WERS 88.9 fm - Album Review: Times New Viking - Born Again Revisited

October 15, 2009

The folks of Times New Viking are sort of like the musical equivalent of a hyperactive twelve-year-old on sedatives. The happier they sound, the more people they're liable to tick off. I can't fathom the sheer volume of individuals who must have grimaced at some point at the banshee-like guitar work on their latest, Born Again Revisited.  Why, those rabble-rousers think they can thrash around for 90 seconds, turn everything up really loud, and call it a song? Well I'll be! What are they, fighting authority or something? How crass! When you Google TNV, or similar bands like Vivian Girls, Wavves or No Age, and you'll discover a pungent-sounding subgenre of bands that write great pop songs and perform them under a thick layer of brown, stinky, mangy, disease-ridden, squishy hyper distortion, making it really hard for people to enjoy. Eugh, what'd they have last night, Indian food?

That leaves me here, typing in Times New Roman about this Times New Viking, the genre's apparent standard-bearers. Born Again Revisited arrives as a follow up to last year's oft raved about Rip It Off. They're a band that's risen out of an unlikely place (Columbus, OH) and landed on a surprisingly huge label (Matador) to peddle their unmistakably shrill sounds to anyone who can manage to listen to their skrreeeeeeeeee and not asplode. Although I'd warn a lot of people before they try to listen to this, I can safely say that I sat through this with my skull intact, and holy dung staring dingoes is Born Again Revisited a fun record!

The most important thing to note is that this isn't really a departure from anything they've done in the past. If anything, this record has more discernable pop pleasure moments than their past work, which conveys the illusion that these folks have eased up on the distortion, which is not actually true. They start this record off with a bang, which almost makes you feel that B.A.R. is going to be a different record than the others. Instead of a sugar-high spazz-out, on opening track "Martin Luther King Day," these kids step out with something quite classy, a disco march with a fully recognized song structure centered around a seductive buzz saw guitar that progressively swims deeper and deeper into the murk as the song consumes it. Afterwards, you feel like you're going to hear a record from an alternate-universe Luciferian T-Rex clone, some sort of neo-glam hit parade, but alas the real Times New Viking resurfaces on a 95 second reverie of clang-n-mutter called "I Smell Bubblegum." Let's be honest, TNV, when don't you?

The Times New Viking we've known for three albums don't slack off on the fourth, and that's a joy. Lead single "No Time, No Hope," is a rapturous rapport between plaintive sing-a-long lyrics and a cyclical organ screeching it's way through a shameless pop carnival. On "Move To California," the partnership of the band's instrumental clamor and the multi-vocal deadpan narrative rollicks through a retrospective diary, displaying the wide range of places this band can take you in less than three minutes. The rest of the record is comprised of the kind of tunes that are Times New Viking's specialty:  tracks that clock in under two minutes and are so shrill they're hard to dissect or even remember, but while you're listening, you're imbued with sinister pleasure, the aural equivalent of jawbreakers so sweet and delicious you shred through them, disregarding the blood covering your shirt and the teeth clanging out of your mouth onto the floor.

Times New Viking seems to have devised a formula, one where they utilize their strengths as an unrepentantly saccharine pop-punk band with undoubtedly strong songwriting talent, and the ability to record a lot of material by applying one simple rule to their recording: loudloudloudloudLOUDDDDD. Chances are we'll get much the same kind of music on their next record. Fingers crossed (and bleeding ears excitingly perked!).

-Jon Gabso