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2024 Body Count Tour Dates

• May 22 Anaheim, CA House of Blues Anaheim --> Tickets
• May 24 Eagle River, AK Matanuska Brewing Company --> Tickets
• Jun 05 Gdansk, Poland Mystic Festival 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 07 Hamburg, Germany Inselpark Arena --> Tickets
• Jun 08 Nürnberg, Germany Rock im Park 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 09 Nürburg, Germany Rock am Ring 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 11 Berlin, Germany Zitadelle Spandau --> Tickets
• Jun 13 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic Rock for People 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 15 Nickelsdorf, Austria Nova Rock 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 16 Zagreb, Croatia Salata Stadium --> Tickets
• Jun 17 Zurich, Switzerland Komplex 457 --> Tickets
• Jun 18 Lausanne, Switzerland Les Docks --> Tickets
• Jun 20 Nummijärvi, Finland Nummirock 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 22 Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhell Festival --> Sold out!
• Jun 23 Dessel, Belgium Graspop Metal Meeting 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 25 Esch-Sur-Alzette, Luxembourg Rockhal --> Tickets
• Jun 26 Amsterdam, Netherlands Paradiso --> Tickets
• Jun 27 Ysselsteyn, Netherlands Jera On Air --> Tickets
• Jun 28 Clisson, France Hellfest 2024 --> Tickets
• Jun 30 London, United Kingdom O2 Forum Kentish Town --> Tickets
• Jul 01 Manchester, United Kingdom O2 Ritz Manchester --> Tickets
• Jul 02 Glasgow, United Kingdom Galvanizers Yard --> Tickets

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The Unkillable Body Count: Inside Ice-T's Relentless "Grindhouse" Metal Band

For those who don't know the whole story, the saga of Body Count is one of rock's great cautionary tales. A Los Angeles reality rapper starts a heavy-metal group with his neighborhood homies. They play a few gigs around town, land a plum spot on Perry Farrell's first Lollapalooza tour and stun tens of thousands with their massive hard-rock power. A self-titled album follows, and everything looks swell — until a police fraternal organization notices a song the group has played live for well over a year, a no-hold-barred protest song against police brutality called "Cop Killer." Widespread and subtly racist criticism reaches a feverish peak when the President and Vice President of the United States single out the rapper for attack during a contentious election season. Rapper eventually withdraws the offending track from circulation and then leaves the record label that put out the album, too.

The Ballad of Ice-T and "Cop Killer" is a fable as familiar as any in the Nineties rock canon, recounted in countless docs, history books, and Biography-style TV specials. The twist is that, 28 years after Ice-T nearly scorched himself on what he calls "the electric fence" in American culture, the band is still going strong. In fact, they're arguably as strong as ever.

Body Count have endured hardships that go deeper than political theater. Much of the initial band — Ice-T, guitarists Ernie "C" Cunnigan and Dennis "D-Roc" Miles, bassist Lloyd "Mooseman" Roberts, drummer Victor Ray "Beatmaster V" Wilson and backing vocalists/hypemen Sean E Sean and Sean E. Mack — died from various causes, leaving Ice, Ernie C and Sean as the only original members of the crew left. Their battle scars have embedded the group with a sterling reputation. No longer just a rapper and his friends taking a rock & roll holiday, they're a true metal act that paid dues and survived long enough to reap the benefits.

You can hear that hard work paying off in Carnivore , a new album released nearly 30 years after their self-titled debut that finds Body Count moving from strength to strength. The LP is stacked with standout moments, whether it's an unexpectedly furious cover of Motörhead's "Ace of Spades," or Evanescence's Amy Lee singing backing vocals on "When I'm Gone," a hammering, angry track inspired by rapper Nipsey Hussle's death and the subsequent outpouring of affection for him. "People wait until you die, and then they show all this respect. Why not show it while they're alive?" says Ice. The album is streamlined and propulsive, exhibiting a deftness that far outstrips Body Count's early Nineties thrash. It's the latest in a late-period renaissance.

