Bringing back the rumbling, distorted white noise sound that made them innovators of industrial, Pigface is one of the few bands that managed to stay relevant in the scene without sounding like charlatans of the genre’s ‘elite’ (i.e., Stabbing Westward and all the other bands which ripped off NIN). Chaotic, soothing, ambient– all are superlatives likely heaped on this band before, but one only need take a listen to their extensive discography to get a hint at how they’ve managed to survive.
It’s been a while since I heard about The Revolting Cocks (aka RevCo, as they’re more commonly referred to now). The last time was in high school, when my friends were passing around a copy of Linger Fickin’ Good like it was a vial of some weird strand of pot you’d never smoked. There was the cover art with Al Jourgensen and his fellow bandmates’ heads on roosters. And of course that name that made any parent unable to keep from snickering uncontrollably whenever they heard it. Like many other Jourgensen aficionados, however, I spent most of my listening time devoted to his main band, Ministry– as newly-discovered classics like Psalm 69 and the live version of “Thieves” off In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up…Live were spending untold hours on repeat in our respective CD players.
But as Linger and the then-legendary Beers, Steers, and Queers began making their rounds throughout high school halls everywhere, delinquents all over town had begun to follow Jourgensen’s latest in a wide-eyed, Jonestown-ish trance, turning to whatever magazines and websites they could for the latest excrement on the band. Devoted fans will be pleased to find that the Cocks’ latest, Sex-O Olympic-O, marks not only a return to familiar, oddly endearing form for the group, but also the manifestation of a new and more melodic vision of an entire band. I caught up with main songwriters Sin Quirin (guitars) and Joshua Bradford (vocals) to discuss their latest anarchic endeavors and clear up any (and every) possible misgiving about the band that I could. Luckily for me, the two were only too happy to oblige… sort of…