Black Flag: What The...

BLACK FLAG: WHAT THE... (2013)

1) My Heart's Pumping; 2) Down In The Dirt; 3) Blood And Ashes; 4) Now Is The Time; 5) Wallow In Despair; 6) Slow Your Ass Down; 7) It's So Absurd; 8) Shut Up; 9) This Is Hell; 10) Go Away; 11) The Bitter End; 12) The Chase; 13) I'm Sick; 14) It's Not My Time To Go-Go; 15) Lies; 16) Get Out Of My Way; 17) Outside; 18) No Teeth; 19) To Hell And Back; 20) Give Me All Your Dough; 21) You Gotta Be Joking; 22) Off My Shoulders.

Good title. Anyone up for a new «Black Flag» album, the band's first in 17 years, with Ron Reyes, a.k.a. «Chavo Pederast», returning to work with Greg Ginn? And no Rollins, no Kira, no Bill Stevenson, in short, nobody of particular interest, in addition? And with an album cover that could only be interpreted as a kiddie parody on the classic Raymond Pettibon artwork of old? They say that Ron Reyes designed the cover himself — wouldn't surprise me in the least. The guy's painting talents are a fairly good match for his singing ones.

I have no idea why, after all those years of experimentation, Ginn decided to return to the stulti­fyingly rigid approach of the «classic hardcore punk» formula. Twenty-two «songs» over forty-two minutes, mostly played at fast tempos and each one written according to the same recipé: multi-tracked guitar riff, funky bassline, and a guy howling out anti-social proclamations as if he were suffering from an acute stomachache that just won't go away. If this is an attempt to go back to the ascetic values of Damaged, it's a total stylistic and substantial failure, but I don't really think this is what it is. More likely, it is an attempt to get back to the roots of the roots — for once, Ginn has decided that he has had enough with experimentation and that, perhaps, at this particular point of time the most experimental thing to do would be to produce a deliberately non-experi­mental record.

Which would all be fine and dandy, if not for two things. First, these riffs are bad. I'd honestly rather have two or three good riffs, spread over long numbers, than twenty-two riffs that are im­possible to distinguish from each other — in the end, what with the short running lengths and all, it all falls together in one thick riff soup. Worse, for some reason, Ginn settles on a different, previously unfavored, guitar sound for him: double-tracked in stereo and run through some sort of wah-wah pedal that creates a constant «bubbling / perking» effect, obscuring the melody; such things might be okay for a brief climactic solo, but when they are at the very base of the sound and never leave that base, you soon begin wondering what the hell is going on.

Second, I can fully understand Ron Reyes' artistic decision to bawl over each single recording like your friendly beer-chuggin' neighbor with a thick skull and poor social skills — for all I know, that description might apply to «Chavo» in real life — but the truth of the matter is that, merely two or three songs into this nightmare of an album, the combination of Ron's «vomit into the microphone» and Greg's «use the guitar as a baseball bat» approaches starts giving me such a terrible headache that sitting through this muck even once becomes a heroic feat, and every at­tempt at a second or third listen only makes it worse. If the powers-that-be still accept immoral suggestions, I would certainly advise them to add the album to the National Registry of «Potential Guantanamo Torture Devices for Future Use».

In fact, were this an instrumental record, we'd all feel better — you could treat it as some sort of Metal Machine Music, an arrogant move to remind us that «hardcore» is really all about being unbearable, and that the aural suffering that you experience should work as shock therapy. But with the vocals in tow, «unbearable» becomes «unbearably dumb», and that is a different beast. Hearing Ron Reyes holler "shut up! shut up! just shut the fuck up!" or "get out of my way!" or any other single imperative chorus with the intonations of an unrefined street gangster is stupidi­ty's death blow to any possible signs of intelligence. The fact that Ginn employs the theremin on some of the tracks is completely irrelevant in the light of this circumstance; no ʽGood Vibrationsʼ or ʽWhole Lotta Loveʼ can come out of this mess.

The only «good news» is that Reyes only lasted a short time in this version of the band, being quickly ousted by Mike Vallely — but, frankly speaking, everybody is responsible for the failure, and Ginn, as the leader, should take most of the blame. A tremendous disappointment, especially for those fans who actually did wait for a new Black Flag album all these years, and let us not kid ourselves by offering the usual justificatory excuses ("they had to move on", "they dislike being pigeonholed", "this is the way the band sounds in the 21st century, deal with it", etc.): this album is just downright stupid, and I am sure that even Greg Ginn's greatest fans understand it in their hearts. One of the most assured thumbs down I've ever given out.

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Black Flag: Who's Got The 10 1/2?

BLACK FLAG: WHO'S GOT THE 10½? (1986)

1) Loose Nut; 2) I'm The One; 3) Annihilate This Week; 4) Wasted; 5) Bastard In Love; 6) Modern Man; 7) This Is Good; 8) In My Head; 9) Sinking; 10) Jam; 11) The Best One Yet; 12) My War; 13) Slip It In / Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie; 14) Drinking And Driving; 15) Louie Louie.

At the time when this live album was released (March 1986; the actual show was played in Port­land in August 1985), Black Flag were still a functional unit, and would remain that way until August 1986, when Ginn broke up the band: as it seems, he was simply fed up with stuff, and de­cided to explode it before genuine stagnation would set in. The scenario is well confirmed by this live album — in terms of production, energy, and tightness, if not necessarily the setlist material, it is arguably their most successful statement of live power.

