Category: Classic Album Review

CLASSIC REVIEW: SCRATCH ACID- Berserker 

 Mary Had a Little Drug Problem, For Crying Out Loud, This Is Bliss

I may be going out on a limb here when making the grand proclamation that music is a particularly potent form of communicating emotion, an expulsion of abstract human experience into material and social reality.  These emotions aren’t necessarily the basic happy, sad, mad, etc., but are more closely reminiscent of attitudes that reflect an environment which the musician can interpret and which is relevant to their audience.  For example, the first wave of the British Invasion was centered around teenage angst and generally pubescent themes, which spoke to a world of youth who were incredibly frustrated and confused. Punk was a fit of anger at systemic injustice, whether this is political or highly personal; and bands like the Smiths or The Cure tackled robust melodrama.  Of course, these are just a few examples in an infinite pool of artists and movements, which are by no means rigidly separated in their capacity to feel and create. I bring up this fundamental requirement of music, though, to emphasize both the genius and eccentricity of Scratch Acid. As stated above, the relationship between music and its audience demands communication, however abstract. It implies a shared connection between the two.  With this in mind, it makes sense that Scratch Acid has simultaneously remained critically important while missing from the canon of classic American acts. And what’s the feeling that they so effectively make digestible for their audience? Pure discomfort: the sensation akin to the shell of your skin being constantly irritated by the red goop moving beneath it. They sing of constant anxiety which permeates every facet of a being whose existence is an inherent offense.  With their EP, Berserker, Scratch Acid melds young noise experimentation with punk’s insistence on efficacy. Rather than using noise to experiment with everything that could be made, Scratch Acid limits themselves to only what is necessary to explore a life filled with a pressing, constant discomfort. I don’t want to act as if I understand Scratch Acid, or that the pain I have felt in my life has been particularly bad by any means. I have a really difficult time listening to Scratch Acid.  Rather, I want to emphasize that their goal as musicians is to deliver a message which is drastically different from most any other band.  

Scratch Acid was formed in the Austin, Texas of 1982.  They consisted of Steve Anderson (vocals), David Sims (guitar), Brett Bradford (guitar), David Yow (bass), and Rey Washam (drums).  Before recording their first album, Anderson was kicked out while Yow took over mouth duties. There is little information out there about the band’s career (beyond their status as a precursor to noise legends Jesus Lizard) other than their notoriety for highly chaotic performances.  Thrashing loosely on a stage clad in aggravatingly unassuming street clothes, Scratch Acid forwarded a movement focused on transferring the spirit of punk’s alternative bluntness into a new direction. Noise experimentation replaced disciplined hardcore, and punk’s natural decadence became a pragmatic nihilism.  Through lyrical subject matter centering around unstable emotional fits and sludged bursts of screeching feedback, the band affirmed libertine attitudes of romantic validity while also remaining grounded in harsh, modern realities. Their 1987 EP Berserker is caustic mayhem which is as brief as it is intense. It stands at only 16 minutes long with pounding headaches of songs which thud against the front of the head in agonizing marches. Yow’s voice is frighteningly clear in a disturbing showcase of guttural pain; Scratch Acid does not sacrifice recording quality for aestheticism.  Berserker’s quarter-hour is determined to massage every crevice of an incredibly detailed offense. 

“Mary Had a Little Drug Problem” is, I guess, the poppiest song off the EP.  Yes, it does feature compressed chunks of dissonance bouncing between Yow’s strained and extended syllables, but the song ultimately falls into a semi-accessible groove.  It’s with the second track, “For Crying Out Loud” that Scratch Acid fully employ their talent of sonically describing discomfort. A grimy and uneven chord progression disorients a listener who is, at the same time, bombarded with a drum solo interspersed with unnaturally long bleats held by Yow. He sounds as if he’s writing on glass as his voice slithers unbroken over his band’s succinct bedlam.  “Moron’s Moron” finds no natural center in its tottering bassline which Yow stumbles over in a quasi-spoken word delivery. “Skin Drips” adopts a rockabilly uneasiness which mocks the camp of The Cramps with deeply disturbing imagery and commotion, while “This is Bliss” contrives descending guitar and bass riffs with a meandering shred of Yow’s throat. It often sounds incredibly unpleasant. Getting through this EP might be the longest 16 minutes of your life. But Scratch Acid know what they’re doing.  It’s a construction relying on complex, often unspoken truths about the disgusting reality of everyday life.

