Revolting Cocks

The origins of Revolting Cocks date to late 1984, when Belgian industrial dance group Front 242, engaged on their first American tour as an opening act for then label mates, American band Ministry. After the tour, Ministry's Al Jourgensen asked Front 242's founder and member Richard 23 to produce a dub remix project. After returning to Brussels, Richard 23 met with Luc van Acker to discuss thre matter. Van Acker (ex-Shriekback; guitars), joined the project after consulting with Jourgensen over the phone. The origins of the band's name came from an incident that took place in a Chicago bar. According to van Acker and Jourgensen, the band was experimenting with "insulting French expressions" on a waiter, ordering something they said meant "revolting cock", to which the waiter replied, "You are revolting cocks!".

The act's first release would be 1985's No Devotion on the 'Wax Trax!' label. An album quickly ensued in the form of, Big Sexy Land (1986), featuring a mix of industrial, hard rock, and EBM, complete with heavy sampling and strong synthesizeresizeresizeresized beats.

Richard 23 quit in 1986, after an argument with Jourgensen over his, and Adrian Sherwood's, remix of the track You Often Forget. The remaining two members would by assisted by Chris Connelly (ex-Finitribe; later of Ministry), Paul Barker and Bill Rieflin (both ex-The Blackouts and at the time of-Ministry), along with various others appearing as contributors or guests.

You Goddamned Son of a Bitch (1988), would be the band's live debut on record and featured more aggressive versions of tracks from Big Sexy Land tracks along with some new material. This trend continued on Beers, Steers, and Queers (1990), an album that saw the band move further into distortion. The band signed to 'Sire Records' Linger Ficken' Good (1993) featured mostly a return to the previous less layered material. The album included a cover of Rod Stewart's Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?. After a cancelled tour, the band went on hiatus.

In 2004, Jourgensen, with ex-RevCo Phildo Owens, revived the group to eventually release Cocked and Loaded (2006).

After compiling a temporary tour line-up to open for Ministry on the MasterBaTour during 2006, Jourgensen recruited Josh Bradford (vocals), Clayton Worbeck (keyboards) and Sin Quirin (guitar; later of Ministry) as the new members for the Revolting Cocks, now dubbed RevCo. Sex-O Olympic-O (2009) followed. Following a tour, a second album followed in the form of ¿Got Cock? (2010). The project fell apart once again when Bradford and Worbeck parted ways. Quirin continued on with Jourgensen with Ministry in 2011.

In 2016, Richard 23, van Acker, Barker and Connelly performed under the shorter name The Cocks for a six-date tour to mark the 30th anniversary of Big Sexy Land's release, including contributions by Dan Brill and Jason Novak.

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Footnote: Although listed as from USA, this act is actually a joint USA and Belgium production.