On hearing the upcoming album Scandinavian Leather you get to think of it as a hymn about the life-style and philosophy of Turbonegro, which in reality isn't any less provoquing or excessive than their lyrics and music expresses. Their authenticity as well as the seemingly insatiable energy they've been throwing at audiences during more than a decade of live gigs, have generated a huge fan base and established Turbonegro as one of the spearheading Rock/Death Punk bands around. They're always keenly quoted by the likes of Dave Grohl, Metallica, Queens Of The Sone Age or the Beastie Boys.
Since their return to the music circus, Turbonegro made a few glorious festival appearances in Sweden (Hultsfred), Norway (Quart) and Germany (Bizarre) last summer, spurring them to come up with a new album. Hence the reason why you'll only have to wait til 28th of April (worldwide release on Burning Heart/Epitaph).
Scandinavian Leather starts off with 'The Blizzard Of Flames' a slow instrumented choral, that reminds you of a historic film, that marks the return of the fearless Vikings, before kicking into 'Wipe it til it bleeds', a classic Rock tune, with just the right guitar riffs, groovy enough to steer you away from the anal-bash-talk in their lyrics. From then on the album starts to race your CD player out of breath, forcing guitar and drum sounds to the limit, without loosing the groove and refinement of excellent musicianship. The songs build up from cross-over Punk Rock tracks like a call to self-destruction 'Turbonegro Must Be Destroyed', anthem-like 'Everybody Sell Your Body To The Night' or the anarchic 'Remain Untamed'. For a moment the pace of the album slows down ('Train to Flesh'/'Fuck the World'), before picking up again and driving you across some of the finest Turbonegro Death Punk tracks like 'Locked Down'.
The music on the album is not classifiable as purely Rock or Punk. It's a lot of both! Take an example: while you're hear the typical clashing Punk guitar, you can always make out Euroboy's classic rock guitar, a powerful component of the unmistakable Turbonegro sound. Scandinavian Leather is pure Punk and noise, mixed with a number of well-crafted and classic refined rock. As authentic and explosive as Turbonegro can be!
(jh)
