“Rökning Dödar.” It’s on every Finnish pack of cigarettes, covering half the front panel. Big and bold. Finns know it to mean “Smoking kills,” but to us less literate English speaking music fans, man, doesn’t that sound like a bichen Deep Purple Deep Cut? One with Jon Lord going crazy-wack-psycho on the church-rockin’, pimped-out Hammond B-3 organ? With lots of smoke and dry ice and distortion…and wattage that would knock skulls on the next continent?
Yes!
That, obviously was the thinking behind insouciant bar punkers The Sharp Chuckies, an upstate New York band who named their latest record—you guessed it—”Rökning Dödar.” The music isn’t that great (although we’ve heard much worse), the homophobic lyrics are a little hard to take, and the band might be taken a bit more seriously if they polished up their act some.
But they do sport an awesome album cover, complete with a Finnish pack o’smokes:
