Black Flag- Damaged

The first wave of punk rock had crested by 1981, but around that time a slew of groups came up from the underground practically inventing a new genre “hardcore”. On the cutting-edge of the movement was Black Flag, who went through three singers before Henry Rollins joined the band and soon after Damaged was released on SST Records.

It’s been almost 30 years since the album has come out, and it has lost none of its intensity. Sure there have been albums that were louder (the album is mixed kind of low), but most of them seem like cheap rip-offs of Damaged. It’s funny to look at what passes for “punk rock” these days and compare it to this album as well as other bands from this era. Most bands today are all about looking “punk” and not creating music that brings something new and fresh to the table.

Greg Ginn wrote most of the music, and his guitar playing expanded the parameters of what people considered possible in punk rock. Whereas before, punk was three-chords and that’s about it, Ginn took the music in a totally different direction (more evident on subsequent Black Flag albums) that showed punk could be layered and was more than just young adult’s playing basic riffs and bitching about society.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of anger on this album, and the lyrics at times may seem very clichéd but even at those moments, with Rollins’s delivery of the words, they seem to take on a new meaning. A former ice-cream store manager turned punk rock vocalist, Rollins’s vocal style is clearer than many during that time period, especially when heard live.

Seeing that this album is pretty legendary (it was in Rolling Stone’s Top 500 albums ever), it is pretty hard to pick a top song. For the purpose of this Blog, I am going to go with “Room 13” if for no other reason than the fact that it was the first song I heard from this album.

Grade---A