Naming a band is more important and should be more carefully considered than naming a baby. Okay, so not strictly true, but we’ve all judged bands by their name, haven’t we? TIMES NEW VIKING is such a name – I saw it, thought for a moment, “ah, I see what they’ve done there,” and then decided to be unimpressed by it. It’s a name potentially more brainless than your average News of the World headline.
But with that out of the way (and it did need to be said), let’s concentrate on the music. For those out there who still like traditional method of compilation making, this album is a dream. Most of the tracks clock in well under three minutes, so there are plenty of songs you can chuck in those annoying spare seconds at the end of a cassette.
This will also appeal to those that like their music as low-key and DIY as possible. ‘Rip it Off’ is an album of simple songs, simple production and plenty of distortion. It sounds like a cross between the The Raveonettes and The Velvet Underground on the whole. It’s not mixed as an album, it sounds roughly done and that has to be the intention as well. The songs don’t blend into one another, in fact it often sounds like someone has put this together on their old cassette player. There’s something appealing about this.
At sixteen tracks, it’s never going to be the case that every song on this release was going to impress. It does, however, give the listener a fair overview of the different influences of the band. Some of this is head-spinningly loud, fierce punk music, whilst other bits are more reminiscent of pure sixties pop music (‘Drop-Out’). It’s the distortion that holds the album together – that is their sound as such, and within that they explore the various things they can do with this.
Some songs work a treat. ‘My Head’ is a lilting, wailing, number that underneath the white noise reveals a catchy melody. ‘Faces on Fire’ is punk pop straight from the late seventies. There is certainly nothing modern about any of these songs, and TNV are certainly just emulating their influences, but overall they do it quite well. You get the impression that they don’t take life seriously,
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Liars would be proud to produce something like ‘Relevant: Now,’ a monotone effort that you can lose yourself in. It’s a song straight from the dark recesses of the psyche, fearsome and menacing in equal measures. On the other hand, there is something almost blissful about the keyboards disguised in ‘Another Day.’ Again, the distortion hides a lot, but there’s definitely some charm creeping through on this one. ‘Off The Wall’ could very much be part of a Pink Floyd song. Like many of the vocals, there is a shouty cockney rebel tone to it (unusual for a band from Ohio) that evokes most of the comparisons to punk rock.
Form is not something that troubles Times New Viking. ‘RIP Allegory’ is literally just noise – there is nothing of a structure and you can barely hear any individual elements. It’s a difficult song and is lost in and amongst better ones. The riff on ‘Mean God’ sounds like someone playing a really understated Stereophonics tune (I think it’s ‘Pick a Part That’s New’).
Although the album is shrouded in its’ simplicity and poor production, Times New Viking have presented a lot of ideas over these sixteen tracks. They are clearly a versatile band and will hopefully move away from the sound they’ve exhausted on ‘Rip it Off.’ There is just a little too much of the DIY ethos on the album to make it truly brilliant, and they may be doing themselves a disservice by so heavily disguising the talents they have.
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