Photo Credit: Fredrik Bengtsson

For those of you who don’t know, and running somewhat contrary to the image of Sweden we collectively hold in our minds, the Swedes have been hard into punk rock. From day one. From Ebba Gron to Anti Cimex, the land of Ikea has quite a bit of violent discontent bubbling just below the surface, evidently. Things are never quite as they seem, are they?

Neither really is the Viagra Boys though. Formed from the ashes of several disbanded punk bands and helmed by the very inked Sebastian Murphy, the Viagra Boys are more seditious, more sardonic, and much funnier than your average self-conscious punk band. Feeling way more Flipper than Social Distortion, you get the feeling that Viagra Boys may be making fun of you. And they likely are. Cave World is Viagra Boys’ third album and with it, they want to tell you how stupid the world is getting, in case you had not figured it out for yourself.

These are, and have been for a while, very strange, and very dumb times. And a good deal of the art that is coming out about now is in direct reaction to our shared global experience: Fear, uncertainty, frustration, and anger. But of the music being produced post(?) covid, only the Viagra Boys have had the courage, that audacity to look around at the pure lunk-headedness of it all and thought to themselves, “yeah, we can go lower.”

Cave World is some really, really, low vibration stuff. Even for the Viagra Boys. The subject matter is of the type the boys are comfortable with; making fun of toxic masculinity, making fun of cool guys, making fun of toxically masculine cool guys, but they took it down a couple of notches to severely remedial throughout the joint. “Baby Criminal”, about the genesis of a school shooter sounds like if the Birthday Party hung out in Detroit around 1977. “Punk Rock Loser”, an ode to drugs and failure is another slick funk rock piece. “Big Boy”, featuring the brilliant and always ready-to guest Jason Williamson, sounds like boom-bap-era hip hop as executed by Tom Waits. And none of it is good.

Sometimes you can hit your goals too hard. On this album, the Viagra Boys were obviously aiming for low brow and they nailed it. The concepts, the lyrics, and the execution of Cave World are altogether not at all profound. Even the instrumentation itself sounds dim like it was woken up too early after a too rough night out. Viagra Boys have made a career of lampooning everything: society, fashion, and you as the listener. There is a place for that, even a tradition of it in punk rock. But, unfortunately, at least on this outing, the stupidity seems less like social satire and more like laziness. But then again, maybe that is exactly what the Viagra Boys were aiming for all along. In that case, touché.

Written by: Padraig Mara