) heard about this, and now they're going Turbojugend too. Hank just re-recorded "I Got Erection" (off of Ass Cobra) with German lyrics for an upcoming St. Pauli compilation, and it's pretty great, it's all "When I see the club flag fly...Erection. When I'm shitfaced at the blood-red stadium and we beat HSV (the other Hamburg team)...Erection" etc.

TS: I can see why. It makes sense, after all St. Pauli is the Reeperbahn (Red Light District) part of town. So are you guys into Soccer? (It's a Euro thing, Americans wouldn't understand)

HT: No. We're sensitive artists. European composers and auteurs, and we have no time for the pursuit of the leather ball.

TS: He he, too busy chasing the hairy ones...

HT: We even told the hooligans this, but they claimed they didn't mind. We do however watch the World Cup, which incidentally becomes more and more ugly each time, with players getting killed when they get home, the Croatian coach being offered minister of state-posts and being appointed honorary general of the Croatian army after turning-point victories, players involved in really low-down scandals, whenever Brazil looses a game you know that people back home kill themselves by the hundreds and even thousands, etc. It's the biggest circus around. The sexiest too, except for us.

TS: So basically, you don't mind being soccer affiliated because it gives you that 'punter' street cred I mean, in a SLADE sort of way...

HT: Soccer and rocknroll have been always been inseparable in Europe. Yepp. Slade were all hooligans originally.

TS: Rod Stewart too, of course.

HT: And there's a lot of soccer in Turbo. For the several European tours we've used The Lightning Seeds' "Three Lions" as our stage intro. This was the official song for England at the last Euro Cup, an incredible pop-anthem about the underdog finally winning (England hasn't won a major championship since 1966, but been very close many times), and we've actually seen people start to cry when they hear it, not only in England, but all over. People get all emo: "That song isn't only about soccer, it's about Turbo!" There's some kind of psychic link there too, because it turns out all the Manchester United fans used to wear Alice Cooper make up around 1972 / 73, so go figure.

TS: That is amazing! Emo, he he...

HT: Somebody just showed us this Swedish magazine the other day, where a couple of the guys on the national Swedish team name us as their favorite band, so they've obviously caught up on some kind of transcendental vibe. We've also been introduced to some of the most notorious, wanted, hooligans around. These guys are all "we don't give a SHIT if our team wins, we're only in it for the action, man".

TS: Crazy-ass...Yeah, they just want to bust some heads. I can see now what your fascination is with these primordeal, 21st century neanderthals.

HT: From what I've heard the Dutch hooligans are among the worst.

TS: Oh yeah, sure...There are actually people getting killed over that kind of sandpit politics. 200 hooligans from each team armed with hammers, axes, knives,etc. agree to meet on this-or-that field near some gas station in the middle of nowhere and battle it out. One clan against the other. It's "Braveheart" to the max, man. And people actually die. Over a fucking soccer team.

HT: I thought Holland was all bicycles, sandals and middle-aged white guys with beards playing aerodynamic yuppified "be-bop" down on the cobblestone corner.

TS: The gobble-bone corner probably. Most of those UNTERMENSCH vermin became yuppies in the 80's. In the 90's they did Jane Fonda workouts until they were in shape and now they get nipple piercings to show off while rollerblading to techno disco to show their rebellious 'alternative' lifestyles. They're like roaches, they mutate, they are digusting, and they keep coming back. That's how I can tell when the summer starts. So.. introducing pyrotechnics in punk rock was a bit risque, right? When did you start using pyrotechnics, and how did people respond to it?

HT: We've used pyro for the last two or three years. It's no big deal. It has never been a tongue-in-cheek "c'mon everybody, do the devil's hand sign" bullshit thing for us. It just came naturally, since we're such hot&fiery fellows.

TS: I'll say. Can we expect Hank to stuff BIGGER sized Roman Candles up his ass to shoot fireballs at the crowd with? Isn't he worried about someday accidentally inserting one the wrong way and turn into a human torch, inside out? Cinder Man!

