Review Summary: Pretentious and the only mistake Greg Ginn made in his career.
I come to infect. I come to rape your woman.
I come to take your children into the street.
I come for you family man. Family man,
with your Christmas lights already up,
you're such a man when you’re putting up your Christmas lights, first on the block.
Family man.
Family man, I want to crucify you to your front door, with nails
from your well stocked garage, family man, family man.
Family man.
Saint dad, Father on fire. I've come to incinerate you.
I've come home.
Family Man is probably the only mistake Greg Ginn ever made. Then again maybe he was trying to make another point that Black Flag weren’t just another hardcore punk band. The album is basically two different sides, one side is complete spoken word hilariously done by Henry Rollins. The second side is an instrumental side with some amount of guitar solos. This was quite daring for Black Flag as what hardcore punk band would have the balls to put out an album like this in the middle of the hardcore heyday?
It is my most important opinion that they should have just left this idea in the dumpster.
It’s sad that I have to sit through some cheesy, forced poetry spat out by some angry, testerone-fueled guy just to get to the mildly sweet parts. Henry’s poetry is very shallow and while it accomplishes it’s mission to create daring imagery inside one’s mind, it also makes the listener cringe until he’s lying on the floor. Henry’s way of reciting this poetry is also amusing, he tries to make himself seem edgy and eccentric but he just looks dim-witted. It is clear to see that the music always made Black Flag. No matter how many vocalists they had, it always sounded great. At this point in time, Henry clearly hasn’t developed a writing skill of considerable degree. Greg Ginn has always been the heart and soul of the band and wrote most of their songs. Nearly every band has one main songwriter and when that one songwriter steps back a bit or quits, the band just aren’t as good. This is happened in bands like Bad Religion and since Greg had no input into the spoken-word, it just isn’t worth a damn. Henry got better at song writing but it just isn’t working here.
However, Greg does come back into play with the song writing.
The instrumental side is all Greg and it’s a massive step-up from the first side. He shows again how he is definitely the ‘Ornette Coleman of punk rock’. The second half sure holds onto the listener more but I can’t help feel disappointed. The band shouldn’t be separated by voice and music, they should be together no matter what. Regarding that last sentence, there is one track with Henry’s vocals and that’s “Armageddon Man”. Without a doubt one of the best tracks on here and is very solid. The other track that holds the album up well is “I Won't Stick Any of You Unless and Until I Can Stick All of You!” Greg throws out some radical riffs and explodes into noise solos on several occasions.
However, apart from that, there is nothing else that great on the album. The rest of the instrumentals are average but are at least better than the poor spoken-word. This sure broke Black Flag’s streak of excellent albums and it shouldn’t have happened. This is rushed (this and
Slip It In came out two months apart) and it’s half-a
ssed. A pretentious piece of crap or a welcome change? I guess I’ll leave you with that one.
