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Album Details

• Artist: Turbonegro
• Album: Apocalypse Dudes
• Label: Sympathy for the Record Industry
• Year of Release: 1999
• ME Rating: Indie Classic
• Reviewed by: christopherdrew on 2007-01-17

If you were to gauge Turbonegro by their appearance alone, you might come to the conclusion that they were a pack of sweaty, hairy Norwegians who had come to fuck you and kill you,and not necessarily in that order. Well, you'd be half right; as dark as they are, the boys are mainly concerned with one thing: sex. Turbonegro specialize in brash, balls-out punk rawk, infused with glam-rock swagger, and Apocalypse Dudes is pretty much a tour-de-force of fast, loud guitar riffs, crashing cymbals and a drawn-out 'yeah' at the end of every verse.
As good as the music is, what sets these boys apart from the rest of their peers is their unabashed homoeroticism. Punk tends to be a sexless affair at the best of times, it's militant energy usually masking a self-conscious awkwardness towards the matter; not so with Turbonegro, who supply a much-needed injection of wanton lust and debauchery to the genre with songs such as 'Rock Against Ass', 'Rendezvous With Anus', and 'Prince of The Rodeo' (the latter with it's chorus of "I'm riding high/I'm riding low/Prince of the rodeo'...). Combined with a healthy sense of humour ('Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker'), Apocalypse Dudes avoids seeming completely lecherous, instead cultivating a certain lewd charm that persists throughout the entire album, ending with the simple yet succinct 'Good Head'.
It's the sound of The Ramones with a sex drive, or AC/DC with a wider range of libido; it's also funny to think of the thousands of frat-boys and rednecks who are banging their heads to Turbonegro's gender-bending power anthems. In the end, however, it comes down to being just really good rock'n'roll, and you really can't go wrong with that, no matter which way you swing.

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