Under The Surface..: BLACK FLAGWell this post was supposed to go up along with th Black Sabbath one in Febuary celebrating my 1st year of blogging however i have tried to write Black Flag up so many times and it's so hard for me not to go into epic rambling when there is so much to tell I've tried my best not to ramble and give you the best of basic information about this might band but every time i returned to the post it was exhausting me! But here it is a mere 4 months late.... So as many of you who have followed this blog from it's humble beginnings will know that I kicked off this blog 1 year ago as of 1. Feb (2. 1. 3. 1. 3) by uploading the first 4. SST records this unfortunately became a bit of a killer for me as no matter how much SST stuff I posted up there were always requests for more. However after 4shared killed my account off all the SST stuff was lost along with many hours of my write ups! However some of you may have noticed that a bit of SST stuff has been creeping back in recently (BLA'ST!, Saint Vitus, Good For You) This is because I found it a bit lacking on my behalf that I was into so much SST stuff but i owned a very small percentage of it (That is on CD as I owned a shitload on vinyl but sold it all when my record player broke) with the availability of downloads i had previously seen little need to replace my vinyls with CD however I was inspired by one key event. Saint Vitus and Husker Du! Henry Rollins said in his book ! So in it parts you have SST0. The original press of 5. It would appear that due to the number of pressings and the variations of this record that they needn't have worried about having their unsold records returned! From the gnarly thrashing guitars of Greg Ginn to Keith Morris's Snotty vocal style there's not an inch of room to spare on this EP from the opening chords to the end this EP just grabs you by the hair and drags you through the dirt of the backstreets and seedy dives of LA and leaves you behind a dumpster in some forgotten alley! Next Up is the . As well as some demos recorded and released on the . Browse the latest album releases on AllMusic AllMusic. Backtrack Blues Band: Way Back Home: Flaming Cheese / Harpo Records. Electronic: Bloodshot.
So after 6 months of searching for a singer Black Flag finally asked SST office regular Dez Cadena to sing for the band and this to my mind is where Black Flag moved into the musical territory that made them the legend they are today. If you listen to the . So I have at this point been coming back and forward to this post for about 2 months now I have been avoiding it due to the mammoth task this write up is and also because I have written up all this Black Flag stuff before but much as i respect Black Flag and the fact that they are my favorite band I think at this point I'm gonna have to call a halt to the . If you want to know more about the history of Black Flag I cannot recommend highly enough you read Steven Blush's book ! I have tried to link you to the beginning of the Black Flag chapter, but the link below the picture below will take you to the middle of the Chapter just scroll up a bit and look for the title ! This album is definitely not an easy listen this is an album chock full of distorted dueling guitar, rumbling bass insanity and Rollins back when he had something to prove to the fans and to his band and i have to say that Rollins sonic resemblance on this album to the vocals of Dez Cadena who preceded him is definitely apparent, this is a far more raw Henry Rollins in both experience and age than the vocal style he would later make his own on other albums this is especially noticeable on closing slow crawl ! For all the Rollins bashing there has been over Black Flag's career and how he . It came packaged in Pettibon artwork with pseudonyms for the members and no mention of Black Flag to be seen anywhere on it's cover in a vain attempt to keep money flowing for the court case but prevent the band getting into further legal strife however this once again landed them back in court and Greg Ginn in jail! During this time Black Flag had burned through drummer Emil and had recruited Chuck Biscuits of D. O. A. These 1. 98. There are some blistering versions of the forthcoming material on here mainly drawn from what would become ! A CD version of these bootlegged demos entitled ! Although like many of Black Flags recordings ! My opinion is biased but there is not a bad song on this album tho the three slow jams are a mission for the uninitiated the rewards are there! The instrumentals are actually pretty great and really show the band flexing their chops especially Bill Stevenson who's drumming is just phenomenal here! Henry's spoken word is part claustrophobic dirty nasty and dark and part humorous have a listen to title track ! Not something to listen to if you're not in the best of moods but I personally love it! So finally for 1. Rollins has really found his groove here as well and his performance is just stellar from the sleazy spoken lines of the intro to