Black Flag Albums

1981

Damaged -  91%

The first proper Black Flag didn’t come out until 1981, when the band had already made many Eps and singles. But with the addition of Henry Rollins on vocals, something quite different is present: there is an air of intensity by a person who seems to be taking on the world around him, and something about him just cuts right to humanity’s souls. Rollins is definitely a different kind of rock n roll front man, talking as much as singing as much as screaming, some sort of wild combination of the three. “Six Pack” talks about people that go out and get drunk like it’s a declaration of war against altering your mind. “What I see” is an existential rant about how hard it can be to be human, but is it form Rollins perspective or is he taking on the person of another person? “Keep Me Alive” and “Depression” would resonate with other teenagers and young adults everywhere, simple direct and powerful. “Damaged One”, the final song on the record,  is Rollins ultimate railing against society, a slow and heavy song that changes the meaning of punk rock to mean something else, by slowing it down but maintaining the rage all of his inner demons become expelled. An epic by their standards, at almost four minutes, “Damaged One” might be the best song of 1981.

            The band as a whole is on fire here though, thought he production is very live in the studio felt, anthems such as the mindlessness of television “TV Party” are not exactly subtle but because of the humor and sense of fun still work as a version of humanity at its most basic and wild. That song and the horrifying “Rise Above” really paint a picture of Black Flag being a banner for everyone to pay attention too. “Police story” makes a stance of “They hate us/ We hate them” against the law itself, and “Thirsty and Miserable” uses the guitar work and musicality of Greg Ginn which is pretty fascinating to behold too, and this is definitely a band that influenced much of 1980’s hardcore music and taught everyone how to incorporate some blistering guitar solo’s in the rage to make it more musical and more free. “Padded Cell” should not be overlooked, maybe the most unified song on the record where everyone rages to gether.

If there are minor flaws, its some songs don’t make much a an impression by either being too short (“Spray Paint”) or some that are not quite as strong as others (“Damaged Two” and “No More” jump out) but in reality each song is so brief that the album works as just blind rage that culminates in an awesome closer. To compare to amazingly influential L.A. punk rock band scene of the early 80s- Unlike Dead Kennedys which were much more song focused and political, X who were basically an angry version of a classic rock band, or Minutemen which were more concise and jazz influenced, Gun Club who were obsessed with blues, the band that seemed to have more in common with would be The Germs or Flipper. But more so than the Germs, there is an underlying focus to what these guys are doing, it is not anger for the sake of anger, they have been damaged by what they have seen in life and are no railing against it.

Best Songs: Damaged One, Rise Above, Padded Cell, Thirsty and Miserable

1983 /1984

My War - 76%

Much like one of their heroes The Clash, the band did not want to create the same album again. So after 3 years of label battles and storing up material, the band shrunk down to three people with Rollins still on vocals, Bill Stevenson on drums, and Greg Ginn on guitar but also playing bass under a fake name since Dukowski had retired before they entered the studio. “My War” is totally paranoid sounding, as Rollins screams his way through a longer song about the person in question being “ONE OF THEM”; its quite a different sounding song than anything they had done before. Their take on music in general was becoming more complex ( “Three Nights” being so bizarre) more complicated (“Can’t Decide” which is quite convoluted and can’t decide what it wants to be despite amazing guitar work by Ginn) and heavily furious – best exemplified by “Beat My Head Against the Wall” which feels like a guy in a straight jacket freaking out in a padded cell, containing the immortal line “Swimming in the mainstream/ is such a lame dream.”

Some tunes don’t do much for me, “Forever Time” and “Swinging Man” are well performed but not very memorable. It’s one of the most schizophrenic albums in rock history, as the first side is a faster type punk rock and the second side is basically a slowed down heavy metal approach. Of the three tracks on side two, “Scream” probably works the best because if the goal is to be the ultimate slow burn, it’s the slowest and the hottest. “Nothing Left Inside” is a nifty idea, but the moans and movements in slow motion don’t quite justify the songs length despite the cool guitar tones. Overall, My War is quite innovative but also the very definition of transitional, compared to other classics that came out in the same year by SST Label bands alone - Husker Du’s Zen Arcade, Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, Meat Puppet’s II, even Black Flag’s upcoming Slip It In – I can’t rate it much higher than ‘very good’, even though in my head I know most of this was conceived way earlier probably 1982-83. 