HT: Hank has actually stopped doing the Ass Rockets, but as he says: "My ass is ADDICTED to them!", so we probably haven't seen the last of that.

TS: Um, well...I can accept that; if it feels good, DO IT! Liberace had a word for it : SHOWMANSHIP.

HT: As we know, that guy really had his shit "together", he he.

TS: And PACKED tightly...! Now obviously, Turbo is a band that is skilled in this like no other...A band that knows all the tricks of the trade....Just speaking as your run of the mill, biased to the max spectator here, of course, being both a professional AND a seasoned veteran...

HT: Thank you, thank you. As we've stated time again, Deathpunk is a way too grandiose genre to be performed in some kind of "Regular College-Joe" context, in a t-shirt and a pair of Wranglers. Rocknroll shouldn't be some kind of championship in Earnesty & Down-To-Earthness, but rather a display of magic, brilliance and power. Hm. Kind of like us, come to think of it.

TS: Vive La Difference...! As you surely know very well, Tom, I am a man who knows the difference between a bunch of dorks showing off their foot-on-the-monitor poses taken from some Iron Maiden video, and real showmanship...And by the same token, I know very well you don't need yet another brown nose up your ass, not even from a semi-legendary underground cult figure such as myself... Everybody's all over you guys....But when I see Turbo live, I keep telling everybody, I DETECT GENUINE SHOWMANSHIP....!! And The Slug Man don't lie...

HT: He he he. It's 1% hard work and 99% hormones.

TS: But after Euroboy's effortless displays of musical genius initially whipped the audiences into silent admiration, no other but Hank could pick the crowds up and incite them into a blazing maelstrom of testosterone. The gestures, the body hair. He has MASCULINITY written all over him, and his manly appearance is oozing charisma and unmatched stage presence.

HT: Yepp, Hank is not your average Deathpunk vocalist!

TS: And leader capacities abound with addition of the tender sailor man.

HT: Dat be me!

TS: Et Voila! Behold the magic trinity, this amazing trio. The cances of these compounds to meet and intereact with each other to form a well-balanced cocktail capable of erupting with such infinite talents are close to zero. Zilch, jackshit, nada, nil. Say, how did you find each other?

HT: On the amyl-nitrate drenched dancefloors of Oslo. Norway is a tiny country population-wise, but the collective geni of Edvard Munch, Gustav Vigeland, Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun have all been parabolically transferred into one small denim-clad group of young adults, so it makes a lot of sense once you really think hard about it.

TS: Don't forget Roald Amundsen, a man who boldly ventured where no man went before, before anyone, despite the most unforgiving circumstances...Kind of like myself, come to think of it.

HT: Well, The Euro Boys are actually writing the score for an upcoming movie about Roald Amundsen. So there you go. By the way, my old uncle Arne was Thor Heyerdahl's archeologist for decades, and the director at the Kon-Tiki museum here in Oslo. He was the main guy when they did the Easter Islands expeditions back in the '50s, so there's a bunch of books with pictures of him smoking a pipe leaning up to the statues in a safari helmet and a "dutch be-bop"-looking beard, looking rather clever.

TS: Wow...Maybe it's a genetic thing...For a band bubbling over with ideas and will to power (the German philosophers had a phrase for it : STURM UND DRANG) I wonder how on earth the members of turbo, each collossal personalities in their own right, manage to refrain from clashing with each other? This must be like galaxies colliding and eating each other up. A leviathan showdown of intellects.

HT: We can't!! There's been numerous violent and semi-violent incidents within this band, but it always ends up in hugging and groping with in minutes. And crying. We cry alot, we're not into that tough-ass rock-thing. We're MEN, not insecure teenagers.

TS: Is it simply a matter of male bonding in the turbo camp, or are there people walking around with bruised ego's?

HT: Male bonding, whitewater rafting, long-distance mountain bike treks Iron John-camps, Robert Bly-readings around the campfire about recovering The Ancient Broken Spear Within, the works. We're all finely in tune with our masculinity.

