City Newspaper Archives - 8/2007
Bad Brains "Build a Nation"
Oscilