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May 15, 2025 Web Exclusive By Caleb Campbell

Nobody makes squawking, unhinged post punk quite like Sweden’s Viagra Boys. The band hit new heights in 2022 with Cave World, a bleak satire of the conspiratorial and regressive cultural landscape of the online world. With those voices now representing an increasingly mainstream constituency, the band would seemingly have a lot of new material to work off of for their latest album, viagr aboys. However, they’ve taken a different turn with their latest record, largely forgoing political caricatures in favor of imagery that feels more visceral, gross, and scuzzy.

Perhaps the band feels like they’ve mined the world of politics for all its worth, or perhaps it began to feel like low-hanging fruit. Vocalist Sebastian Murphy says of the album, “The whole political thing was exhausting. This is like a self-titled album but a bit simple and stupid—because that’s how I am.” Simple and stupid may be what is on offer, but the band does have a way of keeping that combination continually fresh. Opener and lead single “Man Made of Meat” captures a particular intersection of gross-out, animalistic flesh imagery, and the hyper-online cultural detritus that has become one of the band’s calling cards. On the bridge, Murphy says, “I’m subscribed to your mom’s OnlyFans / I spent five bucks a month to get pictures of her flappy giblets / And I spent another 10 dollars a month to chat with her on the AI chat program / It feels great.”

Viagra Boys have already proven how much they like to roll around in the mud, dissecting the characters that inhabit their songs at their most puerile. On viagr aboys Murphy reduces his view of humanity even beneath its most base animal instincts, often framing humans collectively as decaying, stinking, carcasses of meat. He comes off as a morbid, death-obsessed voyeur on the gurgling, swampy “The Bog Body” and a cigarette-eating, toxic waste dump on “Pyramid of Health.” All along, he offers a fountain of unhinged vocal deliveries, belching through his lyrics on the opener and crafting a phlegmy symphony of growling, choking, and spitting on “Dirty Boyz” as he sings about smoking meth and bleeding gasoline. The record trades in the same adolescent satire as something like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, walking the line between shock value and irreverent charm. No other band is going to conjure up a lyric like “Smoking crypto is bad for your health / I’m touching myself by the health food shelf,” much less deliver it atop a caustic bed of flutes and flinty guitar lines.

Elsewhere on the album, those paens to bitter and anti-social behavior crack into something more sorrowful, though no less nihilistic. “Medicine for Horses” is the band’s take on a plaintive and spacious ballad, one which imagines the plains of North America as a land of uninhibited self-destruction. Murphy croons above a desolate expanse of ringing guitar lines, singing “Go ahead, break my neck / Take the fluid from my spine / Put it in a mason jar and give it to a child / Tell him to recreate me in a couple hundred years when we’re all dead.” Similarly, where the last record ended on an anarcho-primitivist freak-out, “River King” strips the band’s sound back into a desolate piano ballad accompanied by hints of saxophone and found sound. Murphy’s vocals crack, scratch, and waver, bringing out one of the band at their most unpolished and nakedly emotional.

Beneath the moments of vulnerability, Viagra Boys retain a steadfast talent for crazed, instantly quotable lyrics and fractured soundscapes. They carve at the boundaries between post punk, country, and electronic music, knitting it all together with fuzzy guitars and scuzzy aesthetics. Nervy dance punk comes to the fore on “Man Made of Meat” and “You N33d Me,” with the band careening forward atop rumbling basslines and howling hooks. Elsewhere, their off-kilter instincts reign with the eerie flutes and chord progressions on “Uno II” and the plinking synths and siren-like guitar tone on “Waterboy.” The record’s climactic screed is the “Best in Show Pt. IV,” which sounds akin to an InfoWars rant playing over a looping bassline and hypnotic electronic textures, rattling on until the vocals descend into a maze of free-jazz saxophone.

To some extent, viagr aboys feels like the band resting on their laurels and leaning into what they know works best for them: simple and stupid. In reining their focus back into rancid character portraiture, they do lose some of the cutting satire that allowed their last record to so perfectly capture its cultural moment. However, they still remain one of the weirdest and wildest punk bands working today. Their disgusting and maladjusted characters continue to ring true, capturing the dregs of society while imbuing them with hints of sympathy and tragedy. Most of all, they know how to write a catchy punk song that itches the primal, animalistic parts of the brain. As always, they make wallowing together in the dirt and filth seem like great fun. (www.vboysstockholm.com)

Author rating: 7/10