Viagra Boys have returned with their fourth studio album “Viagr Aboys”, jam packed as ever with weirdness and cultural statements.
Let’s begin at the beginning. Frontman Sebastian Murphy was recruited by the band after they witnessed his drunken performance of a Mariah Carey song at a Stockholm karaoke bar in 2015. Three years down the line they released their debut studio album “Street Worms” on indie label Year0001 featuring, amongst their most popular songs, “Sports” and “Down in The Basement”. Three albums later and Viagra Boys established their own record label, “Shrimptech Enterprises” fittingly named after their obsession with crustations.
As an old-time fan of the band, I suspect they can be a little marmite for certain audiences. Some listeners won’t appreciate the appeal of listening to a Californian man front a Swedish band chanting about conspiracy theories whilst mincing around shirtless displaying a large tattooed beer gut. But for those more cultured amongst us, there is something very special about Viagra Boys.
“Viagr Aboys”
Make no mistake about it, “Viagr Aboys” is a fantastic album. In a crafted blend of Sebastian’s genius, the album is plaited with social commentary without melting the band’s underlying strangeness. They’re characterised by unfiltered mania, so much so that Murphy has “loose” tattooed on his forehead in Swedish (“los”).
The album sets off on a cracking start with “Man Made of Meat”. Much like most of the boys’ work, “Man Made of Meat” explores a warped pop culture-themed anarchic chaos.
“I am a man that’s made of meat, and you’re on the internet looking at feet. I hate almost everything that I see and I just want to disappear”.
Beneath the bad acid trip of “Man Made of Meat” is a cultural cry of distress from Viagra Boys, a motif repeated throughout the album. The six piece operate a juxtaposing caricature of masculinity and identity in which they appear absorbed by youth culture references and the phenomenon of “Brainrot”. Hilarious as many of their words are, the crux of the lyrics offer a repulsion against the disposability crisis and “endless anxiety” in which the world seems absorbed.
“Pyramid of Health”
Also perched on side A of the album is “Pyramid of Health” in which Murphy digresses into wellness culture and health obsession. Once again Viagra Boys seize the opportunity to make a warped psychedelic interpretation of reality in which you “get real high with the shrimp up in the sky”.
The track is breadcrumbed with references to influencer culture; there is a clear critique of social media’s synthetic plea for meaning derived from constant consumption of dopamine inducing content.
“And if I follow seven easy steps
I’ll see visions of my death
the pyramid of health”.
It’s not so much that Viagra Boys are setting out a nihilistic manifesto, more that they wish to address the current vacuum of meaning in the modern world. A status quo that feels increasingly jammed with disposability and substitutes purpose for quick fixes.
We see more satirical shallowness in “Medicine for Horses” in which Murphy demands “I need your credit card; I need to pay a guy to get my pineal gland recalcified”. The song goes on to glorify death, reflecting fondly on moments in history when “you could pay a guy to get his horse to stomp you on the head”. The track is slightly deranged, much like the majority of the Viagra Boy’s catalogue, but in a sense such derangement has been derived from our own reality and the band’s desire to escape it.
“Uno II”
My personal highlight of the album is “Uno II”. Never did I think I’d hear a song written from the perspective of an Italian greyhound facing reoccurring dental problems but here we are, and I certainly enjoyed it.
“I found a crouton underneath the futon
Mama said, I couldn’t eat it
Cause all my teeth are gone”
The track divulges into the experience of Murphy’s dog (Uno) who suffers persistent dental issues. The track imagines Uno’s fear as he wakes in a vet surgery to discover his teeth have been removed. The music video sees Shrimptech Enterprises deploy Sebastian Murphy to a dog show in Czechia, at which he is stalked by vet “Bogdan”. The video becomes increasingly unhinged which comes to a boil in the final scene in which Murphy’s teeth are stolen.
River King
The album closes with something a little less Viagra Boys. River King offers a nostalgic love song that pleads for simpler days gone by in which “everything feels easy”. But even the crooning nostalgia has inklings of the band’s roots seen through reference to Chinese takeaways and sour meat.
All in all, the album is very strange but very good. There’s no band quite like Viagra Boys in the current music scene. They fearlessly embrace the oddities of society and convert it into self-critiquing literature for the punk masses.
You can catch Sweden’s finest band at London’s Alexandra Palace in March 2026:
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
