When When THE CUMSHOTS from Oslo step onstage, a veritable hurricane breaks loose: wraparound walls of guitars, drums that hammer the air like pneumatic drills, and a singer who gives all he’s got and more as he wrings audience frenzy down to the last drop. Their cascades of sound are pretty mighty, even for Norwegian conditions, and that even though THE CUMSHOTS have nothing to do with the usual masquerade commonly associated with Northern Metal. Max Cargo, singer and founding member of the band, points out that “when we started back in 1999, the Metal scene here was like a kind of Halloween kindergarten. Everybody wore silly make-up. We didn’t want any part of that.” Instead THE CUMSHOTS celebrate a high-energy, double-trouble hermaphroditic existence comprised of down-to-earth Heavy Rock and uncompromising Metal. Straightforward and with a shot to the gut.

With Just Quit Trying, THE CUMSHOTS are now slinging their brute-force Rock into our neck of the woods via Rodeostar. If their first two albums, Last Sons of Evil (2002) and Norwegian Jesus (2003), still had the trappings of untamed Punk Rock-
Noise-Metal derivatives, on Just Quit Trying they display themselves as a soundpouring monster complete with well-crafted riffs and the makings of rocking hits – needless to say, solidly in the red energy range on any control panel. For example, Praying For Cancer, the opening cut, prepares a refreshing roller-coaster ride of staccato guitars, raging offbeats and a power-packed refrain that gives the song its melodic focal point. Just the right kind of dazzling kick-off for Just Quit Trying, an album that moves through 10 songs on an ideal line between irresistibly driving midtempo tracks and bone-crunching eruptions à la Slayer and the like. But there’s more to this album than purely sword-thrusting guitar work:

THE CUMSHOTS have mastered the always difficult subject of instrumentation. Starting with effective guitar solos run backwards and well-done melodic background vocals, straight through to the use of piano, acoustic guitar and cello that departs completely from their genre, they pull out the widest variety of stops to make Just Quit Trying a solid change of pace, no matter what the title recommends.

The single I Drink Alone is embellished with a clip that was filmed at a morgue. “The song is about drinking,” Max grins. “I found out that it’s best for me and everybody else concerned when I drink alone. Then I can keep the damage down.” A bit of self-irony ─ or self-discovery, any way you look at it ─ can’t hurt, even in the case of THE CUMSHOTS. “I’d never commit suicide, for a lot of reasons,” Max goes on to explain. “On Praying for Cancer, that’s why a fatal illness sometimes seems to me to be the only way to say goodbye to all the misery here. You get tossed out into the world naked and helpless, and you don’t stand a chance right from the start. That’s what Baptized in Broken Glass is about.” But don’t get them wrong, because THE CUMSHOTS have a fine-tuned sense of humor. For instance, Vomitory is dedicated to a sleazy bar on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg’s red-light district, a bar with a room just for disposing of excess stomach alcohol – the Vomitoire. By the way, both clips, I Drink Alone and Praying For Cancer, are going to be exclusively on the German edition of Just Quit Trying.

Max Cargo is well known in Norway ─ and very popular ─ due to his extreme performances. His show on TV 2, Norway’s biggest channel, draws a viewing audience of 500,000 in the wee hours. That’s about 92% of the audience between 20 and 29 years old. The format usually deals with drastic depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins. As long as not too many bodily fluids flow, the broadcaster gives Max plenty of leeway, even when audience reactions are mixed. “Oh, I’ve gotten loads of weird email, mostly from religious fanatics,” Max confirms. “Meanwhile I’ve got a whole collection of Bibles at home, and once a woman sent me a letter she signed with her own menstrual blood.”

In 2001 he let himself be inspired into trying an experiment that literally turned his stomach. He lived in a shopwindow display for a whole week while nourishing himself exclusively on unhealthy food: cola, cream, butter. He didn’t wash, didn’t brush his teeth, and more or less put the animal essence of the human body on exhibit in order to see what effect that had on the state of his mood. While doing so he kept a precise log of the amount of food he ingested and excreted. “I felt incredibly fat and tired afterward. What worked my nerves the most was the people who kept knocking on the window. I think I slept a whole week in one shot after that.” The result? “Basically just one thing: My sperm count went up. I’m worried that fast-food junkies are going to populate the earth one day,” according to Max, who doesn’t even own a TV and describes himself as “pretty old-fashioned, actually.” There was a bigger scandal a few years ago, one that even made it into the international media. While the band was on tour, the organization Fuck For Forest asked if they would be allowed to go through with a performance during a CUMSHOTS appearance. “Fuck For Forest does live porno and donates the money to preserving the rainforest. We thought, OK, it’s for a good cause, so we let them get it on with their show while we played. Unfortunately, that all had consequences in court which ended up costing us a 10,000 dollar fine. The strange thing is, we didn’t even really latch onto what was going on elsewhere because we had to concentrate on our own show...”

Of course, scandals aren’t the only publicity that accompanies THE CUMSHOTS. In 2002 they won the World Rock Championship in Bilbao, and the year after they were nominated for the Norwegian Grammy. Several tours completed in Germany and the Netherlands were fairly successful for THE CUMSHOTS, and audiences will be able to experience them again live on an extensive German tour in the fall of 2008.What’s more, the guys are already working on a new album that is going to be enhanced by adding Country influences. More thrills to come...