EDIT 31/07: I still stick by everything I said in this review, but I just cannot stop listening to this album. In a Ramonesy kind of way it supersedes anything that ever came before it. Retox just gets more and more addictive.

Man Turbonegro have officially had their Phil Spector moment. Like when The Ramones finally got a legendary producer and everything should’ve awesome. But as it turned out, it was too conceptual and poppy and well just sucked. I’m not quite sure it’s the production of this album that makes it different from Party Animals or Scandinadian Leather, but it sure is a progression. Fortunately, despite everything, it’s still a Turbonegro album and that means it’s rockin’, taudry and downright infectious. Laugh at first, but you know it’s going to get right under your skin - and it does.

Everything i’ve read about this album says that it’s self distributed. So you can only assume it’s exactly what the band wanted to do. After all they didn’t have a label to answer to. Turns out Rune Rebellion is quite the business man.

There’s 3 absolute killer tracks: ‘Do you, Do you Dig Destruction?’, ‘We’re Going to Drop the Atom Bomb’ and ‘What is Rock?’. The first of which I still can’t stop listening to. The later is a 7 minute flawless history of rock, with inspirations from Ozzy Osborne’s Mr Crowley to Chuck Berry to Guns N Roses. It’s probably the only track that’s got the trademark old school Turbonegro humour right through it. And it’s bloody funny! The remaining tracks are tongue in cheek, mid 80s glam rock. We’re talking LA Guns, Faster Pussycat glam almost, it really is different.

According to the Wiki, Turbonegro are good at reusing riffs, which is kind of a good thing. Because the boys always do it justice and it’s interesting finding out what they’ve borrowed from! On this album, they’ve straight up taken a riff from ‘Danny Says’ from a Ramones album on ‘I Wanna Come’. ‘Boys From Nowhere’ also screams of some 80s song but it may well be original. Those few remaining tracks probably won’t ever make in their live set, but they’re really growing on me.

No doubt this album is going to dissapoint a lot of fans. At first it really did me. But there’s something to be said for a band that keeps challenging and changing each album, not doing the same 12 tracks every two years. And good albums do take a while to grow on you. Although lets face it, no one else is doing what Turbonegro are doing and sadly probably never will. And even at their worst, their 10 times better than any emo screamo band! Death punk forever.

3.5 out of 5 stars. :)