Hail Mary - All Aboard The Sinking Ship

Label: Vermiform

Year: 1999

Remember when Black Flag decided to start playing slower songs, and Greg Ginn decided to indulge all of his inner-jazz-skronk desires? It was around the latter half of 1984 or so, in case you forgot. Well, that alienated a lot of their fans, and while I'm pretty sure the band could have cared less about the musical demands of their "fans", they were at least kind enough to introduce a replacement band in the form of Bl'ast to soothe those not comfortable with Black Flags own artistic shifts. Bl'ast would continue the sonic template of the old Black Flag and grind out a few albums of atonal hardcore hate fucks that, at times, rivaled the mighty Black Flag themselves. I mean, shit, you could even go see Bl'ast and get confused as to why there's a dude playing a clear Dan Armstrong guitar, or a clear lucite drum kit a'la (oh, wait...) Black Flag. It's understandable. Really.

So, fast forward a few years later, and you got Born Against criss-crossing the country serving up a particularly caustic brand of hardcore. Great lyrics, great music, great graphic identity...sounds familiar right? Yeah, well, in a familiar move, Born Against decided they would start playing slower, and they would start indulging their every noisy indulgence. Sure, some people rolled with the punches and stayed on board with them (hey...oh, yeah...I get that too). But of course, there were those who cried for "the old Born Against", and for those disgruntled "fans", Born Against served up Hail Mary. Same record label, same graphic identity, and same furious, intelligent, grating hardcore assault. There you go fans, you're welcome.

Sidebar: I was searching for an image to go along with this post, and noticed this record on three or four other blogs...oops. Sorry, I hadn't seen it around, but I'm kinda lazy. Oh well, maybe you hadn't seen it around either.

DL