Scratch Acid was always destined to provide a link between alternativism and exploration of more nuanced emotions.  By shifting focus from simple anger and alienation to more abstract concepts of constant disgust or suffering, the band validated and manifested the human experience in ways unique to only them.  Berserker is most representative of their work.

 -Cliff Jenkins

CLASSIC REVIEW: DEAD KENNEDYS- Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables 

BEST TRACKS: Kill the Poor, Holiday in Cambodia, California Uber Alles, Ill in the Head

“Just when you think tastelessness has reached its nadir, along comes a punk rock group called ‘The Dead Kennedys’” read a San Francisco Chronicle article from November 1978, “they will play at Mabuhay Gardens on Nov. 22, the 15th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.“  Geez, what kind of chutzpah do you need to mock America’s most tragically iconic family on the anniversary of its most notable horror? Well, the Dead Kennedys were all chutzpah; in fact, they were practically bursting at the seams to brutally mock any American institution guilty of abhorrent injustice (and of course, there are many).  Though not attacking the Kennedy family directly so as to twist the magic bullet (I’m sorry), the apparent curse upon the 20th-century clan of American idealism was a perfect brand for a group whose entire existence hinged on a sardonic articulation of anarchist paragons. The Dead Kennedys were the first explicitly political American punk band.  Bands like X or Black Flag may have been indirectly political in their focus on youthful alienation, but the Dead Kennedys, specifically lead singer Jello Biafra, were completely committed to calling out by name each and every faceless establishment villain who was unfortunate enough to find themselves caught in Biafra’s latex-coated crosshairs. It was not introspection; it was full-fleshed Juvenalian satire. While Black Flag was screaming about being a skate-punk burnout in LA basements, the DKs were hammering Pol Pot, Jerry Brown’s “zen fascists”, privileged college students, unmitigated capitalism, and police brutality in San Francisco’s, well, basements.  Their sound was an absurd combination of screeching feedback, overly laid-back surf rock, spoken word, and performance art. Biafra, always keen on any form of the alternative spotlight, was never at a loss for intentionally aggravating pranks which furthered his desire for total demolition of post-war America. These included illegally using warped pictures of other bands for liner notes, abrasively declaring that then-Governor Jerry Brown was actually a hippie Nazi, or running for mayor of San Francisco on a platform of outlawing cars and demolishing all Government buildings. Whatever cliched pattern that today’s alternative rock falls behind in their lazy conviction of powers-that-be (ahem American Idiot) is derivative of the Dead Kennedy’s extremely meticulous establishment of punk rock as a political force.  They were ideologically consistent, absolutely non-partisan, and, perhaps most importantly, fully committed to an absurdist approach to music that highlighted the very serious realities of injustice. 

In 1978’s San Francisco, 20-year-old guitarist Raymond Pepperell put out an ad in “The Recycler” for bandmates for form a punk group.  Two people responded: bassist (and banker) Geoffrey Lyall and poet/singer Eric Boucher. The three were rechristened as East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and, of course, Jello Biafra.  Their first shows around the Bay Area garnered significant attention (both positive and negative) for somehow being in worse taste than even the raunchiest American punk acts. Cartoonish, catchy, and absolutely confrontational, Biafra gained infamy through his highly animated stage presence which included often dousing the audience in beer or destroying pieces of the stage.  It is important to note, however, that the Kennedy’s performative violence was not out of angst, but rather part of a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the establishment. A typical snapshot of a Kennedy’s live performance saw East Bay Ray hammering away at distorted spaghetti western riff while Biafra bellowed out how much the government wanted to kill you while kicking at the walls with a massive grin on his face. Declaring himself the band’s primary songwriter, Biafra would tape record melodies using only his voice which his band would later transcribe onto their respective instruments.  Of their early written material, one song stood out for being particularly catchy and scathing. “California Uber Alles” was released Summer of 1979 as the Dead Kennedys’ first single. With military-esque drumming, bastardized surf guitar, a cheeky flamenco melody, Jello’s typical outrageous bellow, and lyrics condemning then Democratic Governor Jerry Brown as a hippie fascist, the band distilled everything in within the DKs essence into their very first recording. And while their embrace of non-power chord guitar lines and heavy political overtones was enough to set them apart from any American contemporary, it was “California Uber Alles’” subject matter which is most representative of while the Dead Kennedys were such a unique and integral group.  Attacking Jerry Brown, at first, is incredibly confusing. Ronald Reagan, Brown’s predecessor as California’s governor, had just been elected president and, unsurprisingly, was incredibly unpopular among punks. Why would they go after California’s new “cool guy” Democrat as opposed to Ronald fucking Reagan? Well, simply put, the Gipper was too easy a target. Jello Biafra wanted confrontation, an interruption of American organization beyond partisan attacks on low-hanging fruit. Of course Reagan was terrible, but so was Brown. The Dead Kennedys were anarchists; attacking Reagan would be redundant and a lazy cash grab for a band whose entire ethos hinged on a dismantling of the state. And ultimately this decision was imperative for the band eventually signing a deal with independent British label Cherry Red; the DKs now had the chance to record a full length album.  A whole album was given to Biafra and his band to yelp and screech about international injustice in the most sarcastic manner possible. As one would expect, it’s a lot to get through in one sitting; and as one would expect, it’s an amazing album. 

“Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables” opens with a fitting introduction to the listeners next 40 minutes of acerbic, macabre, and ludicrous fun: “Kill the Poor”.  The song begins with massive chords reminiscent of over bloated 70s arena rock laid on top of Biafra’s lyrics concerning a government who has discovered the neutron bomb and will subsequently use it to kill all of their nation’s poor.  A blistering surf-punk riff tears down its introduction and the song instantly transforms into a breakneck bounce of sing-along melodies that wouldn’t be out of place in a Disney movie. “Kill the Poor”, despite its placement at the top of the tracklist, is a pinnacle only matched by two other tracks. One of these is a crisp re-recording of “California Uber Alles” while the other is, well, probably pretty familiar to a lot of you readers.  The Guitar Hero Classic: “Holiday in Cambodia”. The angst-infected alt-classic opens with an atmosphere, echoed guitar chaos lightly strewn over the unforgettably chunky, descending bass riff before erupting into the bone-chillingly excellent main riff. Churning like an unpleasant halloween acid trip, the song is undoubtedly Biafra’s most scathing performance on the album. As he attacks privileged Americans by contrasting their life with victims of Pol Pot’s Cambodian regime, the other Kennedys lock into a terrifying groove filled with bastard surf motifs and disgustingly sweet distortion. The chorus, as with any classic Dead Kennedys track, is incredibly catchy.  It entices the listener to sing it to themselves when they’re aren’t even thinking of it, as if to trick them into condemning very basic pieces of American civilization. There’s a reason “Holiday in Cambodia” is still the DKs most well known song: it’s haunting, brutally honest, wholly subversive, genius, ear candy. 

“Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables” is the album most people immediately associate with the Dead Kennedys, and this is by no means something to complain about.  Hosting three of the bands best songs and even providing insanely smart and concise parody in its filler, the album is a perfect representation of punk rock’s potential as a force of American political commentary.  No punk band before the DKs came close to explicitly tackling horrendous societal hypocrisies and I don’t believe any band that has come since has done this nearly as well. In an alternate timeline without our anarchist heroes, the landscape of all American music would be undoubtedly changed.

-Cliff Jenkins

CLASSIC REVIEW: X- Los Angeles 

BEST TRACKS: Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not; Nausea, Johny Hit and Run Paulene, Los Angeles

How do you choose the song to open a film like Penelope Spheeris’ seminal survey of LA’s emerging punk wasteland: “The Decline of Western Civilization?”.  Among a pool of bands like Black Flag, the Germs, Fear, or Catholic Discipline, how could you possibly choose a single artist to represent the chaotic atmosphere of west-coast degeneracy? Well, there is one band that explicitly embodies the death of 60s counterculture optimism; a group that built their sound and vision off of repurposed American ideals rather than being representative of their disintegration.  So, as the vital documentary begins, viewers are forever introduced to “Nausea”, an atonal masterpiece off Los Angeles, the debut album from California’s most culturally significant punk act: X. Even as the song runs over footage from fellow band’s writhing around on stages glazed with broken glass, X can be immediately identified as an entity which hovered above simple brutality. It’s hard to concisely process what it is about X, their sound, image or attitude, that simultaneously exists apart from all of their LA contemporaries, yet is undeniably instilled to the bone with punk rock.  They were sophisticated poets obsessed with old western sounds and sensibilities; they had a magnetic affinity for Chuck Berry riffs and frequently covered the Doors; they looked more like disgruntled greasers than bobby pinned brats. But they were punks. In fact, they were probably the most important punks to ever come out of LA. In a time when the question of civilization’s decline was represented in Los Angeles’ rotting metropolis by a primal, anarchist musicianship, X was the one band who actually stepped up to answer it. In other words, while Black Flag and the Germs were rejecting Americanism in their baseness, X was a purely American unit whose subverted guitar leads and poetry addressed the massive failures of post-war suburbia and 60s counterculture utopianism.  Los Angeles is likely the most ambitious and holistically representative work to capture the decrepit reality of the country’s former golden pride. 

