Revolting Cocks

Live at Cold Waves LA Festival

Downtown Los Angeles, CA

November 11th, 2017

Review and photos by Travis Baumann

The Revolting Cocks had a big impact on me when they first came out in the latter half of the 1980's. They quickly made their way into alternative dance clubs throughout the country and added a darker, more subversive tone to the scene.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Revolting Cocks' debut album, "Big Sexy Land". Originally a side project of Belgian based Richard 23 of Front 242 fame, countryman Luc Van Acker, with Al Jourgensen, Paul Barker, and William Rieflin of Ministry. The group put out a seminal album of EBM laced industrial that set off a firestorm of creativity that helped build the legacy of Wax Trax records (also celebrating a milestone anniversary).

In commemoration of this pillar of underground music, the Revolting Cocks present their debut album in a live setting with the added bonus of material from their second and third albums thrown into the mix as almost a second set.

For this incarnation of the Cocks, veterans Paul Barker, Richard 23, and Chris Connely are joined by Dan Brill on drums filling in for William Rieflin's position and Jason Novak, who organized this entire festival, handling Luc Van Acker's duties.

Bilious smoke clouds pumped out from the stage until nearly opaque from the audience's vantage point. The band took the stage with Richard 23 taking command of the mic.

They opened the set with "38", originally voiced by Al Jourgensen but Richard did an amazing job. They pretty much followed the album's playing order with "We Shall Cleanse the World" up next, featuring a more subdued and distorted vocal performance from Richard compared to what we saw with his primary band, Front 242 two months prior.

The crowd cheered for the huge club hit, "Attack Ships on Fire" as the intro began. This song claimed its name and signature dialog samples from the classic Sci-Fi noir film Blade Runner and became an instant anthem with the chorus, "Someone Somewhere... Wake me up!"

Paul Barker's tell tale bass lines lend a melancholy groove foundation that mixes perfectly with the dance-able driving rhythms and layered electronics and samples. "Union Carbide" was next in line as a modified version of "Big Sexy Land" had acted as the introductory music for the band's entrance.

"T.V. Mind" was a hugely memorable song from the initial release and had influence on many bands of the genre such as Meat Beat Manifesto who played immediately prior to this performance. They most notably utilized samples such as "It's in my brain now" from this song, further memorializing this pioneering release.

The ominous and sinister "No Devotion" was amazing live with the audience singing along with the chorus; "The voice of god... the voice of god means nothing, anymore!".

They finished off the first portion of the set with "You Often Forget". The chorus lyrics to this real hit home for me while watching this live, "I can not refrain... To believe that the day will come.. We'll see them again". A number of the past members are no longer amongst the living so this was a cool way to pay tribute even if not explicitly stated as such.

At this point, Richard 23 switched places with Chris Connely and they moved on to the second album, "Beers, Steers, and Queers". They kicked it off with "Cattle Grind". Chris was very animated and retained his signature hi-pitched vocal upturns at the end of verses.

They hit up their infamous Olivia Newton-John cover, "(Let's Get) Physical" for which Chris started somersaulting and tumbling across the stage. This was always a hallmark of the Cocks' ability to take the mundane and turn it murderous and demented.

Classic hit status came long ago for "Stainless Steel Providers" which provided an industrial motorcycle club vibe with revving bike samples and hydraulic-like machinery sounds.

Chris took a moment to chat up the crowd and stated that this next song was from their final album which he further clarified by saying was their third release "Linger Ficken' Good..." so that sums up his view of the project after that point.

They did "Crackin' Up" from this album before returning to "Beers" for "Something Wonderful". It was great seeing Chris live and doing these songs. It made me think of all the awesome ones he did with Ministry, Pigface, Murder Inc., and his solo works.

Everyone was anticipating when they would hit what is arguably their magnum opus with the title track, "Beers, Steers, and Queers". Combining some sort of twisted cowboy hoe-down with a rap-like delivery, country twang and industrial beats they pulled off a truly genre-defying song that has lasted the test of time.

Unfortunately they had come to the final song of the night. Richard 23 returned to the stage, sharing vocal duties with Chris for a very fun version of Rod Stewart's, "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"  It was a light-hearted send off for what had been an amazing two day festival and a great closer to a classic set of material.

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