In My Head

People tend to dismiss this album when talking about Black Flag's recording history. Black Flag changed over the course of time, even though a lot of fans wanted them to play nothing but Damaged-style music. The guitar on In My Head carries the day; Greg Ginn's atonal riffing is mezmerizing and makes up for Henry's contrived psychobabble nonsense. This record and Loose Nut are both way better than My War and Slip It In.

Hey iTunes if I pay ten bucks for a album I want complete song after song! In my head cuts of only like 1:50 into the song! Fix in my head!

Let me tell you right off the bat, if you buy this album hoping to hear blazing punk rock like you heard from Damaged or Jealous Again, you will be disappointed. This is a completely different Black Flag. At first I hated it, but it grew on me. I think of it as the soundtrack to a bad acid trip, but that's a very vague statement. It's really difficult to pin down exactly what you feel when listening to it. It's difficult, paranoid, frustrated, but very mature. People disagree with me when I say this is one of their best, but I fell in love with it. It's a very underrated piece of work.

I was ready to trash this part of my teenage history and never look back but then I had a sample listen and remembered how some parts of it are still part of me. this is a depressing album and fits a depressing moment pretty well. the girl who wrote about white hot- yeah, i was there. paralyzed, in my head, and i can see you still appeal to me. as one already said this is the henry show and, in retrospect, as much as his anger seems to fit many times it's really overbearing for a band with such good instrumentation. imagine finishing a ginn solo (see 10 1/2 live) psyched out and then you've got rollins selling his bum out everyone lyrics to follow. sometimes it's nice to feel good and not see things in such a negative light. even with the 'it's all up to you' track, this album is wayyy too moody. so i won't trash the album. instead i'll say, if you're listening to this one and taking it to heart lighten up, get outside, get some air and find something that makes you feel better other than people who are just as miserable. i did and life has been much much better since.

Don't get me wrong; I like ALL the various phases of Black Flag, and I enjoy their long, slow sludgy stuff almost as much as their short, fast, brutal work. And you have to admit, "In My Head" took the concepts first laid out in "My War" and "Loose Nut" and even "Slip It In" to their logical extension. However, the end result is simply not particularly good. By now Flag had achieved almost complete separation between the vocals and the music that was laid out literally (with spoken word tracks accompanying instrumentals) in "Family Man". The consequence is that there doesn't appear to be much fusion between the lyrics/vocals and the music. Most songs come off sounding like ad libbed rantings of Henry Rollins placed over repetitive guitar progressions that sound more like finger practicing exercises. Gone is the fierce, raging guitar of "Slip It In" or even "Loose Nut", and in its place is a series of repeating elements that while technically proficient lack any real emotion or power. Two exceptions: "Drinking and Driving" and "Society's Tease", but here too the vibe is more the technical proficiency of metal and has only traces of the rage Black Flag was known for. This isn't a BAD album, just pretty boring, and for Black Flag, that's pretty damning criticism indeed.

some of these songs have a real intensity to them, and the sound is awesome. "Drinking and Driving" is a song that really gets you. "It's All Up to You", "Out of this World", and "In My Head" are solid, droney, heavy songs that have an infectious, sometimes haunting groove to them.

Like all of their work, a must own for any fan. It truly is 'all up to you'

Don't get me wrong, Black Flag is easily one of my favorite bands. But this album is almost unlistenable. Henry Rollins speaks in spooky voices through some haunted house echo effect as Greg Ginn noodles aimlessly up and down the fretboard. There's almost no energy to it, and you can tell that creatively the band had hit a brick wall by this point. It's hard to tell where the songs are going half the time, which wouldn't be a bad thing except they don't end up going anywhere. My recommendation: for the biggest Black Flag fans who need the whole catalog ONLY. If not, buy Damaged, Slip It In, Loose Nut, or My War.

Black Flag's final album really showed how creatively played out they were (granted, Loose Nut is little better). This was essentially Rollins' affair ; plenty of pseudopsychotic musings and self indulgent, bad "macho" poesy along with quite a few tired riffs. Black Flag by this point in time clearly had little to offer. They really should've called it quits after "My War", which would've at least meant they would've gone out on a creative peak. By the time of "In My Head", however, the Black Flag story was essentially over. For diehard completists only.

Along with Loose Nut and The Process of Weeding Out, In My Head seems to push Black Flag's experimentation to its height. This is definitly not the right album for a fan into the early stuff like Damaged but for the later fans such as myself this is an album that you should get right away. Ginn is way more crazy than in Loose Nut and Rollins seems to almost preach to you in his lyrics. A truely amazing album to the people into different stuff.