SXSW Review: Death By Unga Bunga, March 21, Valhalla

death by unga bunga

“We’re Death By Unga Bunga and were from the North Pole! This next song is about underage girls! It’s called Young Girls!” announced Death By Unga Bunga singer Sebastian Ulstad Olsen early on in their set, signalling that they wouldn’t be taking themselves too seriously on this occasion.

Although rock and roll is serious business, it’s also often an inherently silly genre and the band seems to take this to heart with goofy, tongue in cheek stage banter, multiple audience invasions, a band name seemingly inspired by a really terrible old joke and a set delivered with total rock ‘n roll abandon. They reminded me a bit of The Hives at times, but leaned much more heavily on ’60s influences with their organ driven garage rock sound.

Sometimes its fun to just cut loose with some good old fashioned rock n roll and luckily that’s what these Norwegian garage rockers delivered on the last night of SXSW. Death By Unga Bunga are all about the fun times.

Posted on by Paul in South By Southwest