TS: Huh??? What's an Ancient Broken Spear?? A disfunctional Spam Javelin? I can imagine there's a whole lot of good loving going around to make things alright...

HT: Of course. You can't have Good fighting without some Good Loving thrown in. That's basically the Dialectics Of Denim.

TS: He he, the Dialectic approach ensures CHANGE, and therefore equals progress. One might point out analogies here with the mid-20's, (lemme explain this to the uneducated commoner segment of CARBON14's readership) when a group of Italian artists rejected the DaDa thing for lacking suvstance and gusto, to become 'futurists', who stood for CHANGE, strength, improvement, speed, and clinical hygiene and ruthlessness. They had ideas of making an utopian 'futurist' society, in an avant la lettre fascist sort of way. Being Italian, of course, made it a loser scenario from the beginning...

HT: Ha ha! "Attila! Attila!"

TS: Interestingly, that Limey butt pirate Adam Ant wrote a song called FUTURIST MANIFESTO, and the homo rock nazi thing goes full circle!

HT: And let's not forget the incredible new wavo-operatics of Klaus Nomi. He's so European, he's one of a kind, one of a kind. Or WAS.

TS: Klaus Nomi...Let's see...O.K. Here's a guy from COMMIE GERMANY, who is so weird they throw him out of the country, he LOOKS LIKE A HUMAN LIPSTICK, and he's gonna wear a checkered, triangular shaped, grotesque looking outfit made of perspex and sing about a "TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE MOON" in a falsetto soprano voice. But that wasn't weird enough for him!

HT: He was like a Kabuki Robot!

TS: Yeah, he he...And he really went down in history being like the first person in Europe to die of AIDS...But Klaus Nomi was not only a painfully visible, - maybe the ultimate Euro-freak, Tom, but also the epitome of the 80's, and VERY much in a Berlin way at that...Americans would never understand...But back to Turbo...How do the other turbo members feel about the fact that they are forced to take backseat, basking in the presence of the aforementioned threesome up front...

HT: They are pleased in their own little sick and dark ways. In fact, some of the main power moguls and movers & shakers in Turbo are in the back. Sometimes us guys up front feel like marionettes.

TS: Really? That surprises me. So they are responsible for sending out the vibes that the Teutonic triumvirat up front in turn feeds on? And you are the ones getting the flak. Now that explains a lot.

HT: Yes, the whole logistics of Denim Discipline.

TS: He he, I like that..! When you see Euroboy perform with that "eyes shut and pucker up" expression on his face, what goes through your mind?

HT: "Oh no...ACHTUNG mouth, ass and vagina!!!"

TS: Explain the Symbionese Liberation Army logo you use on the sleeve of Apocalypse Dudes, please...S.L.A., Patty Hearst, and I'm thinking the phenomenon known in psychology as the Stockholm complex, that sort of stuff...

HT: "The hostage rooting for the kidnappers"-thing, right?

TS: Precisely.

HT: That's basically our live-show agenda, he he.

TS: Yeah! chalk up another one for the underdog, like with the football song.

HT: It's a long story, but when I was a kid my mom (who INCIDENTALLY went to school with Sirhan Sirhan) had a paperback about the SLA, and I was really taken by their multi-headed snake logo.

TS: Que Sirhan Sirhan.

HT: So we always talked about using it for a cover, and finally did it For several reasons, one of the main one being to irritate "the Underground", due to the fact that Trance Records had been using it as their logo for years, so we could hang out in bars and have insecure Little Man-type "scenesters" come up to us, after having psyched themselves up on booze, trying to "arrest" us on the fact. So it has a social function, because it's a great arguement-starter. Which often can lead to a climax of kissing, hugging and fondling of such reluctant little WIMPS...

TS: He he...

HT: Also because it looks really good. We even took away one of the heads, so as to accommodate the sub-normal IQ rock scribes who keeps referring to us as "Turbonegro, a six-headed monster from Norway".

TS: So, Turbo has a slight inclination towards using Nazi imagery and terminology. Am I wrong in thinking this is ment to provoke? I don't mean in a Boyd Rice sort of way, mind you..

