Body Count: Violent Demise: The Last Days

As everyone no doubt remembers, Ice-T's heavy-metal band Body Count is famous for the flap brought about by its 1992 single "Cop Killer." What most people have forgotten, however, is everything the band has done since: Without the publicity created by music-censoring dipshits, Body Count's turgid follow-up, Born Dead, was a huge flop. So it's kind of surprising to see another new Body Count album mining the band's familiar themes of violent death, violent sex and violent attacks upon authorities and rock critics. (The opening track, "Interview," falls back on the old stand-by of firing back at critics, while virtually admitting that Born Dead was an uninspired, near-unlistenable sack of excrement.) Violent Demise isn't a whole lot different from its predecessors: It's got all the same meaty guitars and lyrics that claim to be satirical but are no different from the mysogynistic, hateful junk they supposedly satirize. There's something to be said for over-the-top, visceral rap/metal fantasies, and on that level Body Count delivers. But boy, is it ever dumb.