POP MUSIC REVIEW : Cop Shoot Cop on Target at Bogart’s

There are essentially two kinds of big-beat art bands in the world: those out to charm their audiences, and those--like Laibach, Ministry and good-period Swans--out to beat their audiences into submission.

The proto-industrial New York band Cop Shoot Cop--reputedly named for a New York Post headline, not for an Ice Cube song--sort of tries to do both, noisily. At Bogart’s on Wednesday, drummer Phil Puleo hid behind an array of percussion equipment that included a battered cooking pot and something that looked like a giant cheese grater, but hammered out martial snare-drum tattoos as brutal as anything that Metallica--or a fife and drum corps--ever came up with; singer Tod Ashley sneered and sputtered in a manner reminiscent of the Fall’s Mark Smith, but actually seemed sort of sweet.

They’re one-note wonders, Cop Shoot Cop, but it’s a pretty good note: thick, throbbing, kind of relentless, big-unison one-note riffs that sound something like Philip Glass tossed into a trash compactor with Motorhead, then sealed tight in a Hefty bag. There was a $2.98 version of Skinny Puppy’s harshly strobing light show. CSC is big into that Metallica-esque marching-band stuff, also a grinding two-bass thing the band probably picked up from the San Francisco band Flipper, and a synthesizer used not as a sweetener, but as a way to get a groovier kind of bass distortion. Charmingly awesome, these guys.