Arnocorps – The Greatest Band of All Time

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impulse buy

Anticulture Records
Produced by Jameson Hill

One thing’s for sure, Arnocorps are probably the most original band I’ve reviewed since starting at Jukebox. The “Arno” part of their name does indeed stand for Austrian action movie hero Arnold Schwarzenegger and every song on the album is based on a classic (?) Arnie movie.

We’ve got Predator, Total Recall, Last Action Hero, Running Man, Commando and True Lies among others. Sound dumb? It is. Very.

Musically the intro track sounds extremely promising. Until the singer comes in and literally growls out a band introduction of the kind you get at a gig. “Vielmehr Klampfe on guitar! Inzo der Barrakuda on guitar!” and so forth. A strange thing to do, but arguably original. The addition of a second bass player who basically plays like a third guitar is interesting and sometimes works to good affect, like on Collateral Damage, but is more often than not anonymous.

Downhill from here, however. Every track is made up of actual lines from the respective movie. Growled out sometimes to a melody, sometimes in the exact same way Arnie delivered them in the film. This is uninspired, rather stupid and frankly totally unenjoyable. Musically nothing lives up to the intro either, mostly becoming big and dumb to match the atrocious lyrical content (let’s face it, Arnie movies have never had the most insightful dialogue in the World). There’s some nice instrumental work during Commando and the aforementioned bass-work in Collateral Damage and the lyrics to End of Days aren’t directly lifted from the associated script, but none of this makes the record any more enjoyable to listen to and by about half way through its ridiculously short length (not even forty minutes!) all the songs start to sound the same anyway, with identical vocal delivery and the same punk-infused rhythm and feel cropping up.

This disc just goes to prove that if your idea is a bad one, original isn’t always best. The Greatest Band of All Time? I’m thinking of contacting Trading Standards.

“ dumb ”

Tracklist: Arno Intro / Predator / True Lies / Total Recall / Commando / Collateral Damage / End Of Days / Sixth Day / Running Man / Raw Deal / Eraser / Crom (Strong On His MTN) / Wheel Of Pain / Terminator / Last Action Hero

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Alternative, Arnocorps