Best Songs: Beat My Head Against the Wall, Scream, My War

1984

Family Man - 56%

Split (again??) between two contrasting ideas of Rollin’s spoken word poetry and Ginns fun little hyper-speed meets slowed down instrumental jams, Family Man is sort of a failed experiment. Of Rollins literal just reading out poetry, “Family Man” and “Shed Reading” are the keepers; it’s all a bit silly and half hearted sounding. In the middle we have the nine minute “Armageddon Man”, all pretentious sounding like 4 people in a room with different ideas of how the song goes, just for example- Rollins lyrics about dogs perspective of having sex and ‘lovin dirt’ are laughable. “Long Lost Dog of It” is a neat little instrumental, “I Won’t Stick Any of You….” Is the punk version of jazz-noodling around, “Account for What” has some great interplay between bass-guitar and drums but unlike other groups of their ilk (Minutemen again) they don’t make it a cohesive statement. In all, not much worth holding unto here, as the second of three albums released in 1984. The band are progressing as artists but these are more like practice jams than actual quality music. Black Flag’s worst album.

Best Songs: Account for What, Long Lost Dog of It

1984

Slip It In - 84%

Here we go, the band’s best album of 1984 and one of their better works. On Slip It In, the band turns up the complex music, complex subject matter, and complex drums and guitar solos, and somehow make everything work. On “Wound Up” there are plenty of stops and starts, but it feels like the band has the same ideas of how the song should go- its complex stuff beyond most band’s of their era. “The Bars” is beautiful distorted hard rock stuff, with Rollins baring his soul and the band matching his intensity. “Black Coffee” is particularly grim, definitely influencing Steve Albini’s personal mindset for his career. “Obliteration” is quite the interesting song, Ginn directing the group like a maestro with his shifting time signatures and distorted riffings and it all TOTALLY works and amazes. The seven minute “You’re Not Evil” puts the previous records “Armageddon Song” to shame, showing how a song can be complex but also very entertaining and powerful.

Perhaps some songs are a bit slight (“My Ghetto” or “Rat’s eyes” are merely good but not great) and the title track is a bit special with its man/woman back n forth loud orgasmic groans (Rollins and L7’s Suzi Gardner), surely to turn off any not already devoted to the band’s approach to experiment. Punk rock is not a term or genre that can describe/ confine the band anymore. When people talk about punk music merging with jazz, this is the album I think of; Jazz meaning the best of that genre- the truly amazing beat poetry improvisation feel, and the band that can go off on tangents that prove to be more interesting than the songs themselves. What an amazing progression.

Best Songs: You’re Not Evil, Obliteration, Wound Up

1985

Loose Nut - 66%

The band has reached an odd stage here, less experimenting like last time and more straight ahead, hard rock. Some of it comes off as dated 80’s metal (“Bastard in Love", "Modern Man" ) and the punky songs seem for the most part uninspired (“Best One”, the ‘this is too much’ of “This is Good” ). Despite funny time signatures, much of the music feels strangely muted. Its hard rock but more 1980s in theme, like the band has melded into the decade and longs to blend in. There are no longer songs this time around, in fact everything is less than five minutes which is a surprise. Even the songs that start off slow and give hope of evolution like “Modern Man” end up having the same style as the others. The production also sounds murky and not in a good way.

There are some good songs though, like the title track which opens in a fun way- they just love starting albums with the title song don't they? Hope comes in the form of the songs that works in this style: “Annihilate This Week” is pretty grabbing with its catchy riffs and blended performance; “I’m the One” which is entertaining enough mainly because of Rollin’s delivery; “Now She’s Black” reaches for the ultimate depths like “Damaged One” did years ago, but is not quite as memorable though better than most songs here(Rollins would get there on his solo work, no need to worry) . But overall there is not a lot to save here and I’m a bit surprised it has the reputation it has.

