Review Summary: “We are Ninja Sex Party, and this is our first album. You’re welcome.”
Ninja Sex Party was formed in 2009 when Danny Sexbang (Leigh Daniel Avidan) met Ninja Brian (Brian Wecht) through mutual friends. Ever since then the New York based musical comedy duo has been writing kick ass jams, while stabbing dudes and writing tasty medleys. The band used the internet to their advantage by creating hilarious music videos, that caught the attention of animators RubberRoss and Egoraptor. After the Dinosaur Laser Party music video drawn by Egoraptor, NSP’s popularity skyrocketed propelling them into Youtube stardom. With NSP’s first album NSFW, the duo created an extremely consistent and hilarious album, with beautiful vocal harmonies and sugary sweet synthesizers and keyboards.
While the running theme throughout the album is sex, the jokes never seem passé or repetitive. Whether it’s all the common household items Danny’s banged or all the different items Brian likes to suck, the joke never gets old. The few lyrical variations on NSP’s tried and true formula, also work to varying degrees. Dinosaur Laser Fight for example doesn't mention intercourse once, but it’s still a delightful tune, and Puppies in Space is an epic like no other. Not every song is a lyrical gem sadly, Manticore’s guitar wankery and generic chorus about the mythical beast is really a decrease in quality from the rest of the album. Either way NSFW is a laugh riot, and besides one average song it’s incredibly consistent comedy wise, which is more than I can say for most musical comedy groups. *COUGH* The Lonely Island *COUGH*
Ninja Brian’s synthesizers are incredibly bright and bubbly, for instance the intro to NSP Theme Song has an infectiously catchy synthesizers lead. It always creeps into your mind, even when you haven’t heard the track in ages. Some of the synthesizers utilized are extremely vibrant and lively really changing the pace of song in a few mere seconds. The beat created for The Decision does it’s job, but it’s nothing original. The piano playing on Objects of Desire and I Just Want to Dance is well done, and it meshes very nicely with Danny’s vocals. The Drums on this album are serviceable to good, except on Manticore where they are a joke. The sound effects and spoken word sections on the album are also exceptional, like the snoring in Three Minutes of Ecstasy, and the conversations in No Reason Boner specifically stand out as pieces of comedy gold. There is a quite a few different instruments used during NSFW, which is joked about in the song Outroduction:
"I'm particularly impressed by the way you're simultaneously playing the piano, pan flue, maracas and gong next to me right now."
Danny has taken vocal lessons for a long time and it shows, his voice is just about perfect. There isn’t a single weak moment on this album vocally, and the vocal harmonies Danny creates himself are truly beautiful. The melodies a lot of the time clash brilliantly with the crude lyrical material.The tone in his voice is incredible, and even without the music videos you can instantly describe the emotion he’s conveying. His range is also fantastic, he can sing higher tenor notes in his full voice, than most can falsetto. Speaking of falsetto, when Danny uses his it’s heavenly especially near the end of Three Minutes of Ecstasy. He is also very adamant that he doesn’t use auto-tune in his music, his pitch consistency is just that good.
NSFW is a collection of hilarious tracks with bright and colorful synthesizers and strong vocal melodies. The lewd and at times absurd lyrical material is certainly nothing short of great. With a debut this promising, NSP will surely go down as a group to be admired for years to come for their great work drive (releasing a new album every year), and for consistently making laugh out loud tunes.