"It's easy to connect with the rock people now because they know we're official," says Ice-T. "Being on tour, playing with other bands, other bands seeing us out there moving the crowd. Not just being a band that thinks they can make a good record, but actually having some good hits under your belt. I think the word gets around that Body Count is dead serious."

Talking to Ice-T can be a bit overwhelming. The 62-year-old, born Tracy Marrow, enjoys the kind of ubiquitous celebrity that inspires TV commercials (that popular 2016 Geico ad where he spoofs his name with a lemonade stand). He has starred as Detective Odafin Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for the past two decades. His resume includes a true-crime documentary series ( In Ice Cold Blood ), a pair of memoirs (1994's The Ice Opinion and 2011's Ice ), voiceover work for the 2019 computer-animation flick UglyDolls , too many films to name here, a Grammy Award, and NAACP Image Awards.

Certainly, Ice has seen and experienced more life than the average person. He's no longer the firebrand that once scared the political establishment and thrilled suburban kids everywhere with Rhyme Pays , his 1987 debut and one of the first albums in history to get an "Explicit Lyrics" sticker. But in conversation, he sounds hungry, eager to promote his work and share his views. Despite all his past success, he's still likes doing cool new shit.

Most importantly, Ice is a very funny dude. His sharp and often profane sense of humor is the secret sauce that animates his pioneering solo albums and made Body Count such a classic. Just listen to the way he bellows "There Goes the Neighborhood" over Ernie C's grinding guitar rhythm, taking pleasure in humiliating all the accidental racists who hate to see a black man achieve Hollywood success. Or play deep-cut favorite "Evil Dick," where he parodies the male libido.

Ice compares Body Count's formula to the mix of hippie sex, gross-out comedy, slasher horror, violent action and anti-government politics that animated Seventies exploitation cinema. "If you're not laughing, then you're buggin'," he says. "It's so harsh that it's funny. So it's kind of a dark humor. I call it grindhouse like a Tarantino movie. When the guy runs to the trunk, he doesn't pull out a gun, he pulls out a rocket launcher. That's Body Count."

When Ice describes the mid-Seventies cafeteria lunch scene at Crenshaw High School, the place where he met his soon-to-be Body Count friends, the setting sounds more like a Superbad and House Party teen romp than a Straight Outta Compton melodrama. A food fight feels liable to break out at any minute.

"[Ernie] was friends with another guy that I was in a dancing group with," says Ice. He casually notes that Ernie C grew up around Van Ness Avenue, a Bloods neighborhood "that I didn't really fuck with," while "most of my friends were Crips." (The Body Count initials also stand for Bloods and Crips.) Ice was part of a pop-locking group that included Sean E Sean. Ernie C's band would accompany the dancers with funk grooves. Meanwhile, says Ernie C, he would play harder rock like Peter Frampton, Aerosmith and the Isley Brothers (whose guitarist Ernie Isley is a huge influence) during school breaks.

"We would dance in high school against other schools and other cliques," says Ice. Performing routines to James Brown, BT Express and Parliament, they modeled themselves after famed street-dance troupe The Lockers. "We were a knockoff group," he laughs.

Then there was Beatmaster V, who Ice describes as a drummer/weed dealer. "He got kicked out of Crenshaw for selling weed. Vic ran across Crenshaw. He had a book with the pages cut out and a whole bunch of joints in it, and the security guard chased him across the quad. He threw [the book] up in the air, and it was joints for everybody," he laughs. "Then they threw his ass out of all L.A. city schools. So Vic was my man."

As Ice journeyed through L.A.'s fledging Eighties hip-hop scene, he stayed in touch with his school homies. (In the 1985 movie Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo , you can see Ernie C dripping in leather and banging a double-neck guitar in the background while Ice raps.) Those connections endured as the underground success of his 1986 12-inch "Dog'n the Wax/6 In the Mornin'" led to a major label deal with Sire Records, and rap hits like 1988's Power and his theme to the Dennis Hopper cops-and-gangsters flick Colors made him increasingly famous.

