After a 12-year hiatus,
Al Jourgensen revived his toy band
Revolting Cocks with a higher-profile cast than usual. Counterculture superstars
Gibby Haynes and
Jello Biafra have joined the party, which was bound to happen, but nobody could have foreseen
Davíd Garza,
ZZ Top's
Billy Gibbons, and
Cheap Trick's
Rick Nielsen and
Robin Zander as
Cocks back when
Revco was as much a way for the members of
Front 242 to let off steam as it was for the folks in
Ministry. The star-studded
Cocked and Loaded was originally titled Purple Head and planned for 2004 with the track "Prune Tang" being handed over to the Internet for some buzz-generating. It didn't, which is a shame because the track hints at the great album that could have been: a raunchy Texas ass-kicker that both loves and mocks the synth-era
ZZ Top while tipping the hat to the grittiest goth and industrial. Also capturing this excitement is "Caliente," an over-the-top cover of the legendary
Bauhaus' "Dark Entries" with former
Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes adding enough of his cosmic ramblings to earn a new title for the tune.
Nielsen positively shreds on the opening "Fire Engine," a cover of a lost
Iggy Pop song on which
Jourgensen gets co-writing credit (odd since the track dates back to demos
Ig did with
Ric Ocasek in 1983, the year
Ministry was making their debut and not sounding very "Fire Engine" at all).
Biafra's "Dead End Streets" ends the list of highlights before this horribly front-loaded album takes a turn for the worse. The second half of
Cocked and Loaded tries too hard with humorous samples and sleazy joke songs clumsily trying to force a connection between this
Revco and the one on
Big Sexy Land, or at least
Linger Ficken' Good... It's loud, shocking, and sorta fun for a spin, but one has to wonder if
Jourgensen took the nonresponse to "Prune Tang" to heart and mistakenly went back to the drawing board. While it's the closest this throwaway band has come to a throwaway album,
Cocked and Loaded works if you party harder and pass out earlier. ~ David Jeffries