The legend of X’s formation is an almost laughably perfect story of artists fully enamored with living on the mythical edge of society.  Guitarist Billy Zoom met fellow Illinois expatriate John Doe through a guitar ad in the free LA weekly: “The Recycler”. Both musicians were immensely talented, a practical anomaly in the typically brutal punk rock code.  Zoom (born Tyson Kindell) descended from a family of woodwind players who primed to him to pick up a variety of instruments such as the clarinet, alto sax, accordion, and banjo. By the time he had met Doe, Zoom had moved to LA to attend technical tube repair school and was working as a session guitarist.  Doe (born John Duchac) was a country and western music fanatic. With his pompadour and knack for a wrenching croon, Doe’s ability to locate vocal harmonies granted he and Zoom’s group the ability to embody haunting longing, perfectly conveying the lost paradise of late 70s LA. DJ Bonebrake, a Bay Area passenger tapped to join Zoom and Doe as their drummer, shared his bandmate’s affinity for technical prowess, quickly establishing himself as a jazz-loving wunderkind obsessed with polyrhythm.  And so with these three unlikely champions of counter-culture became an entity known as X. If their formation had ended here then they probably would have still been tight, popular, and maybe even a culturally influential band. But it wasn’t Zoom’s plastic rockabilly enamel or Doe’s dirty folk croon that placed them completely in their own musical domain. No, in fact, the amalgamation of all of these factors was only, at most, half of the reason why X became so atypically beautiful. When Doe initially began practicing with Zoom, he brought along his then-girlfriend Exene Cervenka.  Cervenka, a poet, would often write and recite her poetry for Zoom and Doe, who decided that she would be a perfect singer and lyricist. Sharing lead vocals with Doe, she became the only member of X lacking a classically trained musical background. Acting as the ingredient which pushed them from a tongue-in-cheek power folk trio to California’s most scholastic punks, Cervenka’s dissonant harmonies which delivered lyrics of alienation, sublime anxiety, and life after destruction acted as a microcosm of LA’s disgruntled youth. As they began performing in clubs like Whiskey a Go Go and The Masque, X gained traction in local zines which had emerged to cover the largely underground congregation of anti-authoritarian musicians. Upon reading a particularly positive review a live performance (specifically of the song “Johny Hit and Run Paulene”) Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek was compelled to produce the band’s debut full-length.  Aptly named “Los Angeles”, the album is a confusing digestion.

Unlike their contemporaries, X was not fixated on blistering volumes or ridiculous speeds. Rather, they demanded a thematic subversion of American classics. Los Angeles is raw, shellacked guitar tones or well-mixed drums certainly absent, yet rock’s distant folksy and rockabilly forefathers are not trashed for the sake of complete rebellion. The album’s first track “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not” is instantly reminiscent of British glam with it’s sliding, chunky power chords.  In fact, isolating the instrumental would honestly produce an unremarkable T-Rex era romp. But, again, Cervenka’s lyrics and delivery are X’s crucial tipping point. She and Doe double each other for the majority of the track, with Doe remaining (boringly) on key while Cervenka’s atonal shout punches the listener with lines like “Someone clean to chew on a wife that no one likes/ He called and they said all of New York Is a tow-away zone”.  It’s both abstract and mundane; her lyrics epitomizing the daily horrors of a decaying nation filled with excess.  “Johny Hit and Run Paulene” centers around an over driven Chuck Berry riff, declaring itself the postmodern extension of the most classic essentials of Rock and Roll.  When Doe sings he sounds overly self-contained, compressing a bellow into more of a pained whimper. Through this suppression, the listener can make out “He bought a sterilized hypo/To shoot a sex machine drug/He got twenty-four hours/To shoot all Paulenes between the legs” before Cervenka joins in for the slithering, eponymous chorus.  It’s insanely dark, grotesque, and despondent lyrics are juxtaposed by this utterly American, swung guitar lead.  Adding to their commitment to a kitchen sink, twisted rockabilly attitude is their cover of the Doors “Soul Kitchen”.  It’s more acerbic than the original, but it isn’t done mockingly. You can tell that X has a deep respect for their LA outsider predecessors and it’s this appreciation which sets them so definitely apart.  “Nausea”, is a resigned, monotonous conviction of an environment which was so suffocating in its distress. Cervenka and Doe synchronously deliver a chorus which details a body betraying its master while Zoom’s fat power chords are supplemented by occasionally meandering licks. It’s an anthem to pissed of kids forced to live in a supposedly ideal putrid wasteland. 

