Single review: Turbowolf – Let’s Die

And there was me thinking that all the good band names had already been taken. Granted, Turbowolf is a bit of a cheesy name, but it feels knowingly cheesy, laden with ironic nostalgia, harking back to a more innocent era of manly rock while acknowledging its failings; Turbowolf says fast, dangerous, carnivorous. Hairy.

And you know what? They actually live up to the name, if new single “Let’s Die” and its B-side “Ancient Snake” are an accurate sampling of their wares. Side-by-side, a guitar and a buzzsaw synth sound play simple sleazy doom-bl00z riffs at ninety miles an hour; drums batter their way through lumpen boom-crash drum patterns and surprisingly groovy fills and tension-builder breakdowns; Alice Cooper’s evil twin sneers out some mean and nasty rock’n'roll clichés with all the venom and shriekery he can muster. It’s not clever, but it’s big, beefy, uncaring; loud dumb fun of the best booze-soaked and powder-addled type. It’s the sort of thing I want to play to the people who tell me that Andrew WK was the ultimate capstone of the hard-party pop-rock’n'roll concept, to add weight to my argument that he only had one gag (and that even that wasn’t very funny after a few listens).

Turbowolf don’t have any gags; Turbowolf are the gag, and a cruel grin-inducing gag it is, too. Tell it to people on dancefloors by using your elbows. Yes.