Search - Bonk :: Western Soul

Bonk is not Norwegian for the sound of a car smashing into the front of a bank, nor does it mean hurtling over a fjord in a burnt-out speedboat, strangling the bad guy to get the girl, but somehow in the shape of a single album, those clean-living folk from the land where the sun never sets have made a sound which feels like doing both things at the same time, naked. Drawing on influences as disparate as Tamla Motown, Norwegian death-punk and The Who, Bonk is the sound of a culture hell-bent on putting litter into bins and the rock into punk. Formed in 2001 by Andreas Grøtterud and Leif Koren, sleazy hippies of the Oslo punk scene, Bonk are currently on the crest of a wave and are scheduled to play the Øyafestival and Quart festival in Norway this summer to support the Norwegian release of their first studio LP, recorded in Oslo and London in fall 2003. Consider for a moment the sound of one hand clapping. Pure bliss. Now contemplate the impact of a good heart hurled into a raging wall of dirty brutal hardcore rock'n'roll - and that's it: Bonk - the soul of the western world as hammered out on drums, guitars and bass by four impurists and shameless genre benders from Oslo, Norway. Coming out of the Oslo underground rock scene, Western Soul made quite a splash with national critics. Hailed as the antithesis to American Idol - described as "the sound of fuzz-guitars killing a boy band" and appreciated as a pleasant full-on "sonic beating," the album is a highly concentrated brew of punk-sized tracks laced with cold-pressed extracts from Prodigy, Motown, Motorhead and more. The impure ingenuity of it all makes it rock without the retro. Bonk have received rave reviews in Norway. Dave Wyndorf (Monster Magnet), Gluecifer and The Bronx all love Bonk, who are looking forward to exploring the U.S. and Europe in the fall when the album will slide into record shops around the globe.