More about: veganJoe & The ShitboysBISEXUALQUEERFEMINIST

Ziggy Shit has tattooed on his right calf the dark silhouette of a pair of pliers. His bandmate, drummer Johnny Shit, bears a knuckle duster in the same spot. Sammy Shit’s got a pistol, and their frontman—the titular Joe of Faroese punk band Joe & The Shitboys—has a tattoo of a baseball bat. The tatts are inverted representations of the four weapons that appear on the cover of their debut album The Reson For Hardcore Vibes…as well as on the cover of The Reson For Hardcore Vibes (Again), out before Christmas. “It all started,” Ziggy tells me, “with the album cover”. 

The band and I are sitting on the top floor of The Old Blue Last, where they will later pull a dramatic, hilarious and full-power performance out of the bag. Ziggy, Sammy and Johnny are wearing their ubiquitous dungarees, now ripped and inked to oblivion as they tuck into vegan burgers with Joe and write out their set-list. First support Ash Kenazi warms up the vocal chords downstairs as we go deep on the conception of Joe & The Shitboys. “It all started with the album cover”, Ziggy Shit is telling me: “I found [the picture] in our old school…with the misspelling and everything. Some teenager just made that in the arts department at some point. It screams punk.”

Whichever Faroese adolescent sketched out the four street weapons alongside the surrealist, misspelt words ‘The Reson For Hardcore Vibes’ in a schoolroom one day is responsible for quite a lot. The most notorious band to come out of the Faroe Islands in forever, for starters, as well as songs such as ‘If You Believe In Eating Meat, Start With Your Dog’, ‘Drugs R’4 Kidz’ and ‘Save The Planet you Dumb Shit’. A potent piece of work, the journey from artwork discovery to the completion of the first Joe & The Shitboys album was remarkably quick. “After two hours, we’d recorded two songs: ‘The Reson For Hardcore Vibes’ and ‘Your Product Sucks’. We wrote and recorded the album in about two stretches of five hours”. 

The result was a ten-minute record that fits on a 45. So too with album number two. So how are Joe & The Shitboys doing 40-50 minute shows? “There might be a third [album]” Joe whispers. “I don’t know: maybe a fourth one,” Ziggy adds. “There could be,” Joe says. Ziggy agrees: “There could be”. 

Evidently—if not from this brief exchange then from the length of the set-list scribbled on a piece of paper—there are more albums to come. Though Joe & The Shitboys are not averse to a cover: at The Old Blue Last, they deliver a rendition of ‘Flat Fuck Friday’ of Gators Daily fame before finishing their set with a delightful shitpunk version of Cher’s ‘Believe’. They also air several as-yet-unreleased tracks, including one titled ‘If You Want To Be A Cuck, I’m Your Boy’.

It’s possible that you’d never heard of Joe & The Shitboys before reading this feature, and are currently forming opinions about them without having heard their music. This may be one of the only instances in which many of your impressions are true: yes, Joe & The Shitboys are fun. Yes, Joe & The Shitboys are loose. Yes, Joe & The Shitboys are as crazy as you’re imagining. Joe (Fríði Djurhuus), Sammy (Sjúrður Samuelsen), Ziggy (Sigmund Zachariassen) and Johnny (Jónsvein Mikkelsen) make truly batshit music. Batshit but brilliant. Rarely over one minute long and not once topping two, The Shitboys’ songs are bold, humorous and oft politically-charged riff-bombs that sound amazing on a 45 and even better live. Unsurprising really, considering all four of these musicians have been performing live forever. Ziggy, Sammy and Johnny all played together previously, in a series of “pretty punk” bands, including one called Ranchus and another, Killer Distiller. 

Joe meanwhile, was a (by all accounts) phenomenal frontman in sludge metal band Iron Lungs. “Even the people who didn’t like his previous band liked him as a frontman,” Ziggy says. Joe smiles and says humbly: “They still came to the shows”. Giving Joe a call was a no-brainer for the Shitboys (“there was no one else”). It was equally easy for Joe himself: “meeting up with The Shitboys reignited my spark” he says of the meeting: “I was about to quit music”.

