Rise Above - "24 Black Flag songs for the Memphis Three"

If you think back to a couple of years ago, you may remember a really brilliant compilation in honour of the amazing Bad Brains (the hardcore rastas). It was called Never Give In and the list of tracks may have brought back a number of memories to those who’d experienced the Bad Brains days. However, to others, this was a series of mouth-watering musical pieces that sent us looking through various record shops in search of anything that the rastas may have produced…

Well, here it is ladies and gentleman : a tribute to Black Flag! And when it comes to playing the tracks that laid the foundations for modern hardcore, the names who wish to get involved are pretty damned big. When you add the fact that all the benefits will be invested in the defence of the Memphis Three (three minors who were wrongly accused of murder when nothing proves their culpability), you find the names get even bigger!

Iggy Pop makes a fantastic cover of Fix Me, where he puts all the guts he’d seemingly lost since The Stooges split. Neil Fallon, the lead guitar / vocals to American super-band Clutch makes quite a performance on American Waste on which his usual groove guitar is replaced by slashing punk riffs… But that’s not it ladies and gents : you can also get a nice listen to Mike Patton screaming to Six Pack, Lemmy playing Thirsty & Miserable, Nick Oliveri from Queens of the Stone Age, Tom Araya from Slayer, Ice-T, Jeff Moreira from Poison The Well or Corey Taylor from Slipknot…

And that is not it! As the title clearly indicates, this compilation has 24 tracks… Listing all the names appearing here would only be tedious. However, I would like to point out one little aspect which made this musical experience less exciting than I was expecting: all these people play Black Flag the way Black Flag was originally played. I’m not saying that this is bad… but I am saying that Rise Above therefore cannot compare to Never Give In or the Black Sabbath tributes Nativity in Black 1 & 2 where each band put in a little of their own musical spice. Perhaps the lack of transformation to the songs is due to Henry Rollins, the very own Black Flag vocalist, being present on a certain number of these tracks…

Funnily enough, one man stands out : Ryan Adams whose cover of Nervous Breakdown has a lot of feel and personality within it.

This is a fairly good tribute to one of the best punk acts of the last century. You may not appreciate each and every cover… but the noble cause which Henry Rollins and his friends wish to bring up should be enough to get you interested.

Polo