Credit: Photo by John Anderson

Turbonegro

Auditorium Shores, Nov. 4

Given the number of Turbojugend – Turbonegro’s fan club members – running around Fun Fun Fun Fest in denim jackets, sailor’s caps, and makeup, you’d think the Norwegian self-styled death-punk band was this year’s major attraction. The recently-reactivated group headlined the Black stage on the final night, but it did so without charismatic frontdemon Hank Von Helvete. New mouthpiece Tony Sylvester, late of London’s obscure Dukes of Nothing, brings a chubbier, gruffer style to the mic, and perhaps it’s his chesty rasp leading the band back on its latest Sexual Harassment to the punk & roll of 1996’s Ass Cobra. The fast-n-furious “I Got a Knife,” brutal “Buried Alive,” and statement-of-purpose “Hello Darkness” dialed back the glam and metal influences, though “Dude Without a Face” borrowed a bit of Priest-ly Rocka Rolla. The sublimely ridiculous “You Give Me Worms” and “Shake Your Shit Machine” squatted proudly aside previous low culture classics “Wasted Again,” “Get It On,” and the ever-popular crowd sing-along “I Got Erection.” As classy as ever, Turbonegro exited the stage after that tasteful encore to the strains of “God Save the Queen.”

This article appears in November 2 • 2012.

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Michael Toland started writing about music in 1988 on the Gulf Coast, moved to Austin in early 1991, and has inflicted bylines upon the corporeal and digital pages of Pop Culture Press, The Big Takeover, Blurt, Amplifier, Austin.citysearch, the Austin American Statesman, Goldmine, Sleazegrinder, Rock & Roll Globe, High Bias, FHT Music Notes, and, since 2011, The Austin Chronicle.