What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women, obviously! But what is second best? We reckon getting pumped with some classic Arnie movies comes pretty damn close. Delivering the musclebound musical equivalent are Californian beefcakes ArnoCorps, whose Live Audio Assaults – returning to the UK for the Heroic Proportion Tour this week – are surely the closest your average headbanger will ever come to staging a rescue mission into some tropical South American hellhole.
Now into their 19th year as an active outfit, despite some pale imitations, they are indisputably the original, best and broadest-shouldered band of their type. Who better, we thought, to rank Scwarzenegger’s corpse-strewn classics? Safe to say, they didn’t disappoint…
“Come on, don’t bullshit me. You’re asking ArnoCorps to rank movies starring the Schwarzenstrudel?” grins hulking frontman Graf Holzfeuer, toking a stogie, clenching his fist and over-enunciating every syllable like the godamn hero he is. “Let me tell you, we can only rank these cinematic depictions of action mythology by the qualifier we best understand: ballsiness!”
Bloodthirsty bombast and empty-headed action worship are all well and good, see, but this band is about feeling the pump of positivity and empowerment… “For nearly 20 years we’ve taken on the mission of reclaiming the ancient heroic stories of our homeland,” Graf continues, unloading his band’s bonkers doctrine with protein-packed glee. “It’s the same lore and mythology of the alpine regions of Austria which have been shamelessly pilfered by Hollywood movie moguls. ArnoCorps reveal the motivational meanings that so many miss in those cinematic exploitations…”