"As I became Ice-T from rapping, [Ernie C] and Beatmaster V used to want to play on my rap records," he recalls. "And I was like, well, hip-hop is done with samples — even though Beatmaster V plays on Rhyme Pays . There's live drums on the song 'Rhyme Pays' on my first album. But it was complicated to get them involved until I was able to create Body Count." Ernie C also contributed guitar to "The Girl Tried to Kill Me," a track from 1989's The Iceberg /Freedom of Speech… Just Watch What You Say .

Inspiration for Body Count came from multiple sources. As Ice-T toured throughout Europe in the late Eighties, he noticed how audiences would mosh to fast rap cuts like Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise" and "Welcome to the Terrordome." Back in the States, he rejoined his South Central L.A. friends.

"Mooseman was selling weed. D-Roc was kinda like Ernie's student. And I said, 'Look, I've got an idea for a band. We're going to base it off of Black Sabbath. We're going to base it off of Suicidal [Tendencies]. We're going to base it off of Slayer," says Ice. With their unapologetic Latin gangster image, Suicidal Tendencies were a major influence on Body Count's subsequent all-black, stripped-down look. Also key were Red Hot Chili Peppers, Infectious Grooves and the West Coast's then-thriving funk-metal scene, as well as Black Flag's sludgy punk riffs and anti-authoritarian message. Ice says his shouty vocal approach is less inspired by rap music than New York hardcore groups like Agnostic Front.

Ernie C remembers that the band wrote their material through jam sessions, then tested the songs at small club shows, opening for groups like DRI. "We didn't know this whole idea would work," he says. "We did 11 shows in L.A., and next thing we know we were playing at Lollapalooza." Slowly but surely, the group developed what arguably became the first rap-metal album. (Fans of Rage Against the Machine's 1991 demo tape may disagree.) The rest is history.

After the "Cop Killer" controversy and a departure from Sire Records, Body Count tried to recover by signing with Virgin Records. That resulted in two widely derided albums, Born Dead and Violent Demise: The Last Days . (On the intro to Violent Demise , Ice-T even admits that Born Dead sucked — then guns down a music critic who keeps hectoring him about the topic.) It was during a 1996 concert in Belgium that Ice realized that Beatmaster V was sick with leukemia.

"We had a big, sold-out concert. I went backstage, and the doctor checked his blood count. And the doctor told us that he was technically dead, like, the way his blood was. I canceled the concert with a packed arena. We took a lot of shit for that because we didn't tell anybody he had cancer. We just said he was sick," Ice remembers. "I'm not going to do a show and have one of my best friends die." Less than eight months later, Beatmaster V passed away.

Mooseman died the following year. "Mooseman went home to visit his friends in the neighborhood they grew up, which was Rollin' 60s [Crips]," says Ice. "Some guys pulled up and decided to start shooting. Everybody ran down the driveway, and Moose was the only one hit. Got shot in the back.

"When we make these records and people are like, 'Oh, you're glamorizing this shit,' I'm like, 'No, we're telling you how the fuck it is. One of our band members died from that.'"

Rebuilding Body Count has been a painstaking process. D-Roc died in 2004. "He had lymphoma. He had been sick the entire time we were in the band. I guess it just finally caught up with him," says Ice. "Every time one of the band members dies, the band is stopped, sometimes for over a year, just out of mourning. Like, yo, what do we do?" Sean E. Mack left the group sometime around 2001, and a 2006 comeback album, Murder 4 Hire , didn't quite work out.

It wasn't until 2014's Manslaughter that Body Count found the right combination of new blood. Vincent "Price" Dennis, bassist for power-metal combo Steel Prophet, worked at the rehearsal hall Body Count used. Dennis subsequently recruited drummer Will "Ill Will" Dorsey. Guitarist Juan "Juan of the Dead" Garcia connected with the group when they signed with Sumerian Records. He cut his teeth in bands like Agent Steel and Evildead.

The key addition, however, may be producer Will Putney. As a musician himself — he plays guitar for deathcore band Fit for an Autopsy — Putney has been instrumental in modernizing Body Count's sound. "He organizes everything," says Ernie C, noting that Putney often adds his own guitar parts to fill out the sound. "He knows how we play. When people say, 'Did you play that,' I say, 'I might not have played it. I don't know what I played or I didn't play.' But it's always in the framework of what we would play.

"The first records were a little more punk-sounding. It was a little looser, a little more funk," Ernie adds. "This band is more tight, this band is more precise. We're more like a Slayer now. That's the way metal is right now. Metal is real tight and precise."

Ice says it may have been hard to rebuild Body Count and replace the ones who left, but "you have to do it in honor of them. We never disrespect them. Vince knows he's not Mooseman. Will knows he's not Beatmaster V. Juan knows he's not D-Roc. ... But the fans love it, and the fans want the band to continue. It's just life. Life has to go on."

The success of Manslaughter proved that fans still want to see Body Count. "We went to Mayhem Fest, and the fans were there," says Ice. Then came Bloodlust , which features high-wattage guests like Megadeth's Dave Mustaine and Sepultura's founding frontman Max Cavalera. "Black Hoodie," a throttling protest track inspired by the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, surprisingly earned a 2018 Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance before losing out to Mastodon's "Sultan's Curse." "I thought it was a joke," Ice says of hearing the news of the nomination. "But it's one of those things where you don't care about it until you're nominated. Then you're like, I want to win."

In some ways, Body Count will always chase those golden months in 1991 and 1992 when the band forged a seminal moment in rock history amidst a confluence of social and political controversy that can't be repeated. Mostly, though, they're focused on the present. "We didn't even know how good [that first album] was until later, when we tried to do it again," Ice says, laughing heartily. "But I think right now, with Carnivore , we're at full power."

Below, see Ice-T discuss three decades of Body Count with SiriusXM Liquid Metal's Shawn the Butcher:

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Body Count is currently touring across 9 countries and has 16 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at House of Blues - Old Location in Anaheim, after that they'll be at Mystic Festival in Gdansk.

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An absolutely brilliant night and all three bands put on a hell of a show and definitely see this guys again as the lead singer is one of my favourite artists of all time and his band body count is definitely one of my favourite bands of all time and extremely great live band

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​Body Count tour dates: 24 concerts in 14 countries

About body count.

Body Count is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1990. The group is fronted by Ice-T, who co-founded the group with lead guitarist Ernie C out of their interest in heavy metal music. Ice-T took on the role of vocalist and writing the lyrics for most of the group's songs. Lead guitarist Ernie C has been responsible for writing the group's music. Their controversial self-titled debut album was released on Sire Records in 1992. The song "Cop Killer" was the subject of much controversy. Although Sire Records' parent company, Warner Bros. Records, defended the single, Ice-T chose to remove the track from the album because he felt that the controversy had eclipsed the music itself. The group left Sire the following year. Since then, they have released four further albums on different labels, none of which have been received as commercially or critically well as their debut album. Three out of the band's original six members are deceased: D-Roc died from lymphoma, Beatmaster V from leukemia and Mooseman in a drive-by shooting.

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Body Count: the story behind the debut album

In 2006, Metal Hammer spoke to Ice T about his metal band Body Count’s controversial debut album – a record that’s more relevant than ever right now

Few bands have ever generated such hatred, fear and stark, staring paranoia as Body Count . Because they gave a shit, and never cared if you didn’t. This wasn’t a bunch of middle-class white kids giving the finger to ‘safe’ targets. Here were a band so relentlessly impassioned by the social imbalance and racial tension they’d faced almost every day of their short lives that music wasn’t an escape for them, it was a weapon of mass instruction.

By the end of the 1980s, Ice-T – real name: Tracy Morrow – had established himself as one of the most crucial and confrontational figures on the rap scene. His 1989 album, The Iceberg/Freedom Of Speech… Just Watch What You Say , had turned him into a megastar – someone in demand. He even got a major role in the movie New Jack City , for which he recorded the song New Jack Hustler , one of the stand-out songs on his 1991 album OG: Original Gangster . That same records also featured the track Body Count , a title that Ice took as the name for a brand new metal band he was putting together.

“You know, all the Body Count guys went to the same high school as me, in Crenshaw [a suburb of Los Angeles]. They were rock guys, who just wanted to get out and play, but because at the time [the end of the 1980s] everyone was into Spandex, and that wasn’t their thing. So, the guys [guitarists Ernie C. and D-Roc, bassist Mooseman and drummer Beatmaster V.] would nag me to let them play on my albums. Eventually I thought that I’d put together a rock band with these guys, just for fun. We’d play on the weekends, and then got the chance to tour with DRI and Exodus , which was an experience.

“I remember one gig we did in Santa Rosa, North California. The audience was full of skinheads, and you can imagine that, when we got onstage, they didn’t exactly like us. We won them over. By the end they had a mosh pit going. We had a few of our own songs by then, and then we’d jam on stuff like Jimi Hendrix ’s Machine Gun . It was cool.”

Things started to become serious when Body Count got the chance to play on the 1991 Lollapalooza tour of America. It was a turning point, as Ice-T reflects:

“Ernie knew Perry Farrell [the Jane’s Addiction frontman, who was one of the founders of the touring festival], and he wanted me to do an hour’s set of my raps. But I thought that I’d split my set into two parts, doing the rap thing for half of it, and present Body Count for the other part. We’d already worked up stuff like Body Count’s In The House , KKK Bitch and There Goes The Neighborhood… ”

And also one of the most controversial songs of the era, Cop Killer . Now, when the band’s debut album was released in March 1992, it was called Cop Killer , but this was soon changed, as Body Count and their label, Warner Brothers, came under fire from pressure groups who saw this as an incitement for people to literally go out and shoot policemen.

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“We didn’t expect anything like the outrage that happened. We’d been doing this song live for a year, and to me this was an urban twist on what other heavy bands were doing, singing about eating abortions and things like that. We’d toured with Napalm Death and Cannibal Corpse , and they had songs with far worse sentiments that Cop Killer . But you know what the difference was? You couldn’t hear their lyrics, whereas with me you got every word. So they got away with it, but with Cop Killer , we didn’t.”

Part of Body Count’s problem was that the debut album was released just before the infamous Rodney King riots in LA. In March 1991, King had been filmed by a bystander, being brutally beaten up by the police, after he was arrested following a high speed chase – having initially refused a request to stop. As a result, a court case was brought against four of those involved in this shocking attack. When a virtually all-white jury acquitted the quartet in April 1992, despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence, the black community rioted, seeing it as a racist verdict.

The Cop Killer song was subsequently attacked by representatives of the police for inciting violence. It was even claimed by Dennis R. Martin, former President of the National Association Of Chiefs Of Police, that it had, “been implicated in at least two shooting incidents and has inflamed racial tensions in cities across the country”.

As a result, Ice-T took it off the album, with the title of the record itself being changed to Body Count .

“I really believed that the fuss was crazy. I wasn’t trying to get cops killed at all. I was playing a fucking role in the song. You don’t think David Bowie’s an astronaut because he plays Major Tom in Space Oddity . And you listen to any Barry White album. There’s one song where he’s going, ‘Baby, I love you.’ The next is, ‘Baby, don’t ever leave me’, and then he’s saying. ‘Bitch, I’m outta here’. All on one record! That’s what any singer does, OK? I’m angry in some songs, and not in others – I can’t go onstage and just rage. I’d go insane.

“I did feel really sorry for Warner Brothers, though. They were the ones getting the death threats and all the trouble over the song. So, I made the decision to take it off the album. We’d already sold a million copies, and when we replaced it with a re-mixed version of Freedom Of Speech [originally on the album The Iceberg/Freedom Of Speech… Just Watch What You Say ] we sold another million.

