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What makes <i>Damaged</i> revolutionary isn’t just its speed or rage, but how the band wields it. They have their targets: consumerism (“Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie”), apathy (“TV Party”), authority (“Police Story,” “Spray Paint”). But where Bad Brains captured hardcore’s romance and Minor Threat its philosophical purity, Black Flag’s <i>Damaged</i> is its first existential statement, an album that uses the outward physicality of punk as a tool for inner exploration. It’s easy to squint at guitarist Greg Ginn’s love of the Grateful Dead—wasn’t punk supposed to be a reaction to the dippy intangibilities of the hippie movement?—but it also makes sense. For as much as Black Flag symbolizes hardcore’s societal rebellion, <i>Damaged</i> is ultimately an album about journeying to the limits of your head. “Damaged,” Henry Rollins screams on the album-closing “Damaged I.” “My damage/No one comes in/Stay out.” Not the state’, not his parents’, not his friends—<i>his</i>. .

via Apple Music

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