Cobra Killer - 76/77
(Monika)
Nearly 30 years ago, The Runaways proved that girls could play guitars and make as much rock and roll racket as the boys, although five years earlier, Fanny had initially blazed the trail as the first all-girl band signed to a major label (Reprise). Nowadays, the gender bias has all but evaporated with bands like The Donnas (Atlantic) and Sweden’s Sahara Hotnights (RCA, see review elsewhere this issue) signing with the big, er, guys! Women also continue to make inroads in Europe, that last bastion of macho, heavy metal posturing, where some of the best punk bands (period!) are female combos such as the Hotnights, Norway’s Mensen and, now the German duo, Gina V. D’Orio and Annika Line Trost, who’ve just released their third album as Cobra Killer. (They’ve been playing in bands since before they were teenagers, most notably as The Lemonbabies and The Sophisticated Troublemakers way back in the late ‘60s, and last year they each released a solo album.)
Their new wave-y electro beats are as infectious as Suicide, with the bubbly, happy feet, dancefloor smash “Mund Auf – Augen Zu (Stecker Raus, Ich Dreh’ Durch)” coming off like Nina Hagen fronting Einstürzende Neubauten with Level 242 warming up backstage. The repetitive, martial stomp of “Chemie Des Alltags” sounds like Ultravox with balls, admittedly no small feat for a couple of chicks! There’s even a funky, wah-wah ass wiggle to “L.A. Shaker” that fondly recalls the best of Holly Golightly, and the disjointed, asymmetrical “Tenthousand Tissues” wails like The Raincoats with a beatbox.
Not everything is successful, however; although, luckily for the girls’ sake, it’s the collaborations that don’t work: an ill-advised stab at psychedelia with Thomas Fehlman (“High Is The Pine”) falls flat, the silly rap collaboration with Eric Clark (“I Like It When It Burns A Bit”) is unnecessarily perverse and cloyingly annoying, despite an admittedly catchy beat, and the headache-inducing, techno/rap noise confab with Rashad Becker and Patric Catini (“Ledercouch”) is best avoided altogether. But the fun returns on “Cobra Movement,” which sounds like The B-52’s on acid and is probably a barnstorming sight to behold at their legendary, clothing-challenged live gigs, which are reportedly a hoot-and-a-half. “Heavy Rotation” is a bubbling cauldron of party beats, Go-Go girl glitz and another guaranteed dancefloor stormer, and the gals end with the appropriately-titled shouter “Yes, I’m Finished.” It’s obvious from most of these baker’s dozen fodderstompers that these girls just wanna have fun. Let’s just say that Cobra Killer came, saw and conquered my heart and they will yours, too.
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