April 25, 2025
Words by Coco Le Sex Bomb
This is it, people!
After the smash hit that was Cave World in 2023, two years of debauturous touring, hilarious promotional videos and a couple of juicy singles, the triumphant, exuberant, translucently resplendent Viagra Boys bring us the newest example of how an album should make you – the listener – feel with VIAGR ABOYS.
Kicking off the album with the first single Man Made of Meat, a stripped back bop that playfully, yet cleverly, has a look into the sick and twisted social norms of today while asking what does it even mean to live a rock star lifestyle anymore? Was it better back in the good old days, or are we all just jaded little punk rockers wearing shit coloured glasses?
That being said, like most Viagra Boys songs if you don’t want to sit and think about the meaning of every single lyric like a deranged beat poet art major from 1972, the song simply slaps so hard you can’t help but get excited and rock the fuck out every time it comes on. I can definitely hear they may have picked up some Indy rock vibes after touring with The Hives; the tone and groove definitely moves in that direction. Sebastian also does a killer belch mid-word 26 seconds in, and in my opinion, that shoots the song to god tier in itself.
On the third single second song up, The Bog Body, the rocking tempo kicks up a couple of notches, I still haven’t been able to stop bobbing my head, and my signature stank face just simply will not – nay, can not – be wiped off. Bla bla bla deeper meaning bla. Probably a look into the beauty standards set by the 1% and how body augmentation and chemicals being the answer is so common now, people don’t even bat an eyelid, but I don’t care because I’m rocking out too hard.
Second single third up, Uno II and the vibe changes to a kind of low-fi new age jazz funk atmospheric 70s French noir spy soundtrack. It’s good. I can’t really pinpoint why I get this overwhelming sense of nostalgia, though, and I can’t get enough. It’s the recorder. It sounds like there’s a recorder in the background, and yup, that’s it. For those that don’t know, the recorder is 80% of the Australian music curriculum so that’s where the nostalgia came from, fucking hot crossed buns.
The fourth song is Pyramid of Health, and the tone switches yet again to a grimy, grungy ode to self-deprivation. It’s funny because every song so far has taken me to a different place, and in that place the song is a hit, almost like a time travelling jambalaya of hit tracks I eagerly await whatever destinations are ahead.
Dirty Boys delivers you to a greasy bar early in the night as it precipitously edges towards the point of no return and can only really end in blacked-out hilarity and tales to be told for generations to come. Dirty Boys is what you play after a big week and before a bigger night, but beware, what happens after you press play cannot be undone.
Medicine For Horses takes us down a sad synth road of melancholy in a minor key, an anthem for all the moody folk to really cling to and call their own. Definitely a result of a night out with the dirty boys.
Waterboy is undeniably incredibly catchy as a dude sings about a raisin: 10/10.
Store Policy feels like it could fit on an IDLES album with just as much class and grit. It definitely gets the blood pumping as you mix a cocktail of swing dancing and shadow-boxing in the kitchen.
You n33d Me instantly wakes you up with a powerful bass line punching you in the guts shortly followed by the saxophone with little off beat stabs taking what was a straight forward rock groove and making it swing so devilishly alongside the drums and a classic Viagra Boys monologue in the middle to keep your toes wet and as always a catchy hook to hum along for the rest of the day.
Best In Show Part IV like best in show One and Two this is less song and more a rambling rant of nonsensical historical memoirs from Shrimp Man himself. It’s less a question of what’s going on, who am I, or why am I here and more a question of where is Best In Show 3?
River King wraps up the album with a solo sultry piano ballad. A sweet send-off from the sweet Swedes. Definitely a jarring shift from the last song, but a welcome one, almost like they want to let us down easy for what is, in fact, the end.
VIAGR ABOYS doesn’t disappoint. It is everything you want in a Viagra Boys album, but much, much more. The future is now! Buy 10 copies.
