Henry Rollins - Rock's Caged Beast

With the seminal Black Flag adventure over, Henry Rollins (who in the meantime had also earned himself an excellent reputation as a "spoken-word" performer) broke the news to his great friend Chris Haskett. It was Haskett who convinced him to put together a new band. Chris, a fine guitarist, had been living for some time in Leeds, England. Drummer Mick Green is also from there. In Washington D.C., meanwhile, Rollins brought in bassist Bernie Wandell, and the die was cast!

Still in Leeds, in 1986 the band began recording new material, with technical support from sound engineer Geoff Clout. Much of that material ended up on the band's debut album, Hot Animal Machine, released in 1987 and credited to Henry Rollins alone.

The album is a kind of first spiritual testament from the former Black Flag frontman, shaped by a childhood that calling "intense and difficult" would be a euphemism. The tension built up even during his time at the court of Greg Ginn is unleashed in a furious, hallucinated brew, laced with subtle but unmistakable lysergic veins. Rollins stages deeply "theatrical" psychodramas, in which the central element, the sole and absolute protagonist, is his own psyche, tormented by spasmodic, terrifying tensions.

The galloping rock & roll of "Black And White" sets the tone for the mood of the whole record. Sure, the hardcore charge of Black Flag hasn't entirely vanished; but here it's above all an infernal crucible of blues, funk and visceral rock. "Followed Around" continues the leader's devastating work of purification, with epileptic guitar bursts that now sound the retreat, now launch the offensive. "Lost And Found" opens with a powerful hard-boogie, Rollins a raving madman and an infernal juggler of the soul. "There's A Man Outside" digs even deeper grooves, its voodoobilly streaked with searing psychedelic drift.

The cover of "Crazy Lover" (Chuck Berry) gets the same adrenaline-fuelled treatment, while "A Man And A Woman" doles out bestial instinct amid bass sobs, metallic screeches and the leader's almost paroxysmal verbosity. "Hot Animal Machine 1", a brazen piece of heavy metal, brings back Rollins's meanness and his most animalistic impulses. The surprise is the extraordinary cover of "Ghost Rider" - yes, the very same track that opened the self-titled debut of the legendary Suicide. Another cover is "Move Right In": Velvet Underground, New York City. The logorrheic delirium of "Hot Animal Machine II", with peremptory hard-rock accelerations, loses itself in a psychedelic spiral, with Haskett at the fore and the rest of the gang grinding out dreamlike decibels.

All this maelstrom of distortion, screams, noise and more sets the stage for the psychoanalytic recital of "No One", left to drift in a sea of dissonance, a close relative of "Damage II", which closed out Damaged, the great Black Flag masterpiece. Once again, Rollins has no qualms about baring himself completely, confessing to the whole world all his anguish and all his frustrations.

During the same sessions as Hot Animal Machine, the band also recorded the EP Drive By Shooting, a more relaxed, at times grotesque work.

The first album to bear the name "Rollins Band" is Life Time (1988), produced by Ian MacKaye. The rhythm section is brand new: Andrew Weiss (bass) and Sim Cain (drums), both coming from Gone, Greg Ginn's other project. There's fun to be had here. Right from the opening attack of "Burned Beyond Recognition", there's no doubt that the caged animal spitting venom into the mic is that damned bastard Rollins himself - just to make clear right away that he's still got plenty of fight left in him. The assault continues on "What Am I Doing Here?", with excellent guitar flourishes and a show-off bass line. There's no stopping now, and so "1,000 Times Blind" kicks in, followed by the stately cadences of "Lonely" and the filthy heavy metal of "Wreckage". Rollins becomes aware of his place in the world, concluding that the only solution to this abominable mess is solitude. The album's masterpiece goes by the name "Gun In Mouth Blues", a long, exhausting descent into the unconscious, propped up by an epic instrumental framework and a dissolute voice. Slowed almost to a standstill, to a white-hot calm, the track burns through all its energy in a final apocalypse, amid murderous bursts of guitar machine-gun fire, adrenaline-charged bass and maniacal screams. Things go back to jumping around like lunatics with "You Look At You", while the supersonic frenzy of "If You're Alive" sounds like it could be the unleashed Black Flag all over again. There's still time for the heavy-funk of "Turned Out" and... everybody go home!

Even more desperate and powerful is Hard Volume, which hit the shops just a year later. The sound has gained in tightness and dynamism: by now the Rollins Band is a merciless war machine. From the battered rock'n'roll of "Hard" to the explosive "I Feel Like This", by way of the exuberant, solemn blues of "What Have I Got" and the slowed-down, mechanical punk of "Planet Joe", Hard Volume stands as a granite block of energy, passion and street poetry.

The beast bares its teeth again in the chilling atmosphere of "Love Song", and keeps doing so through the grunge storm of "Turned Inside Out" and the delirious "hardelic" orgy of "Down And Away". If Rollins forces his voice to follow him everywhere, the rest of the band is no less committed, weaving between hard-rock lashings, lysergic orgasms and fire-seething stillness.

Having documented their live activity with the decent Do It (1988), right in the midst of the grunge era the Rollins Band taught a thing or two to plenty of lightweights with the monstrous The End Of Silence (1992). Rollins is, if anything, even angrier, more theatrical, more alone. His screams are spasmodic, disjointed, sincere. The music has by now burst its banks, flowing relentlessly downward, toward the depths that voice - damnably on the edge - insists on dragging it into. The Rollins Band pushes out into open water, and keeps sailing on, fearless. "Low Self Opinion" still pays tribute to beloved blues, while styles multiply on "Grip" and psychedelia takes over again on "Just Like You" (with Rollins's bestial scream leaving no escape) and on "Blues Jam". On the more properly "heavy" side sit "Tearing" (with a great Haskett solo), "Almost Real" and "What Do You Do".

To be honest, some of the jazz-core ravings eventually wear thin, but, all things considered, The End Of Silence stands as a landmark of '90s alternative rock, as well as one of the finest episodes in Rollins's career.

With Weiss's crucial contribution gone, the Rollins Band slowed its mad dash with the mild disappointment of Weight (1994), a funk-metal album that doesn't tear at the soul all that much. "Liar" is the hit single of the record, their first real commercial success. But it can hardly be called a great song - quite the opposite. Nor are the heavy metal of "Icon" or the lysergic hard rock of "Step Back" especially convincing. And what about the funk of "Shine"? No, it just doesn't work. Let's move on. Better yet, let's look back, since faced with the fossils of Come In And Burn (1997), Get Some Go Again (2000) and Nice (2001), all that's left to do is pine for the good old days. (The Only Way To Know For Sure (2002), meanwhile, is another live document).

Alongside his work with the Rollins Band, old Henry carried on his career as a poet, touring with his "spoken word" shows: in 2001, "Rollins In The Wry" was published.

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