TIME NEW VIKING - Dig Yourself

Damn all those who preach the death of rock!

Damned, every single time these thirty minutes of incendiary music

fill the air. Once and for all, long live rock! And, as it happens,

Times New Viking are a bass-guitar-drums trio. Oh, my God! The abc. The

rock, the disorder, the destruction, the youth, the outrage. From Columbus,

Ohio, Times New Viking, like a radiant light in this latest sliver of

2005.

"Dig Yourself" pulls together tracks from various cassettes,

thus forming the band's first official record. A

gloriously satisfying blast of skewed noise, claustrophobic and metallic, yet with

a finger-licking pop attitude. Great stuff, starting with the

feverish distortions of "Lion And Oil". Songs like killers lurking around

the corner. Garage-noise-wave bacchanals, somewhere between Chrome and "Sister Ray", with a coda

devastata “kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” (“The Statue Pt. II”). Disordine

as a symbolic site of dislocation. Thunderous and unhinged: unhealthy music,

recorded even worse. But so adorably-disgustingly catchy in

its scruffy, blazing acidity ("Skull Versus Wizard").

They're

right! Their sound is the perfect representation of a "romantic

nihilism". Fervor, desperation and bohémienne ardor. Heart and guts.

Not one without the other. Even when the Royal Trux pop up in the

skronk dyslexia of “The Statue Pt. I”. In “Not High”, however, we find ourselves

dazed, chanting along inside a lo-fi pop round dance. What fantastic

goofballs! Exalted and stunned. Dinosaur Jr. overtaking on the outside, hair in the wind.

Songs that make you want to run away. Nowhere in particular. Just away

(“We Got Rocket”). Melodicism with zero fidelity, instinct and reason in equal measure (“Natural

Resources, I Love Mine”). Sublime choruses blooming like flowers inside

radioactive enclosures (“Dance Walhalla”). Lyrics like syrup for

idealist punk kids. You're not born a dreamer, you become one by getting kicked around. That's

how folk-rock skinnings like the one in “Indian Winter” brush against the heart

with a touch that's inhuman precisely because it's indecipherable.

But what are the Stones doing in the swaggering

primitivism of “Fashion To Talk About The Moon”? I knew it! Jagger & co. can't

just be those drugged-out mummies still touring the globe. Their spirit

is elsewhere, thankfully. And thankfully, Times New Viking are running wild

freely, unafraid to reiterate a psychotic, apocalyptic and solemn Word

(“Fuck Books”). Be grateful to them, damn it!

Ride the wave of great music

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30/04/2026