Turbonegro was one of the greatest bands of all time. The question for me is whether or not they still are.Turbo started in Oslo, Norway in the late 80s. They played dirty, blistering metal-inflected punk (they called it "deathpunk"), culminating in their triumphant single "Vaya Con Satan." The quintessential deathpunk album was 1996's "Ass Cobra," which featured rock n' roll's first crying baby solo, on the insanely-creepy-but-awesome "Midnight NAMBLA." In the mid-90s they picked up Knut "Euroboy" Schreiner on lead guitar, featuring wailing hot guitar licks. In this iteration they put out "Apocalypse Dudes," which Dead Kennedies' Jello Biafra referred to as the greatest rock album ever made.
Then, touring in support of Apocalypse Dudes in 1998, Hank von Helvete ("Hank of Hell"), the lead singer, had a heroin-induced psychotic breakdown in Spain and was interred in a mental hospital. The band broke up and went their separate ways. In their wake, the Turbojugend, Turbo's devoted worldwide fanclub, continued celebrating their favorite band's memory by eating a lot of pizza, drinking a lot of alcohol, and starting a lot of shit.
So, as of 2000, Turbo had followed the archetypical rock n' roll trajectory: start obscure, rise to underground stardom, fall apart at the peak of success in a blaze of drug-addled glory.
Then, in 2003, they got back together - Hank was off the smack and they had all belatedly realized how popular Turbo was, especially in Germany. Since then, they've put out three albums (the latest, "Retox," is coming out in a month in the US and is already out in Norway) which all sounded a lot cleaner, much more produced, and much less brutal than their pre-breakup output (although their song subjects are largely the same: anal sex and denim.)
So here I am, along with my fellow die-hard Turbo fans, wondering what to think about the situation. Turbo's music is unquestionably worse than it used to be, but it's not bad, exactly. It went from dirty deathpunk to dirty pseudo-stadium rock. I think it boils down to the question of whether or not you can continue to love a band for the memory of what they used to be; if I heard Turbo's latest and didn't know the history, I honestly don't know if I'd like it.
Practically every band and every band's fans go through this if the band stays together long enough, anyway. If the band stays the same, it gets stale, but if they reinvent, they risk self-parody. What makes it especially pronounced with Turbo is that their rise and fall was so perfectly orchestrated, and their reunion was a genuine surprise for everyone. That they failed to live up to the hopes of thousands of sexy denim-clad sailors is not, in retrospect, especially surprising.
Anyway, I'll stop rambling. Here's a clip of Turbo at their best, shortly before the breakup:
2 comments:
I had some friends in Oregon that felt that way about Rush. There were three good albums and twelve really bad ones. It was such a mark of a Rush fan if you bought the next album because "maybe this will be better." It's like Hollywood making shitty sequels banking on the marketing fact that the first one makes people go see the second regardless of how crappy the second one really is. Bands illicit more loyalty. There are still Rush fans, and far as I know they've yet to make anything good in twenty years. But that won't stop my friend from buying the next album...spending twelve bucks to reminiesce about how good that first album was. Sort of like not breaking up with an asshole because the first three months were the best you've ever had.
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