Best Songs: Annihilate this Week, I’m the One, Now She’s Black

1985

In My Head - 80%

The band’s second album of 1985 shows them as super prolific again, as this is a very similar album to the last one though perhaps a bit better. “Black Love” seems to take a cue from black metal bands like Venom is being super dark and echoey in the vocals but instead of metal riffs you have Ginn’s weird guitar scaled mutated- maybe it’s a parody? The back half of the album seems to have the best songs though: The straightforward “Drinking and Drive” is the classic track here, and the best they have done in a bit- it is angry with a sarcastic message, one of the things Black Flag does the best. “Retired at 21” and “Society’s Tease” are longer, complicated songs and call back to Slip It internal madness and are beautiful to behold. The latter of those is one of BF’s catchiest songs. “It’s all Up to you” is the bands best closing song, leave us all on the edge of our seats even though it closed out their last album proper; check out those odd background vocals.

When the band is united like that, they are hard to beat! Still, there is some that doesn’t work: “Crazy Girl” seems to emulate “In your Eyes” by Minor Threat, since they were all friends its def. possible. ”White Hot” has some interesting moments but is a bit too long at over five minutes for what it has to say. “In My Head” (looky there the title track isn’t first this time!) is a pretty good yet confusing song, besides some internal rage and stellar guitar playing im not sure what the band is trying to say. “Paralyzed” is a pretty good tune, though the vocals are buried in the mix and the guitar reigns supreme. Perhaps that is why the band broke apart, it was just being pulled in different directions and Rollins was ready to start his own journey.

Compare to Husker Du, on the same label – they made New Day Rising and Flip your Wig in 1985, and I dunno….I just have the feeling where I admire their work ethic I do find Black Flag to be a band with a lot of ideas but only some of them deserved to be released. Henry Rollins solo career actually continues in this same vein but just gets better and better- I highly recommend his 80’s and 90s solo/ Rollins Bands albums. A lot of it is truly moving and a lot truly hilarious.

Best Songs: It’s all Up to you, Drinking and Driving, Black Love, Society’s Tease

Side note: this album is all out of order on some streaming services, you may want to go to a site like RateYour Music to get a better idea of the original track order. Bonus tracks seem to be randomly placed throughout.

Compilations

1983

First Four Years – 76%

    These are the earliest opening Ep’s and Singles by Black Flag while I wont go into specifics on who did what when, as I am mainly just contemplating the songs which are super charged and screamed like the best of punk rock so far helping define Los Angeles’s hardcore scene of the late 70’s / early 80’s. Keith Morris is the debut lead singer here, doing his best Johnny Rotten impression on “Nervous Breakdown” and its pretty nice, “Jealous Again” is a more structured and complex tune, “No Values” is one of the best hard hitting songs of these early years. Dukowsi’s “American Wate” is a continuation of what Dee Dee Ramone was up to and it adds some depths to the proceedings. Dez Cadena takes over vocal duties for the early version of “Six Pack” and it has more of a structure and dynamics than any song they had done up to 1981 though it feels a little unfinished ( the classic chorus of “we’ve got nothing better to do…” is not present yet).

      Of the shorter songs around a minute in length, “Fix Me” works very well and gets its point across the best, “Revenge” and “White Minority” fly by but don’t leave as much of an impression; I had no idea Camper Van Beethoven's version of the song was a cover of "Wasted" (from their 1985 debut album) but that makes it even funnier. Some songs were correct in remaining obscure b-sides (“Machine” is super underdeveloped, the cover of “Louie Louie” does not have the effect of say Frank Zappa’s version). As usual producer Spot does an amazing job with not much at all making it sound uniform and super in-your-face. Several songs were re-worked to much more visceral effect on Damaged (“Damaged One” for example does not nearly match the effect of the later version on Damaged) , but it was so early that I could see  how it was definitely influential. More a collection of ideas and excited moments this compilation is a important document of its time but the band was not quite a cohesive unit yet, which is typical for early Eps.

Best Songs: Nervous Breakdown, Jealous Again, American Waste, Wasted