Release Date: Apr 25, 2025
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Post-Punk
Record label: Shrimptech Enterprises
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Your more hardcore compatriots are always demanding proof of noise credibility, the general public will flip up their nose whether your commentary is substantive or dribble, and music critics will swear up and down that you can have too much personality. Let your freak flags fly, you damn beautiful Swedes; your nearly self-titled new release is a singular moshing of your own creation. Don't mind the posers.
Hailing from the same Nordic nation as ABBA and Avicii, Viagra Boys deliver their fourth studio album, viagr aboys. Operating within punk and punk-adjacent genres, Viagra Boys have carved themselves out a niche with their outlandish, vivid, and sometimes political lyrics - all delivered with a tongue-in-cheek smile. Viagra Boys' latest outing distances itself from the political slant of the band's last album, Cave World, which spent much of its runtime mocking vaccine conspiracy theorists and basement-dwelling incels.
The Swedes’ fourth album continues their run of excellent, absurdist post-punk excursions. Play it loud and revel in the weirdness Few bands capture the absurdity of modern life with as much grotesque glee as Viagra Boys. On their feral fourth record, Viagr Aboys, the Swedish outfit distil their signature blend of scuzzed-out post-punk, sharp observational humour, and dance floor-ready grooves into their most refined – and deranged – work yet.
Viagra Boys crack open their new self-titled album with a howl and a stomp, hurling us right back into the gaping maw of their signature cartoon hellscape--a world as grotesque as it is musically precise, as absurd as it is emotionally intelligent. “Man Made of Meat” sets the tone: part Hieronymus Bosch, part Ren & Stimpy “gross-up” close-up, and, crucially, all in good fun. It’s a gleefully unhinged feat of epic silliness, just as willfully brutal as carefully constructed, and lucky for us, it’s just the beginning.
"I'm a man that's made of meat / You're on the internet looking at feet." That line, from the opening track ‘Man Made of Meat’, might as well be mission statement -- and perfectly sets the tone for their latest album, ‘Viagr aboys’. Absurd, visceral, and uncomfortably honest, the record lurches between the grotesque and the hilarious, painting a portrait of a crumbling, commodified culture with the tone of a Twitch stream beamed in from Hell's waiting room. This is Viagra Boys' fourth full-length, and unlike many bands that lose their teeth over time, here their bite has only grown sharper.
For the majority of Viagra Boys' existing audience, the main purpose of this fourth album is likely as fuel to further the outfit's cult live presence, the Swedes having left a trail of angsty moshpit-inducing fervour across the globe for a decade now. Yet 'viagr aboys' makes like a metaphorical onion left in the fridge for a little too long; its provenance questionable, it's not something most would want to touch with their bare hands but is - get to the point! - nevertheless layered. Opener 'Man Made Of Meat' causes a casual jolt, its proto-punk sound clashing with a casual (and unpredictably crude) reference to the death of Matthew Perry, showing that no, this is not a 1970s crate-digging exercise.
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