A Tribute: Turbonegro – Ass Cobra (1996)

THE DISCO SUN IT SHINES SO BRIGHT

Turbonegro, ‘Denim Demon’

When talking about classics and masterpieces, everybody talks about the ‘White Album’, but not all talk about Turbonegro‘s Ass Cobra. That’s not right.

Let’s get one thing straight right from the beginning: Ass Cobra is no little or unknown record. When we talk about Turbonegro, we don’t talk about some little obscure Norwegian punk band, but about a boys choir that guys like Josh Homme, Little Steven and many others labeled as one of the most important european bands, Jello Biafra calling their Ass Cobra follow-up Apocalypse Dudes „possibly the most important european record ever.“

But 1996 was the year of the Ass Cobra. A record that in the algorithmic fever-dream and politically correct times of today is even more offending than it was back then. Let’s approach this stone-cold punk classic as if we were seeing it for the first time. What is this record with familiar yellow and white typo on a green background? At first we think that it’s just another copy of Pet Sounds that we’re spotting, but wait, when we come closer it says ‘Turbonegro’ instead of ‘Beach Boys’ while ‘Pet Sounds’ translates into ‘Ass Cobra’. Does this pastiche imply that the Wilson brothers hinted at bestiality sex with their happy farm cover where they’re feeding off 6 cute animals?

Now think twice before you start to shout “Infamy! Scandal!” in order to defend your all American sunny-boys: the latter were connected to Charlie Manson and his satanic family, as was the White Album of The Beatles, while Turbonegro have a snow-white vest here.

Back to the animal covers. Compared to the Beach Boys, Turbonegro take a Scandinavian purist approach and reduce the bestiality-cast to just two animals, the Ass-Cobra meandering around the apparently abused body of singer Hank von Helvete, and the Deutscher Schäferhund. Both animals at the same time serve as symbol for two of the most important topics in Turbonegro’s artistic creation: Anal menace and Nazi-offense of all sorts. The most interesting song and 7 inch cover related to Adolf Hitler must be “Bad Mongo”, a strangely beautiful and cinematic song where named one and his likes go berserk and on a killing spree:

He’s been waiting for so long –
Singing that same old institution song –
A humanoid shape in the dense of night –
Bad Mongo got a very big knife –

Generally it can be stated that Turbonegro is an ultimately offensive band opposing all sorts of political correctness whilst at the same time lacking all stupidity, an absolutely irresistible combination for me. The band originally wanted to call themselves Nazipenis, but decided against it, realizing that it would be impossible to sell any records with that name. Interestingly, they opted to implement the origin of the n-word in their name instead, by calling themselves Turbonegro. According to the band, the Turbonegro describes an imaginary, armed vigilante black citizen in a fast car and on a mean and revengeful mission of unknown nature, but it is also a composition of two Latin words that the band considered as apt to represent their music: turbo-fast and negro-black. Also, it is not the first time that the word turbonegro was being used, but it was used in a much bigger and established context: the car industry. Not too long ago, ‘Turbonegro’ was the official name for the darkest black car-polish available. If you wanted a pitch-black car, you asked for a turbonegro polish. I would never have known this if it wasn’t for the Turbonegro and the controversy around their band name, a reason why it is sometimes pronounced TRBNGR.

But who are these 5 young men from Oslo, Norway? Let’s have a look at the cover photography, a proud and menacing document from the dark side of Christopher Street. It’s dark, it’s night, and it’s no surprise that one of them wears a Hitler mustache, albeit with a dapper silk scarf around the neck at the same time. A strangely delicate and erotic Adolf with four amusing playmates gathered around him, figures from the diverse playbook of hard gay mandom and saints for sea-men. Needless to say that no member of Turbonegro is homosexual in real life. Yes, it’s a big gay opera, a mean travesty- call it a vile mockery or a tender homage, depending on your level of dignity and indignation.

So where do these men come from, how do they feel and what drives them? Just the same old story of teenage struggle and exclusion, like their reference song “Denim Demon” makes it clear in its poignant metric:

I tried to be part of the scene
Bought all the records and magazines
But all the kids they put me down
Laughed and said I was a clown
Said they didn’t want me around
Made me feel so all alone

We all know these stories, and we all want them to have a happy ending where ugly ducklings turn into beautiful swans or convince through professional and suburban success. We really want it to end well and unlike Stephen King’s Carrie. Turbonegro’s solution lies somewhere in between I would say, it’s a mixture of good homosexual performance and success, and especially anal revenge. The victim becomes the perpetrator.

But now I’m back with a bang
I’ve got my own leather gang
And all of them are men
And denim’s back again

And I am, and I am
A Denim Demon
You’ve got my penis streaming
And your asshole’s screaming “Help!”

