Album Review: The Cocky Bitches – Mercy

The Cocky Bitches are the new outfit from Paul Leary, the guitarist and producer of the strangest thing to ever come out of Texas, The Butthole Surfers. He has been joined in this new venture by Cold‘s Sam McCandles and a vocalist know only as The Baroness, the band previously existed under the name Carny before evolving into it’s current form and adopting their new moniker. The Butthole Surfers were one of the most unpredictable bands of the 80’s and 90s, so as a result I have no idea what to expect from this 21st century outlet for Paul Leary‘s twisted psychedelia and distorted madness, something that has lurked at the heart of all his previous releases.

The slow pounding beat of the dark and distorted Sex Machine kicks things off with the soundtrack to a demented acid infused S&M session. Jump Jane Crow continues to take you further down the rabbit hole before Burn Baby Burn shatters the looking glass with the most hauntingly surreal moment to date, by now you know you aren’t coming back from wherever The Cocky Bitches are leading you. The album continues to reflect a different facet of the band with every track, from the grinding hallucinatory Hand In The Fire through the brief gentle surreality of Eela Moira, that provides a rare moment of comparative tranquility, to the full blown industrial flashback of Free The People. The lysergic country of Produce precedes the demented fairground glam stomp of Humper and Rocket, a track that recalls The Butthole Surfers later years, before things collapse in on themselves in the dense dark finale that is Mercy‘s title track.

The Cocky Bitches offer no quarter, no mercy, no escape and definitely no safe word with their debut album, if you love the early recordings by The Butthole Surfers or The Revolting Cocks then Christmas has come early for you this year. Mercy is not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination an easy listen and there isn’t anything on here that you would call even remotely radio friendly, psychedelia permeates the entire album, industrial beats propel it along and elements of art rock, punk and pretty much anything else they encounter are thrown into the mix. This is an album with no commercial aspirations, Paul Leary and the rest of The Cocky Bitches have released an album that defies description and continues his legacy of producing outsider music like no one else.

Mercy can be pre-ordered via Slope Records here