It’s been a long year–exacerbated by a miserable economy, more war, the heightened threat of global warming—so take your mind off it all with the good that happened. Like, for instance, a year full of great music we posted!
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…
Ministry is dead; long live Al Jourgensen!! Revolting Cocks brings back its own retarded, mutant brand of noise-rock to upturn noses further with its indeterminable-yet-offensive musical stench (a retarded description, though intended affectionately). Nostalgic high school memories of the band’s infamous Rod Stewart cover “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” have been officially replaced with the subtle affirmations of “I’m Not Gay” and the incestuous, Jesus Built My Hotrod- sounding “Cousins.” On their latest, Sex-O Olympic-O, Revolting Cocks re-establish themselves as pioneers of a genre all their own, while adapting, kind of, to that modern trend of re-hashing the sounds of industrial days past. Then again, much of that sound was developed by Jourgensen himself, so rest assured that the Cocks are back, bigger and badder than ever.
Words by Jeff Nau