the title track through blistering hardcore (albeit hardcore Black Flag style!) songs like . On a side not it is rumored that the regimen of rehearsal and live playing through 1. Bill Stevenson with a sort of nervous tick when he went to his doctor about it he was asked if he had been around a lot of automatic gunfire! There is not in my opinion a bad song on this album I defy anyone to not have there head nodding and their teeth gritting all the way! So into the final years for this band and we have no less than 5 releases to cover (tho one was recorded in 1. Great Big Band And Friends : 966: Nistico, Sal: Heavyweights : 967: Lytle, Johnny: Nice And Easy : 968: Dameron, Tadd: 1948 : 969: Jordan, Clifford. Rollins, Sonny: Shadow Waltz (Freedom Suite) 987. Firstly we have album number 5 ! So he took my money and sent me on my way sniggering behind my back as he had just got rid of what he thought was a bit of a turkey onto me and took my pocket money for the privilege!! So I got home put the needle to the record and title track ! It was nothing like anything else i listened to and i didn't at that time have any kind of reference points for it, all i knew was this band was effecting me in some way and i loved them! Best way i can describe this album is this is kinda what I'd loosely describe as Black Flag's ! However bear in mind that the most prized and most played music for the band at this time was early ZZ Top, Dio and Dio era Black Sabbath! This album is chock full of fat riffage and the guitar tone is gnarly and pretty heavy Take one listen to anthem ! In the interim between . Not a bad EP as such but definitely not the first one I would reach for when listening to these guys however it does have one of their best Pettibon covers and looks way better than it sounds... Whilst this album still retains some of the rock sensibilities from ! This album whilst having rocking moments here and there is maybe a little more minimal in sound than ! The cassette and later CD versions of this album contained 3 bonus tracks ? So last release for 1. Live ? This is a fairly tight run through mainly Loose Nut/In My Head material with a smattering of the hits as well however whilst it's a better quality set than Live 8. Flag release to feature drummer Anthony Martinez who is a good and capable drummer he is NO Bill Stevenson so to my mind it's a bit of an unessential live album really but worth having.. It does end with the trademark closer from the early days . Shortly after this Rollins received a phone call from Ginn saying he was leaving the band which as it was his band was pretty much the end of Black Flag by this time Ginn had moved on to his instrumental power trio Gone (featuring the mighty rhythm section of Andrew Weiss and Sim Cain who Rollins would later enlist for his own Rollins Band poetic justice???) And that folks as they say is that... Or is it???? Fast Forward to 2. Black Flag show and some ex members of Black Flag decided that an appraisal of Black Flag's music was long overdue so enter FLAG ! I am not getting into that here though you can easily find out everything about this with a quick google search! So what was Ginn's major response to this apparent affront to him? To enlist Jealous Again era vocalist Ron Reyes and some unknowns on Rhythm section and reform Black Flag! This line up hastily recorded an album entitled ! Whilst as I've said Ginn can churn out tunes quicker than most people blink that's fine for his solo work and numerous projects however to resurrect the Black Flag name and release this album well to my mind it's a bigger insult to the name Black Flag than the excellent,blistering and faithful reproductions of the music that FLAG! I am not even gonna review or dissect it there's a link below you can make up your own mind about it but with this cover how could it not be a fuckin turd... So that's it folks the Under The Surface Black Flag mega post I really don't have any clever words to wrap this up it's been exhausting work even with the comparatively minimal write up i have done here my words can't really do justice to what this band means to me, one of the most important bands of the 2. I just wish that bitter old bastard Ginn would've just let it lie!!! Here's your links please.. ENJOY! First Four Years + TV Party - Mediafire. Everything Went Black - Mediafire. Damaged - Mediafire. Demos - Mediafire. My War - Mediafire. Radio Tokyo Sesssion - Mediafire. Live '8. 4 - Mediafire. Family Man - Mediafire. Slip It In - Mediafire. Loose Nut - Mediafire. In My Head - Mediafire. The Process Of Weeding Out EP - Mediafire. I Can See You EP - Mediafire. Who's Got The 1. 0 & 1/2? Over the last few years i have amassed quite a few little Black Flag and related curiosities, Ray Pettibon art, Flyers, Promo and live photo's so as I feel that Pettibon's art and those famous SST promo photos were such an important part of the Black Flag package I decided along with the music to upload my Black Flag.
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