Search - Rollins Band :: Hard Volume

His best before the storm

Daniel Byrd | Katy, Tx | 01/10/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When Black Flag ran out of gas in the late 80s, it took Henry Rollins six months to get this band together and running. This is THE Rollins Band album to buy, considering his body of work before 'The End Of Silence' came out.
This is the still poor, angry, we can make this band work Henry. Hard, angry, and not too poorly recorded. I love this album, all the tracks. But I only give it 4 stars because of the missing original CD track 'Joy riding with Frank', a 25+ minunite live track that had the best bass guitar work I have ever heard on ANY rock album.
Either way, its a great buy. Its funny, back when I bought this album around 1988, I couldnt think of Henry Rollins singing for anyone other than Black Flag. Now, listening to this album, considering Black Flags later work, it sounds like he was wasting his time with Black Flag, waiting to make this album, and when he did, he exploded. Recomended."

Hard as nails

Paul Mcdonough | Irving, Texas United States | 11/27/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album is the last truly underground release of Henry's career (it originally appeared on Texas Hotel records) and while Henry has admitted that he withheld some of the stronger material that they were working on (Tearing in particular) for later release (End of Silence), this album is easily the darkest, hardest and most honest album in the Rollins Oeuvre. The opening track "Hard" is an awesome ode to self-preservation, while "Planet Joe" is a brutally uncompromising vision of the iconoclastic spirit. However, it is the amazing "Turned inside out" (Who's the criminal now? Is that you? Could that be you?) and the frighteningly honest "Down and away" (The closer you get, the farther away I feel) that dominate this release. The bonus tracks are great (mostly demos), particularly the unreleased "Thin air," one of the greatest Rollins band songs of all time. This disc is like the Swans on steroids. Don't beleive me? Buy it and see. Rollins plans on re-releasing "Joy riding with Frank" in the future, so don't despair. However, you should have bought the original release true fan"