Album: Julian Cope <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Dark Orgasm, HEAD HERITAGE

His second album of 2005 finds Julian Cope still pursuing the shamanic heavy-rock path of Citizen Cain'd, but with greater emphasis on the oppressive power of organised religion. With songs characterising burkha-wearing Muslim women as "brainwashed and ignorant', references to "Catholic rapists", and a general attitude perhaps best summed up by the line "What's left to believe when the God is a fool?", it's likely that Dark Orgasm would fall foul of any prospective law regarding religious defamation, from just about every possible angle - though personally, none of these comments is a fraction as offensive as the poorly punning reference to Ken Bigley in "I Found a New Way to Love Her". To give him his due, Cope's an equal-opportunity iconoclast, regarding "Christian, Muslim [and] Jew" alike as "a heinous crew", and attacking George Bush with equal vehemence in "Mr Invasion", a track which rocks as hard as anything on The Darkness's album. Sadly, the 20-minute "Death and Resurrection Show", which takes up the entirety of the second of these two CDs, is a drag; far better is the more focused, vituperative spirit of the tracks on the first CD.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Mr Invasion', 'Nothing to Lose Except My Mind', 'White Bitch Comes Good'