Punk was never explicitly sexy—at least not in the way that the pseudo-punk of today is, with its model-turned-musician frontmen whose references don’t expand beyond the Ramones and Black Flag, both of which they discovered in appropriative Urban Outfitters tees purchased with their parents’ credit cards in teenhood. Stockholm’s Viagra Boys, however, are a true, modernized embodiment of the ethos of punk: Sebastian Murphy’s snarky lyrics are punctuated by his eternally uncovered beer belly, appropriately plastered in ink, and the band is driven by an affinity for making “stupid songs sound serious, and serious songs sound stupid.” It’s all maintained over a dirty bass and the true signature of punk—stupidly simple guitars.

Their third record, Cave World, which premieres today via the record label YEAR0001, parodies in parroting, as its lyrics adopt the personas of pandemic-era low-lifes who buy into anything preceded by, “They don’t want us to know this”—no matter who they are, or what this is. On a call with Document, Murphy explains that a substantial portion of the lyrics were ripped directly from YouTube videos of conspiracists.

Viagra Boys aren’t living in fear that their music will be adopted by Trumpian anti-vax gun toters or workplace shooters—and not because lines like “I think they’re planning something sinister with the global elite/ They’re the ones who say the earth is round and tell me what to believe/ But they can’t shoot me up with no 5G if I’m a monkey living in the trees,” carry obvious irony. Rather, it’s that they almost want the songs to be adopted. If any of them were to become 4chan anthems, the commentary the album is making would be further proved.

Between YouTube spirals and endless touring, Murphy found time to join Document to reflect on the making of Cave World, and his personal journey in learning the art of conspiracy.

Megan Hullander: Cave World’s album art has a reference to 2001: Space Odyssey, which I found interesting because it seems that the record is largely about human devolution, and that film has a grander message of human evolution.

Sebastian Murphy: For me, even if the film is about evolving, it’s still about devolving. The monolith, or at least the way I [interpreted] it, was where shit started going to hell—when the monoliths showed up, and the monkeys adopted tools for violence, and they started killing each other and all the ships. What I think represents the monolith for me is this move from where monkeys used to live in trees, to when they moved down to the flatlands, and they learned how to speak. Basically, when humans learned to adopt language and to see into the future. Of course, there were some positive aspects to that, but that’s where humans started destroying the world.

Megan: Right now, reality can feel a little bit science-fictional, and some of the things that make it feel that way are dominant in the album’s narrative. Do you think that’s something that’s unique to the time that we’re living in? Or is that universal to human experience across time?

Sebastian: It’s definitely more than ever now. We’re living in this capitalistic, Big Brother society, where all these major companies know all of our information, and they know what we like. They know more than we probably know ourselves. And we’re all connected to some sort of database. In that sense, it’s all science fiction. I think some people think it’s even more science fiction than it really is, where they have all these conspiracies where the world is run by secret societies and robots and shit like that. I think things are simpler than that. If you break them down, things aren’t that complicated; it’s just people who want money, and people coming up with new ways of making money.

Megan: Where did your fascination with conspiracy theories start?

Sebastian: I worked in a tattoo shop years ago. All the older guys that worked there were super into conspiracy theories, and definitely exposed me to a bunch of that shit. I started taking ayahuasca with them, and that’s when I also just started, like, ‘Man, they don’t want us to know all this shit.’ But I couldn’t really put my finger on what it was that I knew. I kind of got tired of all that shit; I never wanted to hear another second of conspiracy theories in my life. For the past few years, I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube, like Channel Five news and Internet Comment Etiquette. A lot of the lyrics are stolen from interviews in those videos.

“It wasn’t too long ago, where people were writing stuff on Twitter, like, ‘Fuck Rage Against the Machine,’ trying to cancel them for saying anti-cop stuff. Like, what? What machine do you think they’re raging against?”

Megan: Are there any conspiracies that you still buy into, or that you think have some basis?

Sebastian: I think a lot of them stem from a little bit of truth. Maybe. Of course, I believe that there’s a lot of government cover-ups when it comes to—who knows, you know, fucking aliens? I’m sure they cover up all sorts of shit, especially the US. I don’t find it so far-fetched that someone could fucking fly to the moon—I find it way more far-fetched that someone would plan a moon landing.

Megan: A lot of the references you have are very American. What does the conspiracy theory scene look like in Sweden? Is there even one?

Sebastian: It doesn’t feel as prevalent, at all. You don’t really run into as many people like that. But of course, you see Facebook groups, and there are people that go on marches out here. I’ve got a couple friends that are anti-vaxxers, as well—where they think that there’s some sort of government conspiracy against them, but they don’t really have any good reasons as to why. I guess they just say words like ‘control’ and ‘money.’ I just find it hard to believe that any government officials are telling all these doctors, ‘Make all this shit up. Make all these studies up, blah, blah, blah.’ But it’s not as prevalent out here. I use the US much more as a reference, because it’s kind of a melting pot for insanity.

Megan: With the lyrical use of irony and satire, do you expect an adoption of any of these songs from conspiracy theorists?

Sebastian: You can’t underestimate their stupidity. It wasn’t too long ago, where people were writing stuff on Twitter, like, ‘Fuck Rage Against the Machine,’ trying to cancel them for saying anti-cop stuff. Like, what? What machine do you think they’re raging against? You never know what people are gonna do [with] it, and I wouldn’t mind if they did, because I find it funny. I love when things are misinterpreted.