X is one-of-a-kind in their commitment to a holistic delivery of an America in decline. When individual bands competed in decadence in order to largely constitute the panic of a new generation, X was able to verbalize that discontent while maintaining a love for previous traditions that were too rich to do away with entirely. Los Angeles is the only album I’ve heard to come out of the first-wave punk movement that was not only a product of its environment but did everything in its ability to address and critique it.

-Cliff Jenkins 

ALBUM REVIEW: BAD BRAINS- Bad Brains

BEST SONGS: Sailin’ On, Banned in D.C., I, Pay to Cum, Right Brigade

“When I think of a great frontman, like a really charismatic guy who everybody in the audience immediately wants to be, I think of Iggy Pop and I think of H.R. from Bad Brains”.  Pretty high praise from Henry Rollins, Black Flag’s most integral and prolific lead singer, don’t ya think? Who, or what, could be such a force as to cause hardcore’s buff dad to put you on equal footing as Iggy motherfucking Pop?  Well, Bad Brains of course. “What’s a Bad Brains?” you ask, wide-eyed in anticipation of yet another WKNC review of an integral punk group, lip quivering on the verge of tears because you can’t take another four paragraphs justifying how music that sounds like shit is actually good.  Don’t worry! This week’s spotlight is on Bad Brains, the undisputed kings of hardcore. Outshining even essential acts like Minor Threat, they made every soul in a mile radius of their presence look down at their own bodies and ask why they haven’t been living through the Bad Brains lifestyle for the entirely of their previously miserable lives.  They made people check their turntables after throwing on their newest single because the noises coming from it didn’t sound like music that humans were even capable of creating yet. They made Guinness Book of World Records give them an award for the fastest band of all time. And the best part, they were good. They were really really fucking good.  While their contemporaries were pushing to play the fastest and the loudest, Bad Brains looked at each other and said “yeah I guess we can do that too” and played the loudest and fastest of them all. But beyond this, this naked engine nearing aneurysm intensity, Bad Brains was composed of incredibly talented musicians equipped endless creativity and an uncanny amount of stamina.  Though their later work was not at all tainted by age or a lack of ingenuity (I Against I is a masterpiece) their eponymous 1982 debut, colloquially known as the “Yellow Tape” is the most essential hardcore punk album ever recorded.  

Unlike bands like the Damned, or the Germs, or even Black Flag, Bad Brains was not originally founded upon a commitment to aggression and anarchy.  They began as a jazz fusion group. Yes, you read that right, Jazz Fusion, a genre not only infinitely distant from punk’s insistence on id-focused simplicity but one which demands incredibly high levels of skill and a thorough understanding of music theory.  So, in their embryonic stages, Bad Brains (then called Mind Power) were obviously leaps and bounds more technically proficient than any other punk band in their native Washington D.C. “Perfect,” the frontman for a completely hypothetical hardcore band who would need to compete with Bad Brains said to himself, “the Bad Brains may be way more talented than me and my sweaty group of pasty bad boys, but they don’t have anywhere near the attitude or vigor to even be considered in the same vein!”. But much to the chagrin of our hypothetical punker, Mind Power’s guitarist, Dr. Know, happened to catch a 1976 television profile on the then up-and-coming British punk scene.  His mind blown by a newly discovered weapon against the establishment, Dr. Know bought every Sex Pistols, Ramones, and Damned record he could find before convening with his bandmates and urging them to adopt a radically new style. They were convinced and Mind Power was forever rebranded as Bad Brains, a term taken from a Ramones song which served as an analog to their former head-centered title. After practicing for hours upon hours in the basement in their friend’s mother’s basement, Bad Brains began booking shows in the three D.C. clubs which supported the still very young punk rock ethos. While frequenters of proto-hardcore shows were initially drawn to the novelty of Bad Brains being an all-black punk band, it soon became clear that the group was a spectacle of fury and showmanship that no other D.C. contemporary could compete with.  The band was ridiculously fast, putting the Ramones and Stooges to shame with tempos which would have caused complete implosion under normal circumstances. Bad Brains was also tight. Really fucking tight; there was no wavering when their songs lurched into breakneck pace, as Dr. Know would even rip into solos (a cardinal sin in most punk circles) that scorched the bung hair off Minor Threat purists who claimed aggression’s only avenue was through the power chord.  H.R, the lead singer and front man would flail around wildly while his band was focused in their blistering craft, acting as the mouthpiece of a rabid flutter while he fell on his back and writhed around before jumping into the crowd and screaming in their face as they smothered in his sweat-drenched frame. What a performance. D.C. degenerates couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The area had never known anything close to a punk scene, and now it appeared like they had been gifted, simply put, the best band of all time.  Nobody could match their energy, technical skill, or ability to meld the crowd and performers into a single volatile goo. As such, they attracted a huge following almost instantly. H.R. notoriously would request over a hundred people for the guest list. That, combined with the natural frenzied disorder associated with any Bad Brains-caliber performance, quickly got them banned from the three D.C. clubs that would even think of booking punk shows. So what does an insanely popular, yet underground band who has been blacklisted from their native Washington do?  Well, move to the Big Apple of course! Bad Brains evacuated D.C. for the REAL DEAL DADDIO PUNK ROCK NEW YORK CITY BABY and almost immediately earned themselves a headlining spot at perhaps punk’s most important venue: CBGB. It was during their NYC libertine residency that the band recorded their seminal first album. Angry, playful, virtuosic, this self-titled statement to everything hardcore is an essential addition to any collection which aims to document an evolution of American music. Every single song is mind-bogglingly perfect. It’s briefest cuts require the listener to ask themselves “was what I heard real? Are people actually capable of making something like this?” while the slower ones provide breathing room and showcase Bad Brains’ ability to perfectly pace an album.  Pacing in a hardcore album? “These guys must be on a totally different plane from the rest of us”, you say, finally excited that we don’t have to cover a deconstruction of music itself yet again. And you’re right, faithful reader: Bad Brains is unlike any other band which came before or after, and their self-titled debut is the required first-taste of their galaxy-brained musicianship. 

