Loose Nut

by

Black Flag

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What really surprises me about Lose Nut is that it was recorded not to long after other great albums like Slip It In. What the heck happened? This is not the Black Flag that I love. Yes, I understand that bands need to evolved, but, in my opinon this album was a major decline both musically and spiritually. I love the other Black Flag albums because they were spontanouse, without pretension, musical yet raw, and emotionally harrowing. Black Flag on Dammaged sounded like a band not giving a damn about polishy production values, a band concerned with capturing the immidiate spiritual truth, almost feeling as if they haphazardly recorded the music in thier basements obeying only an inexorable need to purge themselves through their music. Listening was both imperitive and cathartic. Not so much a band, but a life force. Sadly, I feel this quality is sorely missing from Lose Nut. The drums are flat and alienated, while overall the band seems conventional and too stiff. At times Henry Rollins singing seems to me perfunctury, stale, and unispired. Some of the songs are good and effective but lack an soul, that feeling of urgency that creates a trancendant experience I find in their other recordings and other truely great records. Somehow, this albums just doesn't take me there, to those special hieghts - certianly not when I hear Rollins' bored, perfuctury chorus on "Bastard In Love" while the band aloofly plays along. Black Flag's dubious technical musical talents are not nearly good enough to compensate for the emotional flatness, they have not the brilliant guitar work of a Slayer, or melody of the Beatles. Lose Nuts comes across with an more metal sound, however, a very awkward metal sound. I concede that my opinion may be a bit harse because I so adore their other work but this record is not memorable, at least, not in any good way. Lose nut, on its own merits, is not a really bad record, it just isn't a very good one. Approach with caution.