The current musical landscape would be much poorer for a lack of Joe’s antics on stage. He is quite as good a frontman as his friends testify: he barrels into the Old Blue Last to join his bandmates as their set begins, wearing red lipstick that clashes beautifully with his blue hair. Unabashed, charismatic and totally perfect in his comedic timing, this is a band that has to be seen to be believed. 

“There’s a tonne of live music but it’s all local” Ziggy tells me of playing their homeland: “A bunch of Christian country!”. Seeing as The Faroe Islands are so small (around 50,000, by last count), there are no cliques within the scene. It also means the scene is just that: one scene comprised of everyone all together: “We tour together, we listen to the same music…even if we don't like the same music, everything gets played” Joe says. It’s also the reason why the citizen to musician ratio seems so high over on Faroe: “You have to fill that void yourself”. Fill it they do. Expect at least two more albums from Joe & The Shitboys after this month’s The Reson For Hardcore Vibes (Again). But don’t expect things to last forever. 

“Are we going to be shitboys when we’re 40? Probably not, right,” Joe says. Their publicist cuts in helpfully: “Shitmen!” 

“We’ve got a few ideas of what we can do” Ziggy adds, as the quartet confirm there’s no end in sight for The Shitboys “yet”. 40, after all, is still a way off.

******

“BISEXUAL VEGAN SHITPUNK” reads the bio on every Shitboys social page. “#BISEXUAL #VEGAN #QUEER #FEMINIST” they tag many a post. It’s no secret that this is a band interested in social justice, albeit served in an entirely new way—and with a pinch of salt. “Think it’s gross when two boys kiss?...Say ‘gay’ instead of ‘bad’?” they ask on ‘Closeted HomoFobe’, released for Bisexual Awareness Week this year. “Kill your first born! Sort your trash!” Joe yells on ‘Save The Planet, You Dumb Shit’. ‘If You Believe In Eating Meat, Start With Your Dog’ ought to convey its meaning without much digging. ‘Manspredator’ even deals in those pesky, hyper-masculine public transport tyrants. It’s what punk was made for: challenging the norms and infuriating the conservative. On The Faroe Islands, it’s not too hard.

“If someone has an issue with something, you’ve got to do something about it” Ziggy says of the noise they’re making on their home island, “there’s a DIY attitude. I met way more angry dudes complaining about feminism than I actually met feminists. I said: ‘let’s be as woke as possible. Go all the way the other way’”. “As long as you’re doing something, you’re making a huge impact” Joe agrees: “There really isn’t that much media there”. 

For a band as relatively small as Joe & The Shitboys, they’re already proving this to be true. “Last night I got a message from an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years, and he said ‘just to let you know what you do helps me a lot. It got me through when my mom died’” Joe tells me. Another time, “a guy got the courage to come out as bi because of us”. Perhaps most amazingly, a trans man approached the band and told them that after he saw them play the Faroe Pride after-party in 2019, he “decided to quit cutting” on the spot. Pretty extraordinary stuff. 

“I think it’s important to stand up for what you believe in,” Joe says simply. “I think it’s important to spread the message.” Did you cry when these people reached out? I ask. “Almost,” Joe deadpans, “One or two tears…but I sucked them right back in”. 

Therein lies the charm of Joe & The Shitboys. They’re spreading the message: one of tolerance, one of radical acceptance and one of total self-deprecation and silliness too. Get on board now.

This interview first appeared in Gigwise 2: The Back To The Future Issue. Buy a copy here. The Reson For Hardcore Vibes (Again) is out now.

Issue Two of the Gigwise Print magazine is on sale now! Buy it here.

More about: veganJoe & The ShitboysBISEXUALQUEERFEMINIST