The original single LP was later expanded to include most, if not all, of the show, so that the latest CD edition includes over an hour of material. The setlist includes nearly all of Loose Nut, with the exception of ʽNow She's Blackʼ — not because of political correctness, of course, but because the song's author, drummer Bill Stevenson, was no longer with the band at the time, re­placed by the less «brutal», but more polished Anthony Martinez. There are also a few previews from the yet unreleased In My Head (including some of its best tracks, such as ʽDrinking And Drivingʼ); a few scattered reminiscences from the 1984 albums; and virtually nothing from Da­maged, except for ʽGimmie Gimmie Gimmieʼ, reworked into a rather silly «comical» sex-based performance in which we learn that, of all people, it is Kira who got the 10½ — gender discourse in a hardcore paradigm can be a terrifying thing.

Not having a huge lot to say about the studio counterparts of these songs, I certainly have even less to say about the live renditions — except that the band is tight, playing most of the songs at slightly speedier tempos, with the new drummer keeping everything in good shape and Henry trying to actually sing wherever some singing is required. On a whim, I'd also say that there is a little less «sludge» to Ginn's guitar playing live than there was in the studio; this means that, if any of those albums gave you a headache, there is no harm in trying out the live equivalent with its ever so «thinner» guitar sound, if only a little bit. There is a four-minute ʽJamʼ there which is quite skippable (just Ginn trying out a bunch of ideas or what looks like ideas), but other than that and the dubious inch-measuring game played by Henry, it's just song after song of solid late pe­riod Black Flag material. And, for dessert, a Black Flag-style ʽLouie Louieʼ which you can pro­bably imagine how it goes even without hearing it.

In short, it isn't exactly like Loose Nut — the new drummer kicks tighter ass, and the guitars buzz and squeal instead of growling and howling, so there's no harm in comparing the two and deci­ding for yourself what kind of sound you like best. Personally, I might even prefer the live stuff, but even if not, it still deserves a thumbs up, simply for the sake of being the tightest, most fo­cused, clenched-teeth-disciplined live album from these guys ever. This is as «un-sloppy» a hard­core record as hardcore ever gets. No wonder they exploded after that — too much discipline tends to overload the engine.

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Black Flag: In My Head

BLACK FLAG: IN MY HEAD (1985)

1) Paralyzed; 2) The Crazy Girl; 3) Black Love; 4) White Hot; 5) In My Head; 6) Out Of This World; 7) I Can See You; 8) Drinking And Driving; 9) Retired At 21; 10) Society's Tease; 11) It's All Up To You; 12) You Let Me Down.

Surprise — for the first time... ever?, here is a Black Flag album that does not sound significantly different from its predecessor. For once, the band has sort of «agreed» to the sound they had got­ten going for themselves, and settled upon refining and perfecting it rather than coming up with some new radical reinvention of image. And it works: In My Head reaches a tight, well-kept balance between jazz, pop, punk, and metal, or, if you wish, between free-form experimentation, pleasant catchiness, pissed-off frustration, and brutal crunch.

The album shows Rollins receding ever farther in the dark, uncomfortable corners of his subcon­scious: long gone are the days when this band still used to remember that some of the world's troubles may be directly ascribed to «The System», and now Henry is busy full-time exorcising his, my, and your demons, one by one, exposing Man (the species, that is) for the inherently ag­gressive, sexually imbalanced, mentally challenged nature freak that he (or she) has no way of not being. Curiously, the album is occasionally said to have begun life as an instrumental venture, in­tended by Ginn to be released as his first solo album. But then Henry came along, listened to the tracks, and wrote a bunch of lyrics for them — and they fit in so well that the solo career was postponed. Not for long, but we do have ourselves one more Black Flag classic.

Case in point: the title track, a mix of stern martial metal with sadistic experimental soloing — Ginn trying to cross Tony Iommi with Ornette Coleman one more time — over which Henry's "I WAN-na BE the BUL-let that goes RIP-ping through your SKULL..." flies like a bunch of bullets that go ripping through your skull. It's one of those songs on which everything comes together in its right place. Yes, Rollins can be an irritating personality, and Ginn's music often comes across as meaningless noise, but every once in a while, when they put their minds and not just their guts to it, they lock together like nothing else.

Maybe the most obvious place here where they lock together like this is ʽDrinking And Drivingʼ, probably the album's most easily noticeable song — simple, repetitive, nagging riff and a chorus of provocative imperatives help it rise above everything else, at least on first listen. They had a video done for it, too, full of car crash images and other chaotic bits, so that the song can function both as a tremendous piece of anti-drunk-driving propaganda and, if you wish, a larger metaphor for the perils brought about by erratic anti-social behavior (not exactly a prime time topic for a «hardcore punk» band, but what sort of asshole would want to pigeonhole Black Flag together with, say, Agnostic Front?). The best thing about it, though, is that Ginn's twisted, atonal solos, which he usually inserts in every song regardless of its nature and purpose, are directly symbolic in this case — musically recreating chaos and catastrophe — and work in full tandem with Henry's iron-voiced "drink! drink! don't think! drive! kill!...".

Some of the songs go down really deep: ʽThe Crazy Girlʼ is stuck somewhere between nympho­mania and homicidal urges as Henry fantasizes on circa-Jack the Ripper topics, and ʽBlack Loveʼ sure ain't about an innocent flirt with an Afro-American passion. Then again, you'd probably think of Jack the Ripper or even worse things, too, had you been exposed to these nasty riffs and gotten the urge to set them to appropriate lyrics. But there are also faster, simpler, «brighter» numbers that recall the old-school Black Flag of Damaged — most importantly, ʽRetired At 21ʼ, as good a slice of catchy «pop-punk» (in the good sense of the word) as the band ever came up with, and ʽIt's All Up To Youʼ, a surprisingly tight piece of production on which Bill Stevenson uses a sharper, thinner, cracklier drum tone than he usually does, making the whole thing sound atmospherically closer to classic Ramones; fans of old school punk might very well find this song to be the major highlight on the album.

There is still a small bunch of rather yawn-inducing duds (ʽWhite Hotʼ, I think, is five wasted minutes of pointless sludge), and, with a couple of exceptions, the individual songs are not ama­zing enough to make us forget the general black monotonousness — yet the album meets and exceeds its goals, and, on the whole, is probably the best proof that Black Flag's continued exis­tence post-Damaged was not at all meaningless. It might have been too outrageously experimen­tal, or too unnecessarily provocative, but meaningless, no. Thumbs up.

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Black Flag: Loose Nut

BLACK FLAG: LOOSE NUT (1985)

1) Loose Nut; 2) Bastard In Love; 3) Annihilate This Week; 4) Best One Yet; 5) Modern Man; 6) This Is Good; 7) I'm The One; 8) Sinking; 9) Now She's Black.

Leave it to a band like Black Flag to have their most «normal» album in years to bear the title of Loose Nut — because, frankly speaking, it sounds like the nut in question has been tightened rather than loosened. The whole thing almost seems «commercial» when compared to the exces­ses and experiments of 1984. Steady beats. Relatively conventional solos. Hook-based, even cat­chy choruses. Structures. No spoken word «poetry» or unpredictable jazz-punk jams. Even a few fast, concise, focused, gang-chorus-led punk numbers that remind one of Damaged. What next — a dance duet between Henry and Madonna?..

Joking aside, Loose Nut seems to have received a rather tepid welcome from critics and fans alike, and I have no idea why. The most frequently voiced complaint is that the album sounds «too metallic» — but seeing as how Ginn never really placed a proper delimiter bar between «punk» and «metal», that is kind of silly, and besides, it isn't the kind of «metal» that thrashers like Metallica or Slayer were doing at the time, let alone the pop metal thing; this is Greg's stan­dard sludgy sound, thick, gruff, and grumbly, far more in line with the punk spirit than the doom-laden, hellfire-breathing tones of the thrashers.

And there are some really strong songs on here, a couple of which I really like, despite not being a heavy subscriber to this kind of aesthetics at all. ʽSinkingʼ, for instance, which really sums up much of the grunge spirit several years before «grunge» as a phenomenon came into being — sludgy, but catchy riffs and a depressed, near-suicidal singer. To my mind, it is one of the finest moments in Greg's and Henry's history as a team, when the former's wailing solos finally become the perfectly soulful counterpart for the latter's gangrenous growls of "it hurts to be alone, it hurts to be alone...". In 1984, it seemed way too often that the two were operating on unrelated wave­lengths, but on ʽSinkingʼ, and quite a few other songs on Loose Nut, they are finally getting back in touch with each other.

In a different vein, ʽBest One Yetʼ may indeed be their best one yet since Damaged — short, speedy, melodic, angry, and derisive of the band's fanbase ("you say you don't like the things I've done / you say you don't like what I've become" — well, you can preliminarily guess the verdict); again, nothing really to complain about. ʽThis Is Goodʼ latches on to a seemingly dumb, but effi­cient idea — cross Henry's lyrical masochism ("I smash my fist / Into my face / I can feel it when I close my eyes / And this is good...") with a «geometric» noise-jazz guitar pattern reduced to a minimal, repetitive set of chords, creating a special genre of «primitive blockhead music» which really is a convenient soundtrack for repeatedly punching your fists into the wall at moderate time intervals — and the repetitiveness of the chorus is all set here to numb the effect.

These potential highlights are nested among a slew of lesser tunes with varying degrees of like­ability, but one thing is clear — the guys are still far from spent, and the album in general feels as if they almost managed to find a good balance between formula and experiment this time around. In addition, they threw in a bit of closing intrigue, with drummer Bill Stevenson's contribution, ʽNow She's Blackʼ, inciting endless discussions about whether the song is «racist» or not — al­though, to be honest, except for the poor word ʽblackʼ itself, there is hardly anything in the song to allude to the protagonist's girlfriend racial characteristics, and, most likely, the ʽblackʼ in ques­tion has to be taken quite figuratively; and Rollins sings it from his usual desperate madman point of view, not a KKK member or anything.

Clearly, Loose Nut is the band's most «accessible» album since Damaged; whether it should also make it their second best or not is debatable, but even if you like your Black Flag to go out on a limb, burying you under thick, endless layers of guitar dissonance and lulling you to sleep with streetwise spoken word declamations, that in itself would be no reason to accuse these guys of «selling out» when the only thing they really did here was work out a compromising style that allowed both «stars» to work on the same emotional level at the same time. Meaning another thumbs up, even if I still tend to «respect» this stuff much more than «feel» it — but then I guess that whoever cannot get his heart strings properly afflicted by the likes of Henry Rol­lins should probably count himself a real lucky guy in this world.