“Bad Brains” captures a crossroad in the band’s sound and, to a larger extent, worldview, which saw the four Baddest Brains adopt Rastafarianism.  This meant a stronger spiritual message in their music, an adoption of reggae and dub by the band, and an alienation from racists who thought that Rastafarianism could be equated with violence and other racists who were pissed that the band growing dreads was a sign that they were moving away from the shaved-head mandate of hardcore.  In actuality, the implementation of a strong spiritual message within the album, coupled with the sonic diversity of melding reggae with hardcore, enhanced both the pace of the album and the overall quality of its songs. From the beginning of this half hour epic, Bad Brains incredible songwriting suffocates its listener in “Sailing On”: a Beatles-esque mosh fest whose brevity is equally as impressive as its ear-worm, call-and-response chorus.  Dr. Know shreds so hard that it sounds like it’ll melt any CD player unfortunate enough to challenge it, while H.R.’s vocals are brilliantly placed behind this crunchy guitar with a reverb that makes it easily distinguishable from the delicious commotion produced by his bandmates. Beyond this, the singer’s full arsenal of screeches, gulps, bellows, and growls instantly distinguishes him from even the most pissed off Ian McKayes and Henry Rollins.  “Banned in D.C”, a reference to the band’s blacklisting from all Washington punk clubs, pounds its unsuspecting listener into a higher orbital as soon as its mockingly militant opening is seized by the H.R. and Dr. Know’s respective vault into white-hot power chords and riot-inducing yelps. H.R. often sounds on the edge of collapse, his lyrics rattling off so fast that he must surely be on the verge of sloppiness or total collapse. This is all before he anchors it back with such ease that it sounds almost like a second thought.  “Pay to Cum” is just fast. That’s all I can really find within myself to describe it. It’s brilliant. It should be played to aliens when they are trying to decide whether or not to destroy humanity as the sole relic of our civilization just because, to me, it’s almost unfathomable that this music was actually created. It’s just that fucking fast.  

When H.R. screams, he goes fully in, incinerating his vocal cords in a raspy grind.  But Bad Brains isn’t just a band for pissed off teenagers; H.R.s versatility as a singer allows these moments of anger to be supplemented by an undeniable talent which can meld the band’s brand of punk into an innumerable amount of other genres (reggae, doo-wop, guitar pop, metal, etc.).  And at its core, this is what made Bad Brains so important was that their commitment to punk was not out of convenience or pure angst, but rather an understanding of the lasting vitality that naturally comes with a genre infused with genuine expression. Through their continued showcase of remarkable talent and innovation, Bad Brains legitimized hardcore more than any other group. 

-Cliff