Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the hard-fought third album by the D.C. hardcore icons who played faster and better than everyone else.
The hand-drawn cover of Bad Brains’ 1982 self-titled cassette featured a gigantic lightning bolt blowing the 15,000-pound Statue of Freedom that tops the United States Capitol building to bits. Mississippi Senator and later President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis oversaw the statue’s 1863 installation, ensuring that it met every design specification except for one: Davis, a slaveholder, removed the statue’s liberty cap—a Roman symbol of an emancipated slave.
With the self-titled cassette and 1983’s Rock for Light album under their belts, the four Black members of Bad Brains had become highly respected outliers playing punk rock in a sea of their white peers. Singer H.R., his brother and the band’s drummer Earl Hudson, guitarist Dr. Know, and bassist Darryl Jenifer toured relentlessly in a van they named “The Slave Ship.” Revered for their skilled musicianship, their ability to play at breakneck speed, and H.R.’s flamboyantly shapeshifting voice and persona, Bad Brains were a force, a phenomenon. If punk was the snotty, irreverent response to the pretentious and bloated rock of the 1970s, Bad Brains were a lightning bolt sent to blow up punk.
In November 1986, after a three-year absence, Bad Brains released I Against I—a gripping, heavy, futuristic rock album that left some fans missing the lightspeed precision and spiritual enlightenment that had become the band’s signatures. Bad Brains’ music had always included elements of reggae and dub, but I Against I was their least punk and least reggae album. In the same year that Janet Jackson injected club culture into Control, Run-D.M.C. desegregated rap and rock on Raising Hell, and Metallica introduced refined thrash metal to the mainstream with Master of Puppets, Bad Brains released an equally groundbreaking album. But while I Against I’s legacy is far-reaching, Bad Brains remain relegated to underground hero status.
Formed as teenagers in the Washington, D.C. area in the late ’70s, Bad Brains drew inspiration from accomplished jazz fusion artists like Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra, but when they discovered bands like Dead Boys and Sex Pistols in a friend’s record collection, they were consumed by the energy of punk. They found similar inspiration at a Bob Marley concert, where they began to embrace Rastafarianism and Africanism. Bad Brains connected with the shared ideals in these seemingly contradictory styles: Freedom, unity, and self-expression.
In the 2012 documentary Bad Brains: A Band in D.C., guitarist Dr. Know described the band’s early vision: “We were going to play faster and more technical[ly] than the Ramones, and be more chaotic than The Damned.” By 1980, after H.R.’s father gave him a copy of the self-improvement manual Think and Grow Rich, Bad Brains had also become obsessed with the concept of P.M.A., or “positive mental attitude.” Their early songs were two-minute-ish blasts of kinetic energy that shared punk rock’s themes of rebellion but preached a more positive message. As the repetitive lyrics of “Attitude” state, “Don’t care what they may say. We got that attitude! Don’t care what they may do. We got that attitude! Hey, we got that P.M.A.!”
Bad Brains’ P.M.A. was evident in H.R.’s warm, melodic sneer, which was the band’s focal point. He could scream and howl intensely, but when H.R. sang, it was with an unusual sweetness that felt fresh and uplifting against the backdrop of the ferocious Bad Brains. During early live shows, H.R. often performed backflips between explosions of lyrics. He might spend more time moshing in the audience than on the stage.
The band quickly gained a local following in D.C., including Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and a pre-Black Flag Henry Rollins, who recalled in the same documentary, “It was the summer of 1979. Word was that there was an all-Black punk rock band in Washington, D.C. Never seen one of those before.” When Bad Brains relocated to New York City later that year, they became an anomaly once again in the burgeoning hardcore scene—four Black men who played faster and better than everyone else at the mostly white CBGB. H.R. never screamed, “Black Power!”; Bad Brains simply embodied it.
Born Paul Hudson in Liverpool, England in 1956, H.R.’s family moved to Jamaica (where he discovered reggae at age 3), Texas, Alabama, and New York before settling in D.C. He demonstrated early athletic prowess as a swimmer and a pole vaulter, skills he later used in his band. But Bad Brains’ fearless, thrashing frontman could also be erratic. H.R. arrived late for shows and occasionally missed them altogether. Onstage he sometimes replaced his storied backflips with long periods of stillness, during which he didn’t sing at all. Rumors swirled of everything from drug use to schizophrenia. It took years of this confusing behavior to discover that H.R. suffered from a rare neurological disorder called SUNCT, and it wasn’t until 2017 that he finally underwent successful brain surgery for the condition.
Both of Bad Brains’ early albums featured a few markedly slow, bass-heavy, sun-drenched songs that serve as moments of respite between all-out sprints. H.R. wanted to move further into reggae but other members resisted, so after the Rock for Light tour, he and Earl left the band. H.R. released the first of many solo albums, It’s About Luv, in 1985.
H.R.’s time away cooled things temporarily, and H.R. and Earl rejoined Bad Brains to play two New York shows in July 1985. The rehearsals became the writing sessions for I Against I. Unlike many of their hardcore peers, Bad Brains weren’t concerned with “selling out”—not only did P.M.A. apply to every aspect of life, but it pushed them to strive for success. Though they’d fielded interest from major record labels since their early days, H.R. was hesitant to sign a long-term contract. In any case, he often managed to foil those conversations—in one meeting, he allegedly threatened the A&R man who’d signed Mötley Crüe for attempting to disparage Rasta. In the absence of a major label deal, Bad Brains’ next album would be released by the independent powerhouse SST and produced by Ron Saint Germain, a big-name rock producer who had worked with Jimi Hendrix and would record the album in three days for the relatively small sum of $5,000.