HT: Provocation is boring. If it looks good and sounds good, then it IS good. Actually we're more of a left-wing band, if anything. I mean Hank's name was on the death list of a neo-nazi group, his name and the names of a bunch of politicians and media types. The cops found this list during a raid, so it was in the papers, etc.

TS: You're shitting me!

HT: No shit. The same thing goes for our name: We sold one hell of a lot more t-shirts playing for black shipyard workers in Norfolk, Virginia than we did in Berkeley.

TS: Wow, that's amazing.

HT: However, seeing that the left-wing in music today are all into Chumbawamba and hanging out in their coffeshop-ghettos doing the safety dance and playing their little petty word-games, we're pretty much on our own without any allies.

TS: With friends like that who needs enemies. I found that out a long time ago.

HT: In San Fransico we even saw some flyers outside a show: "Boycott Turbonegro! They are racist, fascist and homophobic!" Shit, you'd think that radical activists in the USA had somewhat more crucial issues to attend to than a bunch of sexy Norwegian men in bulging denim.

TS: They should be glad some CLASSY Euro studs finally graced their silly capitol of P.C.-ness with their graceful presence. But no, the padlock-in-the-nose crew didn't want to be educated. The Slug Man says : that makes THEM the close minded, reactionaries.

HT: Yes, of course. "Good Head" is probably the closest thing we have to a political slogan.

TS: Beats "Anarchy" by a long shot if you ask me.

HT: Maybe we could run for office on that. "Good Head NOW!"

TS: Maybe Monica Lewinski is into turbo. Christine Keeler...

HT: I hoped you wouldn't mention that.

TS: Are there any bands/artists around today you find interesting?

HT: Well, then we'd have to start naming all our buddies, and such nonsense has no place in modern rock-journalism.

TS: OK don't swallow the bait then! But I was thinking, maybe you've played with some totally insane bands you wanted to talk about.

HT: San Francisco's own Plainfield are without doubt the best band we ever played with, America's best kept secret.

TS: Named after serial killer/cannibal Ed Geins hometown etc...Loveslug's Mike De Veer was in a band called Plainfield in the mid 80's...

HT: We've played with several all-time greats, such as The Ramones, Poison Idea, The Bad Brains...now THAT'S a funny story. This was in the pre-denim days, and we were doing the whole Al Jolson-schtick with afro-wigs and black-face, and it's like after you've done it once you really don't give it much thought. It's not like you're sitting in the dressing room laughing your ass off, slapping your knees, etc. night after night. You just really get used to it, and it's very much a routine.

TS: Tell me about it...

HT: So there we were backstage with our black faces and wigs and little hats, smoking pot with our all-time heroes the Bad Brains, and the absurdity just didn't cross our minds. I mean, those guys didn't mention it, they were probably just embarrassed on our behalf, you know. And we NEVER actually thought of it, not once, until just the other day, when somebody brought it up.

TS: [laughing] AWESOME. Fucking hell. They were probably too stoned to notice you were whites and speaking Norwegian.

TS: What's worse, the ludicrous Goth band you played with here in Amsterdam, or Pitch Shifter, who mercifully cancelled, making Turbo headliners...I know you made a lot of fans that night.

HT: They chickened out, the little neo-metal PUSSIES. What's the difference? We WILL NOT be intimidated by such genetic debris as the Goth-people and their "spooky" tomfoolery.

TS: That is not the issue, you can't compare a vampire wannabe fashion show with a rocknroll show. Especially not when it's the best show in town ALL YEAR. Say, imagine being 25 years old and looking like Marilyn Manson because you have to "express yourself".

HT: Now THAT'S scary.

TS: Ridiculous, even.

HT: One high point that night was when the singer/dominatrix of a well-known American S/M-ensemble tried coming on to several of us after the show, he he...

TS: Who was this bitch, Gitane Demone, the strap-on slinging S&M fetish queen? Um, what band was she in? Christian Death or something like that I think. Or are you talking about that broad from Genitorturers? They come over here to indulge in the endless kinky parties going on, precisely why I want to get away from here...

