High-rise: Viagra Boys (from left) Tor Sjödén, Linus Hillborg, Henrik (Benke) Höckert, Elias Ljungqvist, Oskar Carls, Sebastian Murphy.
“BEING MISUNDERSTOOD is a beautiful thing,” marvels Sebastian Murphy, the superficially fearsome frontman of Stockholm’s Viagra Boys. “In the beginning here in Sweden,” he chuckles, “certain people on the punk scene were upset about our name, like it was some sort of attack on women.”
Now on their fourth album – titled Viagr Aboys, largely to avoid all their e-mails going to spam – Viagra Boys have established themselves as a scurrilous, disruptive and frequently misunderstood band on the rise. Their lineage can be traced back 15 years through the fierce Swedish hardcore scene, where bassist Henrik Höckert and guitarist Benjamin Vallé first came together in Pig Eyes. When that band flamed out, Höckert “forced” Murphy, a reformed speed freak who’d moved to Stockholm from San Rafael, California, and who worked at the same tattoo parlour as Höckert’s girlfriend, to try out as singer in a consciously different-sounding project.