After a commanding minute of sludge on “Intro,” I Against I’s title track—a song Bad Brains first recorded in 1980—offers the security of the band’s classic speed. But while the album maintains intensity and grit, it never returns to that pace. Instead, the band who’d already reinvented a musical movement by speeding up digs in and slows down. Dr. Know had spent the band’s hiatus listening to increasing amounts of hard rock and metal, and I Against I is Bad Brains’ most guitar-driven album. His influence is most evident on the closing “Return to Heaven,” where an opening guitar rev-up and Sunset Strip chug recalls early Van Halen. The guitar solo—a faux pas in punk rock—was omnipresent in Bad Brains’ music from the outset and I Against I is no exception: More than half of its songs feature guitar solos. “You like something and your peers don’t like it, so what?” Dr. Know would explain in a 2011 interview. “You’ve got to keep an open mind.”
Bad Brains had recovered from a breakup and they’d navigated their frontman’s health issues, but a new, unforeseen roadblock would emerge before I Against I’s completion. During the recording sessions, Saint Germain captured several takes of the band, but in order to protect H.R.’s voice, the producer hadn’t yet recorded his vocals. Just before H.R. was set to sing, he casually informed Saint Germain that he had to leave the rural Massachusetts studio and report to prison the following day to serve out a marijuana conviction.
“We had two hours so I basically said, ‘Give me two takes on each song,’” Saint Germain recalled in A Band in D.C. “I finished the recording with H.R. and then he had to go serve three or four months. And I had the one song which wasn’t finished, ‘Sacred Love.’”
The eight songs H.R. recorded in those two hours are among his most impassioned performances in Bad Brains. His imminent incarceration feels almost physical. “House of Suffering” conveys the urgency with stuttering, rhythmic shifts. H.R.’s rant in the final verse is an album high point: “In this house of suffering, don’t want but just one thing, got to have my origin, in this house of suffering.” Each phrase relies upon H.R.’s delivery, abandoning his cool vibrato in favor of a desperate fit augmented with indiscernible rhythmic scats. With “Let Me Help,” he offers a plea to remain positive in times of spiritual trial. The song’s final lyrics—“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life”—are among the most potent illustrations of the album’s intended message: Positivity, self-assurance, tremendous respect. The themes deeply embedded in Bad Brains’ music have never been articulated so well and delivered with such heft.
Weeks later, while imprisoned at the Lorton Reformatory in Laurel Hill, Virginia, H.R. got a job sweeping the floors, which allowed him access to a pay phone. He then called the studio and sang the unfinished song, “Sacred Love,” into the receiver. “I could barely hear the music,” H.R. recalled in a 2010 interview. “But it was in my heart to sing that song.” His naturally distorted vocals are his most serene and melodic on the album.
Were it not for H.R.’s empathetic vocals, I Against I’s bombastic drums and percussive, muted guitars might mark it as metal. Upbeat tracks like “She’s Calling You” and “Hired Gun” come off as innocent dance-rock segues until they reveal the sharpness of their teeth. On nearly every track, the band exhibits patience, restraint, and groove. Despite the obstacles that impeded the album’s creation, with I Against I, Bad Brains architected what Jane’s Addiction later achieved with Nothing’s Shocking and what Nirvana eventually got credit for with Nevermind: They blurred the lines between punks, new wavers, and metalheads, conceptualizing a new musical landscape less defined by genre.
By the end of 1987, H.R. and Earl would leave the band again, only to rejoin just in time to record 1989’s Quickness. “The Bad Brains function on vibes,” H.R. said of his propensity to leave and return to his band in a 1989 interview. “So when the vibes are right, then we come together. And when they’re not right then we decide to wait until they are.”
By 1990, H.R. and Earl had left the band for a third time when guitarist Dr. Know and bassist Darryl Jenifer appeared on MTV to promote Quickness. On the alternative show 120 Minutes, stoic host Dave Kendall asked with the tact of an awkward record store clerk: “Do you think, uh, that Black rock music is making headway?” And on the metal show Headbangers Ball, a frizzy-haired Riki Rachtman introduced Bad Brains’ video with a disarmingly defensive tone: “I like this song. It’s definitely... Definitely you guys are unique.” Bad Brains perennially endured questions and judgements about their place as a Black band in a white musical universe. That Bad Brains appeared on either 120 Minutes or Headbangers Ball—both shows featured almost exclusively white artists—was unusual; that they appeared on both was nearly impossible. It was testament to their ability to defy both racial and musical boundaries.
In the wake of I Against I, the door opened just a little bit more for Black rock bands like Fishbone, who drowned out their ska roots with guitars on 1988’s Truth and Soul, and Living Colour, the first Black alternative rock band to achieve mainstream success and significant MTV airplay with “Cult of Personality” that same year. It’s easy to think that Bad Brains should have been there alongside them, but the band’s demons never allowed them equal footing with their contemporaries or their successors—many of whom also had the backing of major record labels. Instead Bad Brains seemed eternally plagued to pave the road for them.
I Against I was Bad Brains’ most successful album, but it never rivaled those of their most vocal admirers. Beastie Boys and Deftones each took Bad Brains on separate tours in 1995, both rife with altercations between H.R. and fans. Jeff Buckley covered “I Against I” and Sublime covered “House of Suffering.” The sticky riff of “Re-Ignition” is the basis of a Lil Jon Crunk Rock Remix, and although it’s not a cover, the title track of Deftones’ 1997 album Around the Fur is an obvious homage. Bad Brains are a classic “band’s band”—cited as legendary by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters—but without a tune that the average person could hum.
No roster of famous admirers gets at what makes Bad Brains important, because they relied little upon external forces to push their message forward. Instead its members were happy to embody their self-defined P.M.A. I Against I marks a high point in the decades-long career of a band who was sometimes on the verge of stardom, often on the brink of total combustion, and always at the nexus of social and political change.
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