NAG’s debut album came as an exciting breath of basement-smelling air in 2016. Their moderately original cement mix of the filthiest of punk and the evilest of metal was very well received, both among those who like to write about hard rock and those who just like to rock hard. The album somehow even got nominated for a Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannspris). Then came gigs and tours around Europe before their second album came in 2018, to raving reviews, of course. But then there was dead silence. For a long time. Had they, like so many other promising bands surrendered when the real world with PTA-meetings, family SUV’s and refurbishment came closing in?
The howler monkeys in NAG strike back with the album “Boys of Europe”!
No. NAG does not give up that easily. And now they’ve finally returned from
obscurity with a new album with ten perfected and mighty NAG-tunes. Indeed, their hair has become greyer, and their backs hurt more, but there’s no way you can tell. They still sound like raging
teenagers. More so than ever. In other words, NAG have stayed true to their moderately original formula, and the album is as hard, fast, and straightforward as anything. In short, the album has
everything they pulled off well on the previous ones – and more!
They made the riffs in the small window grownup punks have for such activities: after the supper dishes have been put in the dishwasher and the kids to bed, and before the dishes and the kids
return to the table for breakfast. They punched in the lyrics on their smart phones on the bus to and from work, posing as regular SoMe-consuming zombies.
They recorded the album themselves in the post-industrial play pen Tou and in Ørjan Nag’s own studio, where Espen Nag as usual evoked his inner drill sergeant, screaming incessantly at Arnfinn
Nag for his lack of guts, balls, grit etc. in his vocal and guitar performance. In between the screaming, he made panicked phone calls to Ørjan Nag, at work in the North Sea, asking why the
b***dy, f***ing input channels on his mixing table didn’t seem to work. When Ørjan finally was back home, he barely made it out of his survival suit before he found himself sighing and shaking
his head in front of the mixing table, playing the bass, mixing the album, and cleaning up the other boys’ mess. Amidst this chaos, Arnfinn Nag did the only sensible thing a quiet bible-belt
(yes, there is one in Norway too) boy can do: Shut the hell up and do what he’s told.
The album-title itself is nicked from a Norwegian run-of-the-mill men's clothing store franchise, but other than that the album has little to do with menswear. Now that war once again has come to
Europe, NAG nail the age we live in well, where they on the title track put you on a brief and intense roller coaster ride through Europe’s history of strife and warfare. There are no preaching
or military analyses to be found here, only a hint in the familiar resigned NAG-style: We’re not done yet. When the screaming feedback and the echo from the final NAG-howl on the album fades, you
will probably not worry less about the future. The only certain thing about the future is that you will spin this record again.
