Bad Cop - Harvest The Beast (ROIR)

As the Prophet said, “One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain..”. Nashville, Tennessee band Bad Cop ’s auspicious debut on the legendary ROIR label is an inoculating shot in the arm that acts as a sort of psychic painkiller. It’s an elevating, honest and transcendent album.. as well as being a masterpiece of raw rock ‘n roll psychedelia packed with ear-worm riffs and giant beaming breakdowns. You can hear the slew of rad influences shining like gems in Harvest The Beast.. a Stones chord here on “Daylight”, explosively charging Who-worthy drums there on “Tonight Only”, unsettling and gut wrenching vocals that carry a hint of Joy Division on “Time After Time”. All the references sit like musical one-inch pins hung on the badass leather jacket of Bad Cop’s pure musical ability and earnest intensity.

With the epic arpeggiating strains of “Amorres Perros”, the ear is immediately hooked. Succinctly, relentlessly, the album continues to drench the listener in everything that’s ever been exciting and mysterious about rock. The shots come quickly, fiercely, every song a crazed and controlled pearl of hook laden rock. “Daylight” is insane.. it’s the theme song of the road weary, that moment in the wee of dawn when you have to draw everything up inside to keep rolling down the road. Other instant anthems on this tight as hell album are “Judas the Snake”, just dripping with sneer and attitude and the roller “One In the Same”.

Singer Adam Anyone ’s poetic and surrealist lyrics are delivered in a snarling bass that explodes at will into soul searing scream, Alex Hartness ’ guitar druidry is delivered in tight, gnarly riffs punctuated by lyrical and expertly played runs and Kharl Merkley plays the drums with charging tribal intensity, somehow holding down huge heavy-foot beats while painting more prosaic lines with his fills and syncopation. Combined, the music is breathtaking, an urgent and psychedelic rockn roll landscape as shiny and colorful as the amazing cover art suggests.

Ascribing to the “Always leave ‘em wanting more” philosophy, Harvest is over in half an hour. Naturally leaving you wanting more and more. In a sea of wannabe’s and lookatme’s that clusterfuck scenes everywhere (Nashville’s a recent on the is-the-new-Seattle industry plunder list), it is more imperative than ever to separate the wheat from the mouse turd. Bad Cop’s debut on the always apt and au-courant punk/dub/nowave Brooklyn label ROIR is among the cream of the crop for the coming year. Go see Bad Cop when they come to your town, as they invariably will in their incessant tour schedule. Harvest the Beast drops in September as so the band kicks off their first international tour You can catch Bad Cop with Thomas Function at NYC’s Lit Lounge (93 2nd Avenue) on Thursday, September 9th.

http://www.myspace.com/badcopnashville
http://www.roir-usa.com/badcop.html