If you can imagine Raw Power subverted by good intentions, Kiss debased by righteousness or Alice Cooper perverted by better make-up then you’ve got a pretty good grasp of Julian Cope’s new band, Brain Donor, where the guitars go "klanggg" and it’s happy-hour for lobotomies. However, if you can’t handle songs whose timings regularly run into double figures, you’re venturing into nightmare territory and should bail out now.

I’ve been a long-term advocate of all things Cope, and it is a Cope of many colours - there’s the post-punk pop of the Teardrop Explodes, the alienated isolation of the Fried era, the joyful wallows in fear and paranoia that were Skellington and Droolian, the righteous environmental activist of Peggy Suicide, right up to the pinnacles of greatness that were his Krautrock masterpieces Jehovahkill and Rite. Since then it’s been a little more hit and miss with every album eventually lapsing into self-indulgence from the pointless guitar soloing of "STARCAR" to the pharisaic new-age babble of Interpreter. Frankly I cringe with embarrassment and start edging away every time someone refers to the world as "The Mother" in exactly the same way as I do when people refer to their "Heavenly Father". The focus may be different but the mind-set is similar and neither of them say anything to me other than "Run away! Run away!"

But it’s safe to say that Copey is back on prime form again, finally realising his desire to create a double-necked dumb metal classic and then doing it twice over. Not only has he just released the first Brain Donor album, but also a collaboration between several of Cope’s friends under the moniker LAMF (Like A Motherfucker). While Brain Donor are more than happy to rock out, LAMF prefer to rock in, producing an album of mostly-drumless ambient metal which is an infinitely more workable project than you may at first imagine.

Cope has clearly wanted to put some distance between himself and the seemingly (and fortunately) never-ending Krautrock revival. After rediscovering and revelling in the stuff in the early 1990s, convincing the rest of the world to obsess over this glorious music and then clearly realising that he was becoming more closely associated with other people’s music than his own, he’s tended recently to talk about something superficially far less far-out - 70s metal. Anyone who witnessed his introduction to an evening of Krautrock films in London several years ago, during which he uncomfortably squirmed his way off-stage, embarrassed at being put in such a position, will understand his need to move on.

Initially I felt highly dubious about this new direction, fearing all kinds of uncool indulgences, but now suspect that he is going to carry the rest of the world with him on his obsession yet again. This is clear right from the opening few seconds of Brain Donor’s "She Saw Me Coming", an over-sexed psychedelic teenage riff grinder of incredible stupidity and smartness which is immediately blown to pieces by the following tune, "Get Off Your Pretty Face".

It’s classic Cope - everything that Saint Julian could have been if hadn’t been cursed by being birthed in the period of time forever known as humanity’s greatest mistake - the mid-1980s. Feedback, Tap-esque guitar soloing, pulverising riffs which could put the ‘daisy cutter’ to shame, a throbbing great groove not heard since Peggy Suicide, smart/dumb lyrics that would have made the 19 year old Iggy Pop jump for joy, "Get Off Your Pretty Face" has it all and there is nearly an hour more to go of the album.

Much of that hour is taken up by the final tune, the 20+ minute "She’s Gotta Have It" which manages to sustain its initial adrenaline rush for over 10 minutes before shifting gear and gently cycling round and round in a glorious head-spin for the final segment.

LAMF is profoundly crunchy. It takes us in a completely different direction from Brain Donor, however - there’s no pop sassyness or killer distorted melodies here. The theme tune, accurately titled "Like A Motherfucker", is a sprawling 9 minutes of wah guitar and bass riffs, drenched in feedback, Mellotron choruses and widdley-diddley finger sprints across the fret-board. "Megalithic Goddess" manages to make up for its title by being a thrill a minute - all 17 of them.

The drums fully kick in on the 23 minute tune "The Death of the Motherculture at Mona Mam Gymru, the wailing Shamanic Fury of the Hoeurs and Druids and the Coming of the Romans", whose title is almost as long as the song itself. Fortunately the actual song makes perfect unpretensious sense, even if the title doesn't. It's an endless swaggering cave-man stomp up the steps of the space-ship and brings a triumphant close to the album.

Clearly Cope and Thighpaulsandra (present on both LAMF and Brain Donor) have sussed out exactly where they went so wrong on their Queen Elizabeth albums and have here produced two albums of absolutely essential weirdness with the greatest guitar sounds and electronic brain-buzzes I’ve ever heard. It’s a thrill to have Julian Cope barfing up something as effortlessly brilliant as this again, don’t miss out.