HT: Yeah, that's her. "Listen lady, I don't know what you thought when you saw us up on that stage, but we're all MEAT & POTATOES kinda guys, thank you very much."

TS: AWESOME, that must've cooled her ass right off I guess.

HT: That ass needed it.

TS: She's a hot tamale. Totally fake, but her piercings are real.

HT: Another hi-lite from Amsterdam was that chorus line of really good looking transvestites out in the crowd who did = all these choreographed dances and knew all the lyrics.

TS: That was amazing. There were even some fags in crotchless leather pants.

HT: Tony, I didn't know that you referred to yourself as "a fag". Good!

TS: Don't pull this PC, Sigmund shit on me... A fag means a bundle of sticks to be lit on fire is all...

HT: Come to terms with it!

TS: And... I'm afraid of going TO HELL!

HT: And this TV-interview, where we were being interviewed by some local hot ass alterna-babe, who was appearantly VERY proud of the fact that Amsterdam is such a liberal town, and asked Hank about it.

TS: Tssk, that chick is bogus man, I've never seen her around before. She knew who I was though.

HT: He went all silent, stared into the camera for a while, and then started this Taxidriver monologue about how there was going to fall a heavy rain and wash all the trash off the streets.

TS: Hilarious !She wanted a pat on the back and Hank goes YOU PEOPLE ARE WEAKENED BY TOLERANCE! THIS CITY NEEDS GUIDANCE! I've been saying that all along btw. It's the truth. And it needed to be said on camera, for sure. Say, What's up with that "Clean Version" picture disc on Sympathy? Do the Americans get um, TURBO-lite? What's the scoop?

HT: That "Clean American Version" - text on the picture disc is Long Gone John's little trip, it's a reference to The Mothers Of Invention.

TS: I wouldn't know. I hate Frank Zappa and everything he stood for.

HT: No there's no censorship involved. The whole deal with the picture disc-series was to release the ugliest, most redundant (no "previously unreleased" marketing schemes here), lamest picture discs ever. And so far we've succeeded.

TS: I'm glad to hear it. Now don't go hardcore Freudian on me again here, but I can not help but interpreting the zucchini as a phallic symbol..

HT: Of course! It's symbolizes Orgone, goddammit.

TS: Whew, oh joy! I am normal after all! Only an idiot band like VEGAN REICH would take it differently. What are your sentiments on 'Straight Edge' and bands who take a militant stance, wether it's Skrewdriver or MDC?

HT: Turd Reich. I really couldn't be bothered by such utter childishness. But since you mention it, both the first Skrewdriver AND the first MDC album are huge classics.

TS: Yeah, sure. Say, now would you go on record here saying the Levi's sponsorship is not a hoax?

HT: Yepp. It is for real.

TS: Honest Injun? How much are you on their payroll for?

HT: That is a secret. And they like throwing us little bonuses here and there, for instance when we were going to Texas in April, they sent us a check for approximately 10.000 US dollars (15.000 deutschmarks) with a small note: "Have fun". Such small tokens of appreciation certainly help out.

TS: Goddayamn... so it was off to the longhorn bar in search of the lone brown star, like, pronto?

HT: Yes, the lone brown star hidden within the man. ACHTUNG lone brown star!

TS: Twinkle twinkle, little star....Are Levi-Straus Inc. aware of the fact that they help promote the ominous forces summoned by your DENIM DARKNESS?

HT: Yes, very much as far as I've detected. However I really can't see what they expect to gain out of this, but they apparantly do.

TS: So how does Jello feel about being the emperor of juggling?

HT: He he, you heard about that. Jello is a great guy, and is very supportive of us, for instance by saying stuff like "Apocalypse Dudes is possibly the most important European record ever", etc.

TS: That's easy for him to say, his spoken word albums are probably the LEAST important American releases ever.

