"Low-Fi" punk rock with (1) highly distorted vocals and guit
Brad Hoevel | Saginaw | 11/10/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"4 - 4.5 stars: really good album, but not quite reaching the greatness of a true Rock classic.
Times New Viking (formed in 2004) are, in my opinion, one of the best and most promising "new" band to have emerged in the past five years. The band consists of two vocalists--one male, one female--guitar, organ and drums. Simply put, Times New Viking play rock and roll precisely the way I enjoy it; that is, with loud, distorted guitars hammering out heavy riffs in songs with catchy hooks and appealing melodies.
Compared to the majority of other bands, the music of Times New Viking is extremely "lo-fi". By this I mean that it is quite a low sound quality. Instruments and vocals are highly distorted and are accompanied by a electronic/metallic sounds that might be reverberation or perhaps feedback; every instrument and voice blends together to form a fuzzy, hissing sludge of noise. The lyrics, to me, are all-but indiscernible. All-in-all, the sound is really something quite primitive. This primitiveness is, in fact, the very feature that gives the band their appeal. In it one finds a full-bodied texture that is pleasant to the ear. Not everybody is going to agree with this assessment-- I suggest taking a sample listen to see if Times New Viking's fuzzy, lo-fi aesthetic is something that you enjoy.
In comparison to the other bands I listen to, the sound-aesthetic of Times New Viking is in many ways reminiscent of the Velvet Underground circa White Light/White Heat. Of course, the style of the two bands is quite different, the similarity lies in the production sound, especially for organ/keyboard and guitar.
It is very important to note that beneath the cloudy sonic overload, it is easy to hear that Times New Viking is, at heart, a pop band, and a good one at that. Their songs are catchy and melodic; one can easily hum along with them, and the tunes can easily gets stuck in one's head. Also, Times New Viking is very much a punk rock band. The vast majority of the songs here are played loud and fast and contain heavy, Stooge-like three-chord and sometimes even 2-chord riffs. Another strength of Times New Viking is the passion, raw emotion and energy with which they play their songs. It really is something quite powerful.
It would seem that the bands strengths are also the source of their main weakness. It is hard to describe why I consider Times New Viking to be a very good, but not great, band. Many of their songs are quite appealing and very catchy, but very few songs on Born Again Revisited or, for that matter, on the band's 2008 album Rip It Off, that are discernible as being truly great songs. Most songs are around a minute long and they sort of just all bleed together. Noticeably absent are superbly written lyrics and songs that build up towards several blissful moments of climax. There is a single-mindedness and simplicity to the band's approach that may well be standing in the way of what might otherwise be possible to accomplish if they were to try harder and reach further by taking New Risks.
To summarize, Times New Viking plays an uncompromising blend of noisy punk rock, filled to the brim with powerful intensity and raw emotion. Yet beneath the noisy distortion the trained ear will be able to discern well-crafted, euphonious pop.
P.S. Born Again Revisited is very similar to the band's 2008 album Rip It Off.
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Track Listings (16) - Disc #1
