Hot Wax: Bad Brains’ I Against I (1986/2024)

Innovative, eccentric, unpredictable, fickle, high-energy, reticent, talented, pioneering, troubled, unrelenting…all of these words (and many more) can be used to describe Bad Brains. Much as Nashville’s Afrikan Dreamland was reinventing and reinvigorating reggae music in the 1980s by adding a dash of blues, so too was Bad Brains leavening punk rock with reggae grooves. The Washington D.C. hardcore heroes seem to have wanted to be anything but a hardcore punk band even as they pushed beyond the traditional barriers of rock, reggae, punk, and funk music like no other band in rock ‘n’ roll history.

Formed in 1976 as Mind Power, a jazz-rock fusion outfit not dissimilar to Return to Forever, it wasn’t long until the fresh and exciting sound of punk rock infected the band and they radically changed their sound towards a guitar-driven hardcore style. Original Mind Power singer Sid McCray – ostensibly responsible for introducing the band to punk in the first place – left shortly thereafter and guitarist H.R. (née Paul Hudson) took over the microphone. The rest of the band was comprised of guitarist Dr. Know (née Gary Miller), bassist Darryl Jenifer, and drummer Earl Hudson (Paul’s brother). Around this same time (i.e. 1977 or so), the band experienced the legendary Bob Marley in concert, igniting a shared interest in reggae music and the Rastafari movement.

Hardcore Punk & Reggae

With punk and reggae as their magnetic poles, Bad Brains pursued a performance style that blitzed the audience with unrelenting energy and total creative abandon. H.R. was an incendiary frontman, Dr. Know a skilled guitarist nevertheless capable of grinding it out in the trenches, and the Brains’ rhythm section could swing or slam as the occasion merited. They quickly built up a loyal fan base in the D.C. area and were inevitably blacklisted by local clubs due to their chaotic and unpredictable performances. Bad Brains moved northward to New York City in 1980, where they became the blowtorch that ignited the city’s emerging and soon-to-be-notorious hardcore punk scene.

By 1982, Bad Brains were CBGB regulars, performing several nights a week at the infamous Bowery club. Their self-titled debut album was really just a document of the band’s ever-evolving live show, released exclusively on cassette by the specialty label Reachout International Records (ROIR). Featuring liner notes by New York Rocker writer Ira Kaplan (later a founding member of indie rockers Yo La Tengo), the tape’s fold-out insert also included lyrics – the ultimate in fan service. They were subsequently signed to the indie PVC Records label for their sophomore effort, 1983’s Rock For Light. Produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars and reprising five songs from the debut, the pop-meister smoothed down some of the band’s raw edges but ultimately delivered an enduring and high-octane record.

Creative tensions within the band caused Bad Brains to break up after the release of Rock For Light, the first of many such implosions over the course of the band’s career. The original line-up reunited in 1986, signing with the legendary SST Records label, which by that point could boast of a catalog that represented a veritable “who’s who” of influential underground rockers like Black Flag, the Meat Puppets, the Minutemen, and Hüsker Dü, among others. All of which brings us around to I Against I, the Bad Brains’ “breakthrough” and arguably their best-known and beloved recording. Recently-reissued as the eighth title in the band’s restoration of its back catalog with help from the good folks at ORG Music, the audio has been remastered by Dave Gardner and the vinyl produced by Furnace Record Pressing. A landmark effort, I Against I is worthy of rediscovery as a groundbreaking album that influenced generations of musicians to follow.

Bad Brains photo by Steven Hanner, courtesy Org Music

Bad Brains’ I Against I

I Against I eschews the Brains’ reggae obsessions entirely, the opening track (appropriately titled “Intro”) a plodding doom-metal instrumental with delusions of grandeur and a powerful performance with start-stop guitar shred and ringing instrumentation guaranteed to give the listener tinnitus. The title track bullies its way off the disc, through your speakers, corkscrewing itself into your ears. A 90mph moshpit punker with metallic edging, “I Against I” was a hurricane-strength revelation to the possibilities of expanding hardcore into thrash- and speed-metal. Throw Ronnie James behind the microphone and “House of Suffering” could easily pass for a late-period Black Sabbath track, the perfect breeding of machinegun hardcore riddims and whiplash six-string heavy metal bombast.

The band expands its musical blueprint by a lick or two for “Re-Ignition,” in which you can clearly hear the future of Ice T’s Body Count and any half-dozen vintage ‘90s Lollapalooza bands in the song’s staggered rhythms, swaggering vocal delivery, and muscular git riffs. “Secret 77” is a clever outlier, punky but with tinges of “new wave” pop fused to a funk-metal groove that forged a blade for Fishbone to later hone into a deadly weapon. The rampaging “Let Me Help” performs a fancy head-fake with its pseudo-Zeppelin intro exploding into a punkish storm while “She’s Calling You” provides a bright spotlight for Dr. Know’s fluid fretwork, even though it may be the only wan song on the LP.

“Sacred Love” is a dinosaur-stomper that leaves heavy footprints with its discordant instrumentation; even cooler is the weird effect they got by recording H.R.’s vocals via jailhouse phone when the singer was locked up for a pot bust. Sounding like an early ‘80s Alice Cooper session outtake, “Hired Gun” allows Dr. Know to show off his six-string dexterity, the otherwise panoramic punk-metal construct embroidered with jazzy licks and avant-garde abandon. I Against I closes with the furious and feverish “Return To Heaven,” which offers one of H.R.’s most nuanced vocal takes soaring above a daunting instrumental soundtrack that blazes like 1970s-era stadium rock but offers – often hidden deep in the mix – sly and innovative musical ideas that other bands would exploit for years. I Against I was produced near perfectly by Ron St. Germain, who would earn a certain amount of street cred by working with the Brains that he’d later apply to records by Sonic Youth, 311, and Living Colour, among others.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Despite their relative obscurity, Bad Brains’ influence extends far beyond its meager commercial profile. They were nominated for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 (though, unsurprisingly, they weren’t inducted) and their music has inspired bands as diverse as the Beastie Boys, Fishbone, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Sublime, Nirvana, Green Day, and Faith No More (whose original frontman, Chuck Mosley, was the Brains’ vocalist for a short while), among many others. Although Brains’ band members have experienced various health issues over the last few years, they continue to perform and turn heads to this day.

Working with ORG Music, Bad Brains has taken back control of their considerable and acclaimed catalog of music, and they’ve been busy reissuing every album on both CD and vinyl for discovery by a new generation of restless youth. Check out the band’s catalog at www.badbrainsrecords.com.