HT: We spent some time with him the last time we were in the US, and when he showed up at one of our shows in Europe we introduced him to the audience as "the Emperor of Juggling". He was pretty irritated by this, because we had of course initiated him in our anti-juggling views earlier on, he he.

TS: I figured that, he he. Well, he's had his ass licked by every punkeroo on the planet for what? 15, 20 years. What's a "pocket fulla mice" btw?

HT: It's a metaphore.

TS: Oh, OK... And please explain "Rock Agains Ass"...Call me stupid, but I didn't quite get that one...

HT: That song is about rock, and about throwing rocks against buttocks. The ass symbolizes the best and the worst aspects of humanity. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

TS: Ahhh, now I see, with the line "Jerk that calf, HALF N HALF" ("Prince Of The Rodeo") you referred to the 'yin & yang' aspects the ass represents. Perfection in total polarity.

HT: Exactly.

TS: I haven't heard the very first TRBNGR album, but read somewhere that it sounded WAY different from turbo's later material.

HT: Yes, we didn't visualize Deathpunk until the "Vaya Con Satan" EP on Sympathy in 1991. Up to that point Turbo was a kind of small-time version of the stuff we were listening to at that point. Roky Erickson, Mudhoney, classic punk, hardcore and pop and also very much your fellow dutchmen Gore, as a matter of fact.

TS: I'll be fucked in half! GORE ? No way. I neverunderstood why they were so popular. They wanted me to be in their band in 1987.

HT: Wow! They were great. They preceeded the whole neo-Sabbath thing by years and years, and did it with style.

TS: This guy Rob whatshisface came by my house to bring a tape with ONE one 8 minute song and 5 or 6 sheets of paper with figures on it representing the chord positions, 1-1-1-8-3-4-4-7-1-9-6-3-4-4, etc. ONE PAGE, TWO PAGE, FOUR PAGE, SIX FUCKING PAGES full.... I'm like "No. No! Fuck this, Dudes! I can't possible memorize this. the only thing I understand is verse chorus, verse chorus, break, double chorus.." THERE MUST BE ORDER!

HT: Now THERE'S a good little dutchman...

TS: 6 ft 5, buddie... But no way I'd play second fiddle to one of Hank Rollins pen pal chums. I may be Dutch, but I bring stuff to the party. My riffs will always outlive their 15 minutes of fame! Anyways I declined the offer and didn't become a media darling, once again saving Dutch rocknroll... Hey, their drummer was in this incredible hardcore band named PANDEMONIUM ca. 1982-1985 at age 14. He went on to join Deedee Ramone's band after Gore, which was such an ordeal he now sold his drumkit and took a secret phone number...

HT: Ha ha ha!!!

TS: It's true !....ASS COBRA was a superb record, and it sounds nothing like the monolithical, timeless statement turbo delivered with APOCALYPSE DUDES. Do you intend to keep making different sounding albums? Concept albums perhaps? What direction can we expect Turbo to go next?

HT: There's really no intentional type of development, except that wehave a really good process going, so we keep materializing stuff that somehow connects at certain levels. The high level of creativity is one of the main advantages of being fags.

TS: I wouldn't know about that but it might explain why the Nitwitz ar less than prolific in their output.

HT: Exactly. Intentional concept-albums can be cool indeed, but I think any remarkable album is a concept album per se, by virtue of its own weight. Our new direction is a secret. A dark secret. It's a riddle hidden inside an enigma.

TS: In a snake swallows own tail kinda way, right?

HT: Precicely!!! I can however reveal that there is a side-project in the works starring the one and only Smelly Mustafa of Plainfield, called Yoko Homo.

TS: Who is this motherfucker? The guy who wrote for MRR?

HT: Yepp. The Merle Haggard/Jim Henson of Deathpunk.

TS: Alrightee then, I'll see you in November when you guys are playing with NASHVILLE PUSSY. Any comments about that band, or else in general ?

HT: We will make love to all of them. Tough love, as it is known in certain circles. ACHTUNG mouth, ass and pussy!!!

Thanks to Tony Slug for the use of this great interview!
To read more interviews by Tony check out I-94 BAR