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Black Flag: Live '84

BLACK FLAG: LIVE '84 (1984)

1) The Process Of Weeding Out; 2) Nervous Breakdown; 3) I Can't Decide; 4) Slip It In; 5) My Ghetto; 6) Black Coffee; 7) I Won't Stick Any Of You Unless And Until I Can Stick All Of You; 8) Forever Time; 9) Fix Me; 10) Six Pack; 11) My War; 12) Jealous Again; 13) I Love You; 14) Swinging Man; 15) Three Nights; 16) Nothing Left In­side; 17) Wound Up; 18) Rat's Eyes; 19) The Bars.

As if three studio albums weren't enough, the hyper-prolific year of 1984 ended with Black Flag summarizing all their latest achievements with a live recording — generated in some seedy Frisco nightclub and initially released only in cassette format; the CD version dates from 1998, when Ginn remixed the album and, as the rumor goes, seriously «doctored» the sound, although you'd need the original tape to verify that piece of vile slander.

Unless you are a master veteran with grizzled-sizzled ears, it is probably not recommendable to listen to the entire record in one go; it takes 75 minutes to finish, and 75 minutes of the Black Flag schtick, particularly post-Damaged, is quite a heavy attack on the senses. No shit — the very first track is an extended take on the EP-only ʽProcess Of Weeding Outʼ: eight and a half minutes of Ginn's «atonal» soloing, next to which an equally extended Frank Zappa guitar jam sounds like Bacharach. This is as welcomish a welcome as this band gets, and although the run­ning lengths of inidivudual songs start dropping down after that, it hardly ever gets easier.

The setlist is predictably dominated by recent stuff: much, if not most, of My War and Slip It In are reproduced, with only a few nods to the first four years and, most surprising of all, almost nothing carried over from Damaged — in particular, the absence of ʽDamagedʼ itself, or of ʽRise Aboveʼ, cannot be regarded as unintentional: clearly, these guys must have known what was their fans' favorite record, and clearly, that was the one record stuff from which they were the most reluctant to play. Of course, you don't have to love it, but you gotta have respect for the gall.

Since most of the songs were still fresh in the players' minds, there is not a whole lot of difference between their studio and live incarnations: if anything, the biggest wonder is that they can keep it up live for such a long time, without Ginn's crazy fingers or Henry's rabid bark giving way even once, as they deliver perfectly professional facsimiles of their latest creations. The sound quality, at least on the remastered version (I have seen people seriously complaining about the original cassette), is actually very good, so that you even get to hear the subtlety of the rhythm session — no nitpicking here on my side, at least.

That said, I must note that Live '84 does not have the proper feel of a live album; surprisingly enough, it is the club environment (normally an ideal setting for a live record) that may be res­ponsible for this — there is almost no audible audience reaction throughout, possibly because there was only a couple of stragglers, accidentally dropping in to catch this weird band in action, and without the audience reaction, it just feels like a reduplication of studio work. In fact, I'd say that on a record like this, a few spoken word poetry fragments from Rollins would not be so much out of place as they were on Family Man — at least it'd have given the album more of an actual stage feeling (provided there would be no overdoing it).

On the technical side, if you are interested in checking out post-Damaged Black Flag, but abhor the idea of sitting through all of their LPs from 1984, the live album is a faithful enough «abrid­ged» introduction into the band's fantasy world around that time. You know what they say — a spoonful of Ginn a day helps keep bourgeois rot away. But no more than one spoonful, or you might get geographical displacement syndrome.

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Black Flag: Slip It In

BLACK FLAG: SLIP IT IN (1984)

1) Slip It In; 2) Black Coffee; 3) Wound Up; 4) Rat's Eyes; 5) Obliteration; 6) The Bars; 7) My Ghetto; 8) You're Not Evil.

Definitely an improvement over the excesses of Family Man and an overall better balanced col­lection than My War — for what it's worth, this might actually be the finest of Black Flag's re­leases in the oh-so-prolific year of 1984. Most of the tracks work as actual «songs», sometimes sillier than necessary, sometimes longer than they should be, but the important thing is, the talents of Ginn and Rollins seem once again to be put to good use.

Okay, so I am not altogether sure what to think of the title track, whose title is to be understood quite literally (featuring future L7 guitarist Suzi Gardner engaging in a strictly adult conversation — and simulated activity — with Rollins). From an innovative point of view, this may be the first ever attempt to use hardcore punk, rather than the more traditional genres of R&B and funk, as the musical equivalent of violent intercourse; but even with all the sex noises generated by both participants, the track does not become particularly «hot» or «sexy». As a soundtrack to having sex, it's not particularly well applicable — you probably won't be able to keep up the speed (and if you will, physical injuries to both parties are imminent). As a metaphor on the brutal under­belly of sexual relations, it may lead to uncomfortable associations and conclusions — "you say you don't want it, but then you slip it on in" is kinda risky. But, on the other hand, you don't have to admire the song — you just have to admit it's... different.

