n edgy clarity ripples from Gerner’s vocals, and the band’s songs, nearly all of which are sprinkled liberally with references to cocaine or other harder substances, tend to favor an ascension of guitar that rarely revels in its stay above ground. This technique is heard throughout “Priest, Poet & the Pig,” where a guitar blows around before settling into a riff cycling in an upbeat high. A little past the track’s halfway mark, this high is yanked down an expressway, again a minute later, and finally, exhausted, the notes drift off gradually like a head to a couch. Such musical states portend subject matter of a storied, louche existence, and yet the songwriting, like most rap, never requires such experiences or knowledge to be understood or enjoyed.

At over seven minutes, the album’s longest song, “Toby” is a eulogizing caution tale, purportedly real, of a doomed acquaintance that simultaneously captures the guilt, pleasure, blame, and reasoning in surviving someone who died of drugs at a young age. It’s one of VietNam’s strongest, strangest and more complex records to date. “Toby” opens with the numbing, “Yeah, I heard the other day man, Jamie said Toby passed away man, and for a second I was almost surprised. And when it finally sank in, man, I almost smirked a grin, man, because I knew he was finally satisfied.” Recalling a “new” rock band that has dealt so directly and arrantly with death on a song is a fruitless effort. Gerner’s use of first person narrative later goes on to speak for the entire group, as they loom together, piling on the riddance in thick skin, with “And I’m sorry we couldn’t come man, but funerals, they never are fun man, and I think we buried you a long time ago up in Philly.” That the next song, “Gabe,” is similar in title but instead celebrates life with a bittersweet, tequila-charged reunion in Spain—it may or may not be an In Cold Blood decampment—nearly creates an entire storyline in sequencing.

“Welcome to My Room,” in essence a heady drug metaphor dropped into a loose party track featuring Grubb and Gerner splitting vocals, has garnered VietNam the most press thus far. This is partially because the song can be framed, perhaps too easily, in the autobiographical context of the band’s residence; for sometime their home has been a Brooklyn storefront—queue some serious mythos mileage in the press that is, oddly, not complete bullshit—complete with oversized windows blocked-out (naturally), candles (electricity is a fleeting luxury), hipster and babe traffic, rock ‘n’ roll antics and inspirational ornaments. “Knock on wood, but the cops have never busted our place in Brooklyn and I’m pretty surprised. And there have been some times that I’m glad they didn’t, because a lot of us would be in prison right now,” says Grubb. Surely trend sweaters reading this are imagining storefront apartments being offered to Williamsburg hipsters for bargain rates, enabling tourists and marketers to get a priceless guinea-pig view. All said, New York has been a good, if choatic, fit for the band. They went from a divorce with VICE, arguably the city’s standard-bearer label and brand (“We thought they’d sign us and the [A.R.E.] Weapons, instead it was the Streets, the Stills…Chromeo. There’s no ill will now. We would never want to be a part of that.”) to Kemado Records, which has come to be lionized as a similar, local, more boutique and rock-centric watershed for its buzzing acts like Dungen and Cheeseburger.

“Brooklyn is cool, man. The people who really live there and feel it’s necessary to be there don’t give a shit about VICE or what someone is wearing,” says Grubb. “Once you’re anywhere for a second, at first you think you’re going to fucking hate someone because of how they look, but after a few weeks they’re your best buddy. I don’t know if those guys [VICE] will end up representing our generation or be our Rolling Stone. Compared to the shit that’s out, they might. Our generation will go down for crystal meth. [laughs] At this point, and how little [money] we make, we’re all just concerned with our friends and getting by. The world has been cool to me, and I don’t really think our generation has had it that bad. A bomb goes off here and there, but things could be a lot worse for us.”

Do they plan to stick around? “We’re all slowly getting driver’s licenses. We’re all from Texas, we’re Southern, and we’re movers. L.A.’s cheaper than New York. The homeless dudes obviously seem to like it, but it’s a freaky place, “says Grubb. “We’re going to check out Tennessee. Nashville’s scene looks really good to us. I think we can do really good there, and we’d be right in the hub. Right now, we’re not as successful as everyone else, but it’s working out for us. We’re a slow burn, we resonate. This is all we know how to do. There aren’t a lot of options, except to go where the music takes us, stay the course. We want to end up playing the Grand Ole Opry.”

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This article is written by Hunter Stephenson, designed by Ryan Speer and illustrated by Sven Barth for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007. Photographs by Hunter Stephenson for ignore Magazine. A special thanks to Clay Irwin.