Music review: Black Flag - My War (1984)

Here I review the best punk rock album of all times. Quite amusingly when it was what made most punks shun Black Flag; you know, the "anti-establishment" and "pro-individuality" crowd sneering at something going against their (ironically very conservative) aesthetics. Laughable.

This LP is one where the two sides are clearly delimited, sonically and thematically. The first one can still be considered punk, it's got the manic, raw energy, the aggression, and some measure of simplicity (some; the sound was starting to go its own psychedelic way). Henry Rollins still successfully channeling his hatred of much of the world, of their fans, into his serial killer howling.

But the B side, of boy, the B side. I won't say it was the "genesis" of this mix between hardcore punk and Black Sabbath (Flipper had their misery-filled debut, Black Flag themselves had "Damaged I" on theirs), but it was the crystallization of what would become sludge metal in NOLA's bayous.

The pain in those last three songs sounds real. It simply does. Whereas The Cure or The Sisters of Mercy look pretty and almost filmic, the stylish kind of depression of an absinthe addict in a Parisian bar, My War sounds like the despair and rage a real human being can contain. It's not a spectator thing anymore, it resonates with what you or me can feel (or have felt) at our worst.

There's only one word to describe this: sincerity. Only the most despondent acts of the sludge scene (Eyehategod, Crowbar, Grief, Dystopia), early Swans and some very select black metal albums managed to put that word in my mouth.

I don't think it objectively is perfect enough for a 10, but that's what it gets from me.