It is much easier to admire ʽBlack Coffeeʼ, one of the band's strongest anthems — a fantastic concentrated burst of dark energy, where Ginn's sludgy hard rock riff and Henry's chorus roar work in full unison. Like the title track, ʽBlack Coffeeʼ has nothing political about it — it is a song about the effects of jealousy — but it is extremely vivid, and conveys emotional frustration so well that it is quite easy not to notice the irony behind the cover (expressed mainly through Henry's over-exaggerated intonations, and some of the lyrics). In fact, Rollins sounds even more like a researcher, exploring various psychic types, on this album than he used to before. When he is not moralizing in a straightforward manner (ʽYou're Not Evilʼ), he is busy drilling into the soul — to understand its limitations (ʽThe Barsʼ), its mutant ugliness (ʽRat's Eyesʼ), its pretentiousness (ʽWound Upʼ), or its poverty (ʽMy Ghettoʼ). I'm not saying it all works, but it is certainly more interesting than if the band had simply decided to put out another generic batch of political rants.

Unfortunately, the music shows no breakthroughs (not that Ginn would have enough time for any breakthroughs, what with the frantic workpace of the band and all) — same old broken riffs and dissonant solos, with the songs distinguished mainly by their tempos and lack/presence of vocals (ʽObliterationʼ is a lengthy instrumental). If it weren't for Henry's raw passion and actor's talent, Slip It In would not have been that much different from the second side of Family Man, maybe with the exception of a couple fast and focused riff-rockers. And even Henry is not enough to justify the seven-minute running length of ʽYou're Not Evilʼ — it is fun to see them switch be­tween different tempos with such ease every few bars, but midway through, it becomes predic­table, and two-thirds into the song, annoying.

Still, this is such a strong rebound from the misguided experimentalism of Family Man that I give the album a thumbs up without a shred of guilt. «Existentialist hardcore» with a Freudian subtext is, after all, just the kind of thing that this band was sent down to Earth for — if they are not always as good at it as we'd like them to be, that's just because it is really hard to be constant­ly good at it. Probing the dark depths of your soul at those speeds and with that sort of vocal range can only be that much successful, and I'm perfectly okay with being impressed by about half of Slip It In (ʽBlack Coffeeʼ is classic), and letting the other half roll by on impulse. And ooh, such a suggestively blasphemous album cover, too!

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Black Flag: Family Man

BLACK FLAG: FAMILY MAN (1984)

1) Family Man; 2) Salt On A Slug; 3) Hollywood Diary; 4) Let Your Fingers Do The Walking; 5) Shed Reading (Rattus Norvegicus); 6) No Deposit – No Return; 7) Armageddon Man; 8) Long Lost Dog Of It; 9) I Won't Stick Any Of You; 10) Account For What.

Black Flag's project-number-two for the prolific year of 1984 happens to be the most universally despised Rollins-era Black Flag album, and for quite an objective reason: this is not really «Black Flag» as such, but rather two brief solo mission statements from Henry and Greg, the former re­citing unaccompanied examples of his spoken-word poetry, and the latter playing a bunch of his avantgarde punk improvisations. The two cross paths in the middle of the record with ʽArma­geddon Manʼ, but in an almost accidental manner — with Henry overdubbing his texts across Greg's «noodling» without any idea of voice-melody unity.

Defending Family Man would be indeed a hard task; whether you are able to like it or not will really depend on how much you like «opening your mind» to pretentious, self-consciously arro­gant «groundbreaking artistic ideas» that choose shock value, provocation, and minimalism over hard work and traditional lines of inspiration. The title track quickly sets up the scene: after Rol­lins has informed us that "I come to infect, I come to rape your women, I come to take your children into the street, I come for you, family man!", there is little left to do other than join the man in his crusade against petty bourgeois morality — or yawn in a «oh no, not another crusade against petty bourgeois morality!» kind of way. Personally, I have nothing against such crusades in general, when it comes to artistic expression; but Henry Rollins simply does not strike me as a person who has any particularly great way with words. I mean, for that matter, didn't Patti Smith already say it all almost ten years earlier?

Out of all the other spoken-word exercises, I vaguely remember ʽSalt On A Slugʼ (where the «slug» in question, of course, is yet another metaphor for the ugly, smelly, bloated underbelly of the bourgeois society), recorded in worse quality than everything else since it seems to have been taken from some public reading (and, consequently, accompanied by rather silly laughter out­bursts from the small audience present), and ʽLet Your Fingers Do The Walkingʼ, which largely consists of the title repeated over and over. Is this important? I have no idea.

As for the instrumental parts, my only comparison could be that of a headless chicken running in the yard. Many of these riffs and solos sound like they totally belong in any number of classic Black Flag tunes, but without a specific focus, usually provided by the frontman, they simply make no sense. At least the last two tracks are fast, which makes listening to them slightly less excruciating than sitting through the entire nine minutes of ʽArmageddon Manʼ (if that is what the Armageddon is supposed to look like, I am totally retiring my financial support for the Antichrist this very instant).

Of course, Family Man is yet another self-conscious «experiment» in the endless war against artistic stagnation, and could be partially redeemed by the good old «well, at least they're trying» argument. But the bottomline is that I cannot imagine anybody wanting to give the record a se­cond spin of their own free will — in the place of, say, giving a third spin to Damaged — and if such people do exist, it is only because they probably feel themselves wronged by the family man, and take exquisite sadistic pleasure from pouring salt on slugs, be they only metaphorical ones. My own level of bourgeoiserie still allows me full well to enjoy Damaged, but sort of starts boiling over with Family Man — if you want to poke fun at conservative conventions, at least have the intelligence to poke it in an unconventional manner. As it is, I consider the experiment a failure, and give it a retrograde thumbs down.