The day is black, the night is white
The disco sun it shines so bright

It is the mention of the disco sun that messes us up and turns this song into a cold fever-dream, leaving us frightened and confused. Turbonegro once justified their homosexual image with that the hard-rock scene can no longer be provoked and intimidated by anything else but gay men playing loud music. And believe me, we were frightened. The menace and mystery surrounding Turbonegro between 1996 -1998 is unparalleled, whether on their cum-paved path to glory all over Europe or in the US where the Queens of the Age took them on tour. My spouse’s band, the Cellophane Suckers (who Turbonegro’s Happy Tom once called „Europe’s best punk rock band“, so check them out, too), went on to play some gigs with them, they got warned to cover their asses if they didn’t want to get them penetrated. We were simply not knowing what was going on. But the music was so good, all killer no filler, finest tight punk rock kicking of a golden decade of Scandinavian punk’n’roll, that we just couldn’t resist them and faced the danger.

Who are these five men with names like “Happy Tom” and which feelings do they express on this dazzling display of talent? We can only imagine by the things we hear. First, no matter what happens, it will trigger an erection:

Everytime I walk down the street – erection
When I see a women that I’d like to beat – erection
I think of blood, I think of love – erection

The #metoo hashtag is working overtime by now. But forget your moral education and cultural training for a moment. Let’s examine their lyrics to get a sense of what could have been these men’s individual fates. If you blend out the completely offending and shocking lyrics, you will see stunningly poignant and reduced poetry. They are just like you and me. On the search for a place in life and a piece of the pie things went wrong and their fates went into unknown directions: into an existence on BDSM – humiliation street.

Once upon a time
I thought that I’d go far
Pictured myself getting blowed
In a company car

But now those days are over
And the world is dry
I sit around, getting high
Contemplating suicide

Let’s face the facts
My fate is sealed
Leather straps tied around my flesh
I’m down on my hands and knees

It’s not only a happy place there, and when one gets raped and tattooed by a motorcycle gang under narcose and without any warning (“Screwed and Tattoed”), it just does something to you. Suddenly Tom of Finland is dictating the tender poetry in your mind, and you find yourself in clubs crowded by horny American GI’s and Marines (“Sailor Man”), driven by the need for homosexual activities of all kinds. An unknown hardness of biblical proportions settles on your entire existence: Trauma is not allowed for a second, salvation is not in sight, there is no healing from this sudden satanic infection that pushed you in a merciless fog of twisted homosexual lust and revenge. Which makes you angry, angry in a way that would have made every Austrian dandy proud:

Not enough war
Not enough famine
Not enough suffering
Not enough natural selection

It is no gentle social critique. I’ve often asked myself why I enjoy Turbonegro without objecting to their lyrics, while in other contexts I would. It’s the overall concept and sick humor of course. They confuse me. Shake me. They don’t lull me but keep me focused. And it is like that with many truths, that more and more get delivered with softened, emotionalized edges. To the point that hard truths get perverted and turned upside down into the new yoga-in-war-zones reality. And I get it, we don’t want the world to be a horrible place. But take the Holocaust. Could you ever truly imagine it, were you ever actually terrified by it beyond a deep consternation? It’s hard to admit, but I wasn’t. But Turbonegro will help you just like they helped me, with their confusingly incoherent juxtapositions, creating a cohesion of true terror:

DEATHTIME

Shaking hands with Morrissey
Sucking cock in East Africa
Ask a lesbian for a fuck
Take a shower in… Auschwitz

And it’s gonna happen to you, baby
It could happen to your child
You could have the same experience

After Ass Cobra– a masterpiece and reference record that is still a secret to especially the non-european punk lovers- Turbonegro went on to conquer the world. The unbelievable and unparalleled phenomenon Turbojugend (a worldwide Fanclub movement all about the strange denim and sailor- romantic) took over, and our boys recorded their next masterpiece, Apocalypse Dudes (1998) with a new guitar player: Knut Schreiner, an incredible prodigy who today could be heard on Josh Homme’s Desert Sessions if it hadn’t been for his cancer struggle that made him pass on it.

Now with more glam and bombast, but still minus the stupidity that often goes along with these musical attributes, they scored themselves a major label record deal. The hottest, yet sickest band in Europe ready to take over the world despite their offending lyrics? Only, it never happened. Sadly, the band broke up mainly because of singer Hank von Helvete’s drug problems after which he searched salvation in Scientology (watch the fascinating documentary Turbonegro – The Movie). While the band successfully continues to make good, sexy music since their reunion in 2002, now with a new singer, it was never like in the years between 1996-1998 again.

Listen to the first song on Apocalypse Dudes, “The Age of Pamparius”. It gives you a hint of what could have been. Starting off as a tender Beatles melody and developing into the most captivating anthem (about the Pizza company one of the Turbonegro members ran), it’s irresistible on so many levels, making me freeze in awe, leaving me in stunned euphoria and laughter. I am shaking my head to this day every time I listen to it. It makes you kneel down and cry. It just can’t be true.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, it all seemed so possible. The sophisticated hostages of a sick and retarded reality & lovers of demented and crude sickness of all sorts could have had a mainstream voice and influence justified by Turbonegro’s pure musical perfection and domination. We could have had our own demented Queen that would have changed the course of music history and rock poetry.

It was so close, damn.

by Saliha Enzenauer

Turbonegro – Ass Cobra front + back cover + original inlay poster

Cellophane Suckers – Disco Bird (2008)