Virus Disband, with Particular Charm
If you felt the planet get a little more boring the other day, that’s because Virus broke up. They make a graceful exit some two years after what will be their final full-length, Memento Collider (review here), which was the Oslo troupe’s fourth LP since their start in 2000. I suppose the least you can say about what they accomplished in their time is that they were the kind of band who refused to follow any whims other than their own, and while their path took them into uncharted reaches of jazz, black metal, prog rock and who the hell knows what else, apparently they’ve gotten tired of confounding those who would try to place them into some genre or other and have decided to move on with their lives. Not gonna say I don’t get it. 18 years is a long time, folks.
And I’ll say that of all the we-were-a-band-now-we’re-not notifications I’ve read, Virus‘ stands among the most charming and the most appropriate to the band itself, from Einz‘s reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to Czral‘s inadvertent namedrop of Voivod. It’s good fun all the way through.
So long, Virus. Thanks for all the stylistic innovation:
A message from Czral. Some of you knew this, a lot of you didn’t. What can one say really? Thanks for all the fish!
– Einz
“Good evening y’all. Or good morning or afternoon, depending on where you are in the world which is made up of time-zones and landslides. We are now into our 18th year of existance, and as you all know, in 1918, in plymouth, Charlie Chaplin forgot his drivers-license at the chemist’s while simultaneously thinking about tunafish and batteries. An odd moment, yes, but it has reminded us (in Virus) that it’s time to throw in the towel..
It’s been 4 full-lengths, a demo and a mini-album and a few handfuls of gigs, plus the odd whale-shark encounter. Einz has become voivod of bulgaria (1155-1299), Plenum has become the prime minister of Equador while simultaneously working as a paediatrician in Ukraine. Czral has become a well known Elvis -and Bret Michaels-impersonator whilst working as a moped-vendor machine-operator in birmingham. So that’s why we’ve decided to lay down our deplorable riffs and beats and bass-lines, rather than being «on ice, don’t know what’s happening» -mode, for an unforeseeable future…
You know, you can’t devour an apple more than three times: the time you buy it, the time you put it on your kitchen-counter, and the time you decide to throw it away because it’s gone bad. Only thrice. But I digress.. My point is: at some point, you realise that what you set out to do has now been done, now, so now.. Thank you, bye bye, we were Virus.. “
Virus was:
Czral – guitars, vocals
Plenum – bass
Einz – drums
http://www.virusnorway.com/
http://www.facebook.com/virusnorwayofficial
http://www.karismarecords.no/
http://www.facebook.com/karismarecords