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Black Flag: My War

BLACK FLAG: MY WAR (1984)

1) My War; 2) Can't Decide; 3) Beat My Head Against The Wall; 4) I Love You; 5) Forever Time; 6) The Swinging Man; 7) Nothing Left Inside; 8) Three Nights; 9) Scream.

After a three-year break in recording, partially triggered by legal hassles with their record label as well as personal problems — such as losing their drummer and their bass player for different reasons — Black Flag came back with a vengeance for 1984, releasing no fewer than three new studio albums that year. But whoever was expecting another Damaged from these guys (or, bet­ter still, three more Damageds!) had to take a hike: Greg Ginn and Henry Rollins were not about to let their progressively-oriented brain machines be overridden by rigid formula.

The first side looked promisingly conservative. The title track breaks in at an acceptably fast tempo (not nearly as fast as ʽRise Aboveʼ, though), delivers a classic Rollins scream-hook as he spits "you're one of them! you're one of them!" right in your face, almost making you blush in embarrassed confusion, and turns Ginn's guitar into a well-oiled machine gun, as he bathes you in sonic shrapnel from behind Henry's muscular back.

ʽCan't Decideʼ, despite the already suspicious gargantuan running length of 5:22, is even better as a song — as its discordant sonic intro even­tually morphs into another set of machine-gun phrasing, Rollins and Ginn construct a series of verses on the issue of having to suppress one's true emotions that subtly-brutally build up towards an explosive resolution: Henry's "I can't decide, I can't decide, I can't decide ANYTHING!" may be one of the most credible expressions of total frustration since the Who's ʽI Can't Explainʼ. Why they decided to include a gazillion of dissonant guitar solos and verses is beyond me — the song would probably have worked much better as a laconic 2:30 blast — but, most likely, expanded lengths like these simply meant re­fusing to kowtow to established «hardcore standards», take it or leave it.

The remaining four songs on Side A do not add any extra emotional range: the energy level never drops, and Rollins' lyrics never cease scorching the earth (the first line of ʽI Love Youʼ is, after all, "I put my fist through the door" — we've come a long way from 1964), but the musical structures and moods follow the same principles, and Ginn's laudable willingness to keep experimenting with chord sequences comes at the expense of catchiness: there are some fairly monstruous and not particularly meaningful polygonal riff-monsters here, and the best thing about them is pro­bably the guitar tone — low, grumbly, distorted, but cleanly produced, with tight control exerci­sed over echo and feedback.

Side B, although it retains the tone, is a different proposition altogether. It is given over to some­thing quite unexpected: three lengthy, slow, draggy slabs of what could only be described as «early sludge metal», most notably derivative of Black Sabbath but nowhere near as poppy or catchy, especially when Greg throws in one of his dissonant solos whose sound I could only de­scribe as «what you'd expect to happen if Lou Reed started playing like Frank Zappa». Critical opinion on these weird creations is usually negative, with «self-indulgent» as the mildest epithet in their direction — but once you really start thinking, it seems as if it is only the tempo that truly separates them from the first half. Everything else is the same — the guitar tones, the dissonan­ces, the darkness, the lyrics, the screaming; if you took ʽI Love Youʼ and slowed it down, you'd have yourself another copy of ʽNothing Left Insideʼ. Therefore, by loving the first side and hating the second side, one essentially admits that the only reason why «hardcore» deserves to exist is its speed — a logical position, but not a very useful one, so it seems.

I think that the monotonous, draggy trilogy of ʽNothing Left Insideʼ, ʽThree Nightsʼ, and ʽScreamʼ is at least «kinda curious», and at most, if you let yourself ride its wobbly waves, a quasi-psychedelic rough trip that mixes early 1970s pothead-ism with modern punk to an unpre­dictable effect. ʽNothing Left Insideʼ, in particular, succeeds in generating a cool, smoky, downer atmosphere where, at times, Rollins and Ginn howl in unison like a pair of stray dogs, freshly run over by a truck. Nothing too serious, just "pain hurts my heart, nothing left inside". Oh, needless to say, eighteen minutes of this atmosphere are easily sustainable probably only if you are a pot­head, but the experience is not a total waste, and «self-indulgence» is a word I'd rather reserve for a 15-minute Kansas epic than for this brave, only partially successful attempt to invent «slow hardcore» (or «anti-hardcore», whatever).

All in all, the experimental nature of My War has its attractive sides, and the album captures and bottles something — at the very least, this is certainly not a case of a band with nothing to say. I am pretty sure that all of this could have been said better, maybe with some extra overdubs, or with a little more range to Rollins' character, or with a little less slobbering adoration for Tony Iommi that prevents Ginn from straying away from that one single path. But even as it is, My War still deserves a thumbs up, since its «bravery» (maybe even literal bravery — the hardcore market is already so small that most of the suppliers usually try not to alienate any parts of it) does not come at the expense of meaning, and the album has some replay value.

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Black Flag: Damaged

BLACK FLAG: DAMAGED (1981)

1) Rise Above; 2) Spray Paint; 3) Six Pack; 4) What I See; 5) TV Party; 6) Thirsty And Miserable; 7) Police Story; 8) Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie; 9) Depression; 10) Room 13; 11) Damaged II; 12) No More; 13) Padded Cell; 14) Life Of Pain; 15) Damaged I.

