Hot Action Cop - 'Hot Action Cop' (Lava / Eastwest)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
What would you rather be: stupid and happy, or intelligent and miserable..?
As much as we may cherish music of the deep and meaningful variety, there are those who will argue the case of a brainless good time over any of that boring nonsense any day. Hot Action Cop would, on this evidence, be ardent advocators of that school of thought. This is an often very stupid album, made by some very happy men, who sound like they love every minute of their job.
So, it's silly, yes, but by no means untalented. Hot Action Cop accomplish pretty impressively the task of dipping into genres as all-encompassing as rap, hip-hop, pop, funk and hard rock with some very infectious results.
Yet, it's as philosophical as an album with a picture of a woman's pert backside as its front cover can be. To be blunt, anyone with an interest in the sharp, alternative or avant garde has found their definitive, nightmare album... Honestly, hearing them threaten to 'get you butt naked, licky licky' on cringe-worthy, current single 'Fever for the Flava' is one of the most disturbing sounds in modern music. They even request naked pictures of your girlfriends on the inside cover.
Thus, 'Hot Action Cop' is very good at doing what it does, but apparently doesn't have a clue that anything else can be done. Because of this, it's debatable what HAC actually bring to the current music party, but if they bring anything, it's almost definitely a large crate of beer and a DVD copy of 'American Pie' so you can zoom in on all the naughty bits. Not an album for grown-ups, but hardly a band that want to be adults either.
Which makes the fact that some actually rather accomplished rock music is buried underneath all this crude lyrical content ('Giggle 'cause the vibrator it make her wanna pee,' anyone?) all the more aggravating. When they do calm down and lay off the weed, the likes of 'The Special' and 'Why Judy' are actually relatively eloquent pieces of music, and as such, much more likely to garner wide appeal.
An inevitable comparison is with early Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band who did just this: conjure puerile gesticulations - and then proceeded to produce career-best albums with a newly-found intellect. It's an attitude-change that Hot Action Cop would do well to take note of. Because after all, there's only so much mindless pleasure you can have before it starts wearing thin. Despite its numerous gratifications, this is about the limit.
Artists in this article: Hot Action Cop
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