Send "Times New Viking " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 That racket. It is what we talk about when we talk about Times New Viking: the bullhorn shouts, the buzzsaw guitars, the Keith Moon-meets-caveman drums. Times New Viking write killer punk rock with a bent towards Kiwi pop, but the thick layer of scum that envelopes Times New Viking's otherwise taut tunage is still their signature sound. Of course, it's that very racket that keeps a lot of folks away from Times New Viking. Their records jump out of earbuds, all but eradicate thought in slightly bigger headphones, and keep the cats away on the turntable. Unlike, say, Sonic Youth, who'll kick up the scuzz when the time is right, TNV tend to just let it ride, and once you've spent enough time with these kids way the hell out in the red, it's a little hard to imagine their music living anywhere else.Here we have Stay Awake, a five-track EP that follows, almost to the year, 2008's stellar Rip It Off. The songs on Rip It Off were, as ever, great, but more than the two records that preceded it, the album's dry, fat-production aesthetic seemed even more assured, more consistent, and-- again, as much as can be expected from a three-piece punk band with the will to sound this distorted -- more nuanced. Levels of scuzz rose and fell with the instruments, the occasional clean-sounding element was introduced into the mix, and for the first time, what they made felt more like a proper front-to-back record than a bunch of ripchord jams played inside a dishwasher. Stay Awake sees our Vikings moving forward on that path-- if you'd told me they were from the same sessions, I'd have believed you....full text |
| Popwreckoning |
| Fittingly to the track title, “Call & Respond” has a nice back and forth between the vocals and the guitar. Fans of Los Campesinos! will love how Beth Murphy and Adam Elliott conquer the vocals and lead the song into the repetitious “Pagan Eyes.” “Hate Hate Hate” is fast number for an already high-energy EP. “No Sympathy” follows, but its spiraling intro leads into a slower ending before the album closes out with its most accessible number “Sick & Tired.” The guitar and drum style make this song sound more punk than the others....full text |
| Prefixmag |
| Times New Viking’s Stay Awake EP follows up the band's first Matador release, Rip It Off, with the same fuzz skuzz pop magic that has worked for it since its inception. The band’s primitive recording technique -- much hated, much loved -- remains. And it continues to scrape our ears clean. So clean, in fact, that their catchy melodic sing-alongs attach themselves even more firmly to the squishy gray matter of our brains. That’s to say this: Their use of raw power is not, as we might expect, an obfuscation, a way of hiding behind. Actually, the noise increases the pop potential of the songs. This is the kind of music we should be hearing all the time, instead of the deathly boring muzak we (and our ears) generally expect. My favorite part of the EP is the final half -- “No Sympathy” and “Sick & Tired.” The cracked, fragmented beginning of “No Sympathy” (which seems to feature some found radio sound of a world folk music I can’t name) gives way to a simply played organ melody that then sets the mood for what must pass for a staid song in the generally crazy Times New Viking world. The melody plays out slowly, each voice resting calmly on each note, even in the chorus. Of course, this placid song immediately gives way to the fist-pumping, guitar-driven joys of “Sick & Tired.” The sputtering vocals of the verse give way to an expansive falling melody in the chorus. You can’t help but want to sing out your own sick and tired thoughts....full text |
Times New Viking lyrics
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