Black Flag's first album with Henry Rollins as lead throatist has acquired a reputation that even a thoroughly negative review would not be able to smear in the least, so I won't even try. This is one of those «classic» hardcore pieces, made ever so more classic by the fact that, having gotten it out of their systems, Ginn and Rol­lins immediately started moving away from that sound and style, so it is one of a kind. Never repeated... never could be repeated without sounding like an in­ferior copy for boring lovers of sequels, for that matter.

That said, I suspect that the original impact of Damaged has been seriously diluted by the tidal wave of hardcore acts that followed in its wake (or competed with it originally, since most of the individual hardcore idioms had already been fully construed in L. A. clubs circa 1979). In the very early 1980s, playing an album like this against the dance-pop, New Wave, and even «clas­sic» punk records of the day could give an electric jolt like nothing else — next to Damaged, an album like London Calling would feel like a tame kitty, and even properly hardcore acts like the Adolescents or the Dead Kennedys sounded positively melodic and «poppy» in comparison. But as time went by and more and more acts started speaking the same language as Black Flag, Da­maged had little choice other than to go through an identity crisis.

The best way to enjoy Damaged is not to allow yourself to stop and think about it. Just as you hear that tsunami wave of distortion and speed ʽRise Aboveʼ, your best bet is to catch it and ride it all the way through to the end, where it leaves you ʽDamagedʼ, spluttering and coughing up muck on the shore. Taken that way, it's one hell of a joyride, as you get carried through layers of pissed-off protest, vicious sarcasm, maniacal despair, and revolutionary exuberance, sometimes condensed into one-breath thirty-second blasts (ʽSpray Paintʼ) and never once feeling phoney or straightforwardly dumb.

Once you do stop and take an analytical perspective at what you've just been through, a certain vibe of disappointment may settle in. For one thing, Henry Rollins is a serious screamer, but that is pretty much the only thing that happens here. The screaming may sound meaningful, believable, infectious, stunning, etc. — yet there is really nothing extraordinary about it, and at this time, the album does not really do much justice to the overall breadth of Mr. Rollins' talents; in fact, his only visible advantage over Dez Cadena is that he is tougher, and can handle all that visceral stuff without being left all «damaged».

For another thing, Ginn's riffage, as opposed to his lead playing, still mostly relies on stock phra­sing, borrowed from the repository of Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and the Ramones, lightly shaken about, sped up, and toughened with extra thick distortion. The lead playing is a different matter — whenever Greg goes into solo mode or just throws in a flash-in-the-pan countermelody, he offers us one of his offbeat atonal experiments, cleverly disguised as stereotypically punkish «inability to play». But, let's admit it, it would be a really strange thing to call Damaged, above and beyond everything else, a classic example of adventurous lead guitar playing.

Finally, from a purely ideological point of view, the album does not offer much insight that we were not already aware of. While I do share the common point of view that ʽTV Partyʼ is lyrically funny, I am certainly past the point where the very fact of making fun of generic TV audiences glued to their generic TV shows could automatically make me predisposed towards a song like that. What really saves the song is not its lyrics, but rather the band's decision to arrange it as a hardcore musical parody on a happy pop tune: take away the distorted guitars, change the lyrics, and that "we've got nothing better to do / than watch TV and have a couple of brews" chorus could be easily modified into a football fan anthem or a Sesame Street singalong. That's kind of funny, not the simple fact of making fun of the average (non-)working Joe.

But let us stop here: this is too much criticism for a record that places all its faith and focus in something completely different. Like The Clash four years earlier, Damaged is not a collection of carefully crafted songs, but a laser blast to the conscience, where form takes precedence over essence, or, more precisely, essence is dissolved in form. Damaged may have been worshipped and imitated many times over, but this is where it all started, and you can still hear the echo of these guys' excitement at what they are doing — sacrificing all known musical conventions in or­der to make way for the ultimate experience in exorcising their own demons. Make no mistake, though: Damaged is not a «dark», «vicious», «scary» record — like most of its predecessors in the «classic punk» style, it is more of an optimistic call-to-arms, and even when Rollins is imper­sonating a raving lunatic on ʽDamaged Iʼ or ʽDepressionʼ, his screams sound more like some symbolic constatation of the problem than the product of a real sick person. Black Flag have a bone to pick with the system, and it is the system that they are accusing of driving people crazy — whereas a band like The Birthday Party, for instance, was reveling in madness that went way beyond the evil activity of the powers-that-be, probing into the darkest corners of human nature as such, and that was scary as heck.

It is sort of symbolic that the famous album cover for Damaged was all set up — naturally, Henry Rollins never put his fist through no mirror, which, instead, was diligently smashed with a hammer as Henry's hand was being accurately covered in red ink. It would not be difficult to say that the entire album is as «fake» as its sleeve photo, but then, the entire punk movement, in all its forms, is «fake» to a certain degree: after all, you wouldn't expect Henry Rollins to go rolling on the streets, screaming "AAAARGGH! I can't see nothin', I'm blind! DAMAGED! DAMAGED!" at the top of the lungs, on a casual basis. It's all just a matter of art. For its historical importance, artistic significance, sheer focus and energy, I eagerly give the album a thumbs up — despite not managing to hold even a single separate song as an autonomous entity anywhere in my head.

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Black Flag: The First Four Years

BLACK FLAG: THE FIRST FOUR YEARS (1978-1981; 1983)

1) Nervous Breakdown; 2) Fix Me; 3) I've Had It; 4) Wasted; 5) Jealous Again; 6) Revenge; 7) White Minority; 8) No Values; 9) You Bet We've Got Something Personal Against You!; 10) Clocked In; 11) Six Pack; 12) I've Heard It Before; 13) American Waste; 14) Machine; 15) Louie Louie; 16) Damaged I.