“I also thought there was an irony in putting that track on the album, because what this whole incident said was that Body Count weren’t allowed to have freedom of speech. “The aim with the withdrawal of Cop Killer was to know when you need to retreat – only to return with superior firepower!”

The album, recorded between September and December 1991, has an unrelenting humour that’s so often missed by those quick to pick up on its controversial nature – “laughter’s definitely there, although it is very dark and heavy,” says Ice. – but there are songs with a significant point to make. For instance, there’s the infamous KKK Bitch .

“Ha! That’s based on a true story, as they say. We used to play in all these redneck areas, and some beautiful white girls would come backstage, to have sex with us! That’s what they wanted. And then they’d say things like, ‘My boyfriend wouldn’t like it if he knew I was here. He hates niggers. And my daddy is in the Ku Klux Klan’. What the fuck! It made no sense that these girls would be into us, when you think about the families they came from. Fucked up or what?!”

And if you want a different take on things, check out Momma’s Gotta Die Tonight , which is actually about a black woman hating the fact that her son’s seeing a white girl – and gets dismembered for her troubles.

“Look, I am not racist in any way, shape or form. I don’t trust humans. That’s as far as it goes for me. Colour never comes into it. But there is such a thing as ‘reactive racism’, something you’re brought up with, and it stays with you. We can all think of certain countries who naturally hate other countries, because of what’s happened in the distant past.

“In this song, I confront the issue of the way black people from my father’s generation view racism. He talked to me about white people differently to the way that I would talk to my son. But there again, I respect what those who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s went through and did to make things better for blacks. Without their determination to fight for their rights, we wouldn’t be as comparatively well off as we are today.”

Body Count also tackle the thorny subject of drugs on The Winner Loses .

“I’m totally anti-drugs,” avers Ice-T. “I don’t belong to the gang mentality, or any of that shit. And never have done. I wrote that song about a friend of mine, and how drugs fucked up his life. All the songs here are based on personal experience, just put into lyrics. And I’m proud of what we did on that record.”

Surely, Voodoo can’t have been inspired by ‘personal experience’. Come on, did Ice-T really become the victim of a voodoo doll, as is outlined in the song?

“No. But we used to go to New Orleans and these shops would sell all sorts of voodoo shit. Anyway, I got to thinking about how weird it would be if I was the victim of someone with a voodoo doll that looked like me! I imagined the agonies you’d go through, and I put it into a song. No, it’s not inspired by a nightmare, or anything like that. Just an idea. I think it also represents our dark humour really well. “

The Body Count album still stands as an epochal record. Some 22 years after it first savaged your sensibilities and attitudes, its combination of streetwise confrontation and raw sexuality can still stir. Ice-T’s raps are rampant surges of emotion, while the riffs can pierce even the most armour-plated of smug moralities. This is still a dangerous prowler.

“Ice-T always wants to do things first,” says the rapper, with considered pride. “We are all very grateful for the way metal fans accepted us – we have to be humble about it – and I do believe that this isn’t a rap- rock album, but a rock record.

“However, we were the first to do this sort of thing, and we did see a trend coming along. I remember for our tour promoting this album, Ernie C. brought along a bunch of kids, who jumped about and had so much energy that they really impressed. They supported us on the tour, and were a band called Rage Against The Machine. Then, with bands like Limp Bizkit it was obvious that the style of music we’d begun was about to become very commercial. But that wasn’t any motivation for Body Count. This is a career. We want to make 10 albums or more. And you know what, that Body Count album… fuck, I’m gonna say it. Not only the first of its kind, but the best!”

Published in Metal Hammer #156

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for  Record Mirror  magazine in the late 70s and  Metal Fury  in the early 80s before joining  Kerrang!  at its launch in 1981. His first book,  Encyclopedia Metallica , published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the  Anthrax  song  Metal Thrashing Mad  in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021 . 

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By Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

Metal / Rap

Century Media

April 13, 2017

It takes a special balance to straddle the line between piousness and self-parody, but Tracy Marrow, aka  Ice-T , has long pulled it off with gusto. Since the beginning of his 1987 hip-hop debut Rhyme Pays , Marrow has relished his self-appointed role as something like Crenshaw, Los Angeles’ unofficial ambassador to the world. As Marrow once explained to Arsenio Hall in 1989, his m.o. has been to intentionally paint exaggerated scenarios in order to show the world what street hustling life is like while also discouraging black youth from pursuing a life of crime. In 1990, Marrow carried the same approach over into metal group Body Count , which he founded with southpaw guitarist Ernie Cunnigan aka Ernie C.

In an interlude on Body Count’s seventh album,  Bloodlust , Marrow explains that he started the band to provide the metal-loving Cunnigan with a musical vehicle while also expressing his own love for three key influences:  Black Sabbath , Suicidal Tendencies , and Slayer . If you don't mind Marrow’s didactic style, the impromptu Q&A comes off with some charm, as if Marrow were standing at a lectern expounding on the band’s history. (Hell, if Steve Albini can take questions halfway through Shellac ’s shows, why shouldn’t Marrow do the same on his own records?) In fact, much of this album plays like the 2015 TED Talk Marrow gave at the Sing Sing maximum-security prison, only set to a bracing thrashcore/groove metal soundtrack.

On his own, Ice-T has maintained household-name status for his 17-year role as Detective Tutuola on the “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” TV series. But the last time Body Count caused any real ripples in the zeitgeist came in the summers of ’91 and ’92, first as a surprise addition to Ice-T’s rap set on the inaugural Lollapalooza tour, and then as the source of a heated controversy over their song “Cop Killer.” Marrow ultimately agreed to pull “Cop Killer” from later pressings of the band’s 1992 debut. Since then, the band has basically repeated itself, almost becoming a heritage act before its time. These days, Body Count can operate in a comfortable space satisfying the public’s niche appetites for vintage metal and hardcore.

But now, owing to the recent occurrences of police brutality captured on video, Body Count stand poised to hit a nerve once again. Marrow attempts to do so most blatantly on “No Lives Matter.” No surprise, he explains the song’s motives in a monologue before it even begins. It’s not, as the ironic title might suggest, a renunciation of the Black Lives Matter movement, but a reminder that although racism is very much alive, power elites view all poor people with the same inhumane disregard. Similarly, Marrow waxes professorial at the beginning of the title track, where he says: “Since the beginning of time, humans have killed each other because they disagreed... The ability to kill is as innate as our ability to love.”

Needless to say, Marrow likes to spell things out. On Bloodlust , he sounds like he’s narrating a profanity-laced “Sesame Street” segment: Imagine an Ice-T muppet popping out of garbage cans shouting, “They’re shootin’ at cops/They’re pushing the line/Racism is high/The country’s divided, you know the fuck why.../The public is dumb.../Our leaders are evil!”  Bloodlust is like that; it doesn’t take long to feel like you’re being patronized. That said, Marrow—who doesn’t rhyme on Body Count albums—is simply following in the footsteps of his most pointedly direct hardcore influences. For proof, just look at the Exploited medley he recorded with Slayer in 1993. But his style hasn’t changed one iota since then. Neither, really, has the rest of the band’s. They keep the music raw enough that it sounds almost-but-not-quite amateurish—again, following in the hardcore/early-thrash tradition—while Marrow’s willingness to indulge in comic absurdity with the lyrics makes Body Count’s preachiness more palatable.

Bloodlust opens with a mock emergency broadcast announcement, in which  Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine announces that martial law has been declared by the Department of Homeland Security, that gatherings of two or more people are now illegal, that “all traitors will be shot,” and that “America is now engaged in civil war.” It’s hokey as hell. But what makes Ice-T still valuable in a world where we now have Killer Mike , Dälek , the Coup , and Immortal Technique is his unique ability to deliver a message of upheaval that also feels celebratory. Later in the opening track, there’s a giddy sense of anticipation when Ice yells “I’m feelin’ the tension/Don’t tell me you don’t.../Rich or poor, urban war/This shit just might jump off tonight” over squealing leads. At moments like that, Ice-T and Ernie C capture the energy of a party record while urging us to give serious consideration to some of the most naggingly persistent issues of our time—an accomplishment regardless of how spotty Bloodlust gets.

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Body Count feat. Ice-T Announces 2024 ‘Merciless’ European and UK Tour Dates

Body Count featuring Ice-T have announced details of a full European tour for 2024. Get dates for the ‘Merciless’ trek here.

World-acclaimed heavy metal band Body Count , fronted by legendary Ice-T , have announced their Merciless EU/UK 2024 tour.

The band will be performing at major European festivals throughout summer and marks a highly anticipated return to live performances after the pandemic-induced hiatus which halted their plans to tour and perform their previous album Carnivore , an album notable for winning a Grammy in the Best Metal Performance category for its track “Bum-Rush”.

Ice-T has expressed that the inability to perform and fully promote Carnivore was a significant disappointment, as the essence of making albums is to perform them live.

The band is currently completing their eighth studio album, titled Merciless , which is expected to be released this year via Century Media Records .

Tour Dates :

06/05 – Mystic Festival – Gdansk, Poland 06/07 – Edel Optics Arena – Hamburg, Germany 06/08 – Rock Im Park – Nürnberg, Germany 06/09 – Rock Am Ring – Eifel, Nürburg, Germany 06/11 – Citadel Music Festival – Berlin, Germany 06/13 – Rock For People – Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic 06/14 – Budapest Park, Budapest, Hungary 06/15 – Novarock – Nickelsdorf, Austria 06/16 – SRC Salata – Zagreb, Croatia 06/17 – Komplex 457 – Zurich, Switzerland 06/18 – Les Docks – Lausanne, Switzerland 06/20 – Nummirock – Nummijarvi, Finland 06/22 – Copenhell – Copenhagen, Denmark 06/23 – Graspop, Dessel, Belgium 06/25 – Rockhal – Luxembourg, Luxembourg 06/26 – Paradiso – Amsterdam, Netherlands 06/27 – Jera On Air – Ysselsteyn, Netherlands 06/28 – Hellfest – Clisson, France 06/30 – O2 Kentish Town Forum – London, United Kingdom 07/01 – The Ritz – Manchester, United Kingdom 07/02 – SWG3 (Galvanizers) – Glasgow, United Kingdom

For ticket details, head over to the official Body Count website here .

Body Count ‘Merciless’ Tour Poster

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BODY COUNT will embark on the “Merciless Tour” this summer

Body Count feat. Ice-T will come to Germany for two shows in June 2024. The band will play the following shows:

07.06.2024 Hamburg – Inselpark Arena 11.06.2024 Berlin – Zitadelle Spandau

And HERE is where you can get your ticket for these shows.

Body Count started in 1992 and it was the debut album that was a blast. The crossover of metal, punk and rap set the scene for many other bands to follow, and it was the song “Cop Killer” that caused some controverse discussions and at the same time made Body Count rather popular.

The new Body Count album “Merciless” is announced and should be released this year via Century Media, giving the tour its title: “Merciless Tour”. Stay tuned for more.

Photo: Alessandro Solca

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BODY COUNT FT. ICE-T

O2 forum kentish town | london.

Doors: 19:00

World-acclaimed heavy metal band BODY COUNT, fronted by legendary Ice-T, are touring their eighth studio album Merciless , the follow up to the Grammy Award-winning Carnivore .

Promising to be an electrifying showcase, fans can expect the same intensity and commitment to powerful messages that have always been a hallmark of their music, known for its bold, unapologetic style.

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Body Count feat. ICE-T

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