I vaguely remember Revolting Cocks appearing in the mid-Eighties but I’d forgotten all about this magnificent piece of provocation called Beers, Steers & Queers in 1992.
RevCo (as they were often known) began as a side project formed by Al Jourgensen of MInistry, aiming to combine art and the dancefloor, with Richard 23 from Ministry’s label mates (and US support act) the Belgian industrial dance group Front 242.
Their first collaboration came when Jourgensen asked Richard 23 to produce a dub remix project after which, back in Brussels, he recruited van Acker, a session guitarist for Shriekback, and Revolting Cocks were born.
How did they get their absurd name, I’m sure you’re asking.
Apparently a debauched night out in a Chicago bar reached a nadir when Jourgensen and friends found it amusing to try out “insulting French expressions” on a waiter, one of which translated from French as “revolting cock.”
Understandably irritated at their cheap racist jibes, the waiter responded with the words: “You are revolting cocks!” And from that point, they were.
Their first single was the rather splendid No Devotion, followed by an album called Big Sexy Land – a fusion of industrial, hard rock and EBM with samples and beats.
Richard 23 had left by the time they released their second album, the distorted sample-filled Beers, Steers & Queers, which resulted in an expensive copyright case over their cover of (Let’s Get) Physical.
Not that it bore much more than a titular resemblance to Olivia Newton-John’s disco hit – especially the alternative version which was a 13-minute loop of the word “physical.”
Presumably Ms Newton-John was not a huge fan.
On their next album, Linger Ficken’ Good, they covered Rod Stewart in a similar style, releasing their version of Do Ya Think I’m Sexy as a single, and promptly broke up for the next decade.
Returning in 2004 with Jourgensen still at the helm and a new track called Prune Tang released to the internet, they announced a new album called Purple Head – shelved and retitled Cocked And Loaded.
Guests included Jello Biafra, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Gibby Haynes of fellow travellers Butthole Surfers, who sang on a version of Bauhaus’s Dark Entries that featured in the film Saw II.
In the Noughties a new line-up, with the name abbreviated to RevCo, put out two more albums – Sex-O Olympic-O and Got Cock? – but the project ended when Ministry reunited.
More recently, they reunited with most of the original line-up as The Cocks before reverting to the full name in 2017, announcing plans for another album.