I suppose that putting out three EPs with three different singers in four years is some sort of re­cord, but what really makes it a unique record is that each following singer was worse than his predecessor. Keith Morris, handling the lead vocals on 1978's Nervous Breakdown, still sings more or less in the «first wave punk» tradition, with a snappy, sneering attitude and relatively un­derstandable enunciation of the words. Sometimes he can even hit different notes and hold them, a fairly anathemous thing to do for America's quintessential hardcore band. His successor, Ron Reyes, also lovingly called «Chavo Pederast» by his fellow band members, already comes across as a profes­sional hardcore screamer on 1980's Jealous Again, but he still shows some under­standing of pitch, may function in one of several emotional states, and knows what sarcasm is (ʽWhite Minorityʼ). Finally, Dez Chavena, active on the Six Pack EP and also featured on several additional outtakes, just seems like a plain old simple street guy with an unreliable throat (it is said that he couldn't handle proper live shows, and eventually pleaded to be relegated to second guitar, once Rollins came along).

What binds all these short stages together is the music, credited mainly to the band leader and main guitarist, Greg Ginn, and occasionally, to the bass player Chuck Dukowski. Although, due to Greg's insistence, the band positioned itself as «professional» from the very beginning, spen­ding lots of time in rehearsal, these early songs do not yet disclose the full scope of Ginn's talents or interests. For the most part, the early EPs are more like «the Ramones taken to eleven» — ʽWhite Minorityʼ, for instance, begins like ʽBlitzkrieg Bopʼ and then, just a few bars later, slips into ʽBeat On The Bratʼ — but the songs are notably shorter (one to one-and-a-half minute run­ning length is common), and, most importantly, notably meaner. Black Flag has its own sense of humor, of course, but it's mostly dark, bitter humor, full of aggressive sarcasm; and most of the time, they just sound like they want to put their fist in your face, rather than party around.

Quality-wise, I suppose this whole disc does not really get any better than its opening track — ʽNervous Breakdownʼ tells you everything you ever wanted to know about early Black Flag, and, in fact, about early hardcore in general. Poor production; Ginn's guitar as the only properly au­dible instrument, sounding like a cross between the chainsaw buzz of Johnny Ramone and the underworld rumble of Tony Iommi (Ginn is a lifelong Black Sabbath fan, and it always shows); and a singer gradually going from pissed-off snarl to frenetic roar, as his promise of being about to have a nervous breakdown is swiftly realized over the course of the song's two minutes. The next three songs basically repeat the same message — ʽWastedʼ being a particular highlight, as it packs the required angst and anguish into a single-breath fifty seconds. It does beg the question, though: why the past tense? "I was so wasted" — is that supposed to mean that things are all right now? Everything else on the EP is in present tense, you know.

For Jealous Again, Ginn already implements a few stylistic changes: most importantly, the guitar playing becomes more melodic, as he adds screechy bluesy leads to the title track and ʽRevengeʼ. More questionable is the decision to address the band's own problems: ʽYou Bet We've Got Something Personal Against You!ʼ slams down the freshly departed Keith Morris, who allegedly stole the band's material for his new band, The Circle Jerks. Then again, maybe venting one's frustration against concrete people for concrete problems might be considered a more honest and authentic way to go than just spewing out another predictable anti-authority rant in general.

The first signs of «classic» Black Flag, however, only begin to appear closer to the Dez Cadena period, as the songs become more interesting from the compositional and arrangement-based points of view. The guitar solos on ʽClocked Inʼ become exceedingly maniacal, with elements of atonality; ʽSix Packʼ opens with thirty seconds of suspenseful bass/drum interplay and features several tempo changes and completely crazyass lead lines along the way; and ʽI've Heard It Be­foreʼ features Ginn in full swing, as his guitar imitates a fire alarm siren gone off its rocker. These are no longer examples of an «angrified Ramones» approach; this is something different.

Most divergent of the lot are the last three songs: ʽMachineʼ is a bass-solo-gone-noise-rock ex­periment over which Cadena screams that he is not a machine (so you could as well call it an anti-Kraftwerk protest song); the cover of ʽLouie Louieʼ, with a new set of lyrics, arguably features the most atonal guitar solo ever suggested for that song; and the original version of ʽDamagedʼ, with a relentless four-minute industrial punch to it, as Ginn suddenly finds himself getting closer to the aesthetics of Einstürzende Neubauten, is one of the most aurally brutal things they ever came up with (much heavier and uglier than what it became later with Rollins).

«Liking» or «loving» a collection like this is almost out of the question, I think, since it is so di­verse in functionality — I mean, if the early songs are your average teenage hormonal stuff, and should primarily fall in line with the average 17-year old as he gets his first serious whupping from Life, the later songs are already more suitable for the ear of the avantgarde lover. So this whole process is interesting, even thrilling perhaps, from an «evolutionary» point of view, but the individual parts all have their flaws — the early stuff is too derivative and formulaic, and the later stuff, weird as it is, feels a bit underdeveloped, and also suffers from Cadena's lack of personality, as the man is essentially a one-note, one-vibe character. Naturally, on the whole the collection still gets a thumbs up, but in general curve terms, it is hard for me not to perceive it as just a gra­dual build-up — a four-year training camp — for the true success still to come.

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