Industrial Rap Rock Rollins

Here's a quirky oddity from the early 1990's, sounding exactly like something that could only come from that era. Henry Rollins paired up with frequent bandmate bassosaurus Andrew Weiss and cut a strange EP showcasing an amalgam of twanging bass-heavy industrial drum-machine rap rock which can only be described as "unique". Rollins alternates between his best Mike Patton "Epic" imitation and a more typical "Low Self Opinion" forceful snarl. The overly synthetic backbeats are strangely poppy, when overdubbed with Weiss's effect-laden bass it sounds positively surreal. The hypnotic wall of flanging noise at the end of "Right To Life" would seriously fuck up any acidhead's mind if listened to mid-trip. "The Whole Truth" is the closest thing to a single on this one, white-boy pseudo hip-hop that was all the rage back then and I have to imagine Hank and Andrew cracking up in the studio at the silliness of it all. You gotta see the video as well - especially Rollins hamming it up on the beach in a parody of Madonna's "Cherish" video, fucking priceless. It all wraps up with an absolutely unrecognizable Grateful Dead cover to boot.

Check Out The Gap

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! YEEAAHHHH!

While his output with Black Flag is unquestionably a watershed influence on SoCal hardcore, Hank Rollins' most cohesive (and undeniably best) work is his 1988 debut LP by the eponymous Rollins Band. Seriously, Life Time may be the heaviest album ever. Fuck doom and Khanate, Otesanek and all that post metal shit - their efforts may be bleak and miserable but not heavy. Not like this. Causal case in point: track four "Lonely." The perfect bludgeoning opening (thanks to über-bassosaurus Andrew Weiss) is the most sadly minor key dirge-of-a-fuck of a song I have ever heard... even before Henry starts in on his cynical "I hate the world that I think hates me" lyrics. What is so great about Life Time is that I feel what Henry is going through. The nearly nine-minute lament of "Gun In Mouth Blues" absolutely redefined what music can actually be; I wrote a fucking book thanks to that song and would seriously encourage any listener to seriously take a check of one's life while listening to the final audal minutes of a determined suicidal souls' existence. The closer "Turned Out" is unrestrained id gone astray - the epitome of hardcore by the guy who defined it... I doubt there has ever been as much anger compressed into one song as on this fucker. My old school Texas Hotel CD has a couple bonus live tracks from Belgium - later remastered by the man himself but enjoy these raw cuts.

Prepare To Destroy

Mr. Henrietta Collins

 

I like Henry Rollins. He just seems like a cool dude. Yeah, I agree, I could do without the spoken word quasi-comedy performances but other than that I think he'd be pretty funny to have at a party or sing for your band. I also like that back in 1986 he didn't take himself too seriously. His first solo album, Hot Animal Machine is a pretty solid post-Black Flag release with a couple covers of Suicide, Velvet Underground and Richard Berry tunes. Rollins covering a song about a comic book antihero? Sweet. But seriously, I think his self-written songs are the real standouts - "Man And A Woman" and "There's A Man Outside" are killer. I know a million blogs have posted Rollins' from-the-same-era Drive By Shooting EP recorded under the "Henrietta Collins" alias but not as many do the Machine such justice. So here you go.

Move Right In

In My Head

 

I know there's lots of squabble around the internet regarding Black Flag and their various singers and sound - when it comes down to it, the band was so ahead of its time that they were not only creating musical genres, they were destroying them. In My Head is the band's final studio album; as with most it's a significant stylistic departure from the album before (1985's Loose Nut) which can be attributed to guitarist Ginn's endless experimentation into (at that point) was what has been termed "bluesy proto-grunge-metal." Sure. It is crazy to look back 25 years at what an incredible guitarist Ginn is, it's too bad he'll probably never get the recognition he truly deserves. His all-over-the-neck chord progressions and harmolodic wanderings up and down the fretboard are sometimes a little off-beat (as if the rest of the band is trying to catch up with him) but nonetheless fascinating. There is criticism that Rollins' vocals are mixed low - while admittedly they are I don't think it hurts the album at all, and each album was Ginn's latest showpony to tinker with anyways. I'm a big fan of In My Head; twelve lasting, classic Black Flag tracks - "White Hot" and "Drinking And Driving" are without a doubt two of their best tunes.

Get The 10 1/2