VW Trainwreck

Related Content

• Zen's Cafe Opens Third Location In Tempe
  January 30, 2012
• ASU Basketball In Telltale Series of Games Vs. Oregon Schools
  January 12, 2012
• NOFX, Black Carl, First Friday of the Year and More
  January 9, 2012
• NOFX at The Marquee Theatre on Twitter
  January 8, 2012
• Want to Write a Song for Bears of Manitou?
  January 4, 2012

More About

• Tempe
• NOFX
• Dead Kennedys
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Punk Rock

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

"Punk rock, comedy, and politics" can be a great combination — look at NOFX. But when a local band declares in its self-penned biography that it's playing with these elements, I get a little nervous. The new album by Tempe punk rockers VW Trainwreck, Dramaturgy, is exactly why.

With a band theme song, a track about sleeping with 16-year-olds, and a song called "Beer, Sports & Porn," Dramaturgy is a standard three-chord punk album with as many cringe-inducing moments as the first five installments of the Saw franchise combined.

Witness: The theme song's refrain: "VW Trainwreck / Our music doesn't blow / VW Trainwreck / No one will ever know."

The second verse of "Jailbait:" "16-year-old cutie, wanna hit that booty / There's no need to worry, I'll just tell the jury: It was only love / Never gonna stop it, 'cause they're finally gonna give it to me now/ People call me crazy, I'm not ugly — just lazy, now I'm running out of time, I might end up on Dateline."

The political song "Suburban Hell:" "Suburbia's a nice place to raise the kids Judeo-Christian white / Hide them from all the coloreds and the drugs and the gangs, don't lock your doors at night."

Oof. Now, I won't get in to a discussion about whether such sentiments were evocative when The Dead Kennedys' Frankenchrist came out, but I think all reasonable people can agree we don't need a three-piece punk band from Tempe doing the same thing 24 years later.

That's a shame, because these guys seem creative, and the few musical flares they employ (a little acoustic accompaniment on "My Way") go well. But, as it stands, they've got a long way to go before they can accomplish their stated mission: "revamp, revitalize and all together reconstruct the punk rock music scene."


Fri., April 10, 7 p.m., 2009