COP SHOOT COP: “Release” (Big Cat)

MUSIC IS a celebration, right? Music speaks when words are not enough, right? Music is an escape, right? Music is about love of life and love in general, right? But music has another purpose – to facilitate headbanging, to facilitate those who just love to be screamed at that life is shite and then you die in agony.

Heavy Metal is simply oozing with messages of plutonium gloom and doom. Much hardcore does the same. Then you have Industrial, totally intent on doing your head in. Why? Why do so many groups peddle end-game theories? Why are there so many fans of the apocalypse?

Cop Shoot Cop are bringing us THE TRUTH in Industrial, rocking tomes. And the truth is an ugly big monster of awfulness. The truth is that humanity is in a big time bad situation. Cop Shoot Cop are here to tell us that the lining on that cloud that looks like silver is actually acid. Cop Shoot Cop desperately want us to know that they’re having a bad time; in their heads at least. Cop Shoot Cop are intent on serial killing any dreams we might have left.

“Can’t remember my line/Can’t come up with a rhyme/Or even a reason . . . If I mentioned love, I take it back/I saw your heart and it was black . . . And Armageddon/Has been cancelled/Cause the tickets/Didn’t sell . . . Feel so bad/Worst night I ever had/I walk the bridge of sighs/The tombs avert their eyes.”

The above lines could all be from the same song, because they all have the same basic message. In fact, they are from the same song, just that it gets called different names and is repeated about a dozen times to fill out an album.

I’m someone to be giving out about all this, considering that Lou Reed’s Magic And Loss is probably my favourite album of the Nineties so far. But strange, I found his stories about the death of friends ultimately uplifting.

I don’t find Release uplifting. It’s not a bad album by any means, but it’s no release for me. I know most of the bile is directed towards the system, but the constant frontal attack is ultimately wearying. One song is fine, two are manageable, but a whole damn album of the same sad story is a fifty minute sentence.

• Gerry McGovern