KOMAROV MAGNIFICENT BACKFLIP - Cop Days

And in the end we cops end up resembling the criminals: in our words, in our habits, and sometimes even in our gestures.

(from "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" by Elio Petri (1970)

Days of high urban tension. This is the scorching, all-too-current backdrop chosen by Komarov Magnificent Backflip to welcome the listener into "Cop Days", the follow-up to their solid garage-punk debut, the thoroughly DIY "Fingerblaster" (2023), and to a brief introductory release on Bronson Recordings, "Better Fat Than Sad", a promotional single outside the sophomore record, built at least in part by design without quite achieving the hoped-for effect - especially considering that the new album puts decidedly more meat on the fire, both in terms of songwriting and sound.

The concept behind "Cop Days" is fairly plain: it's a record against the police... but seen from their own point of view. Simply saying "all cops are bastards" and trading in slogans from the other side of the barricade would have been, in effect, banal; what's interesting and provocative instead is a (more or less ambiguous) reckoning from those standing behind the shield. This idea springs from today's social crises and points to an even more universal root, going beyond the physical repression depicted in the record - which nonetheless remains its most visible and impossible-to-ignore aspect.

An authoritarian drift can be identified in oppression that is not only physical but also ideological, perpetrated by those who, according to the official narrative, are supposed to protect others - implicating, therefore, every category holding power and responsibility, which, rather than addressing the countless fractures and disparities within communities, do nothing but exacerbate them ever more violently.

The record opens in medias res with baton blows simulated by the drum rolls of "Bonk!", the antechamber to the racing guitars of the fast-paced "The Result", which describes the conflicting emotions of a police officer on his first day of work, accompanied by a farcical video that conceals all manner of homages, from a parody of the style of 1970s Italian cop movies to a nod to Věra Chytilová's subversive film "Daisies" (1966).

A first peak is nearly reached with "Grotesque", a garage-tinged, unhinged "Highway Star" complete with an ambulance ride, but the climax (already hinted at by their live performances) is the structured, martial crescendo of "Cops Clubs/Kids Cigs", which depending on the mood dives into blistering surf-punk flourishes or heavy post-hc-indebted rhythms, and from its very title aims to underline the contrast between "them" and "us".

"Jail Time" is an adrenaline rush in "Mclusky Do Dallas" territory, followed by the verses of "Tom Bruise", a nod to an electric, aggressive "The Devil Went Down To Georgia", while the bass of the more brooding "Blender" slips into a noir blues atmosphere that could almost evoke "Your Funeral… My Trial" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, wrapped in a curtain of tear gas in a city square standing in for the thick cigarette smoke of a dingy dive bar.

I give you a flower, just from flowers love is born.

A flower because not everyone despises you.

A flower for all the hatred thrown at you just because you wear a uniform.

Just one flower, just even all the flowers in the world wouldn’t be enough to give you the honor you deserve

Also drawing attention is the poetic intro to "S.O.S.", where the references oscillate between Jean Genet, Baudelaire and Banksy's "Flower Thrower", but with yet another shift in POV, which spirals into a headlong rush through cutting surf riffs, synthetic notes, country shadings and a raucous punk-blues à-la Gun Club, until the circle closes with "A Trial Of Good Intentions", whose title once again seems to evoke Mclusky — whom the band had actually supported at the Covo Club in Bologna in October 2025 — and their "To Hell With Good Intentions", while sonically it completely wrongfoots expectations with strings, horns and a parodic mood drawing on Beatles and Black Country, New Road.

Sarcasm and bitterness permeate the confrontational lyrics of "Cop Days", whose ultimate meaning ties into the theme of individual (non-)responsibility, and even more so collective responsibility at an institutional level, capable of justifying and silencing consciences. KMB retain the do-it-yourself urgency of their debut, which seeks not perfection but immediate impact, further building on and expanding the compositional range of sounds they had already introduced. An album that tackles the theme of abuses of power, sprouting from a growing sense of impunity at every level, but whose real challenge to the listener is figuring out where the denunciation ends and the resemblance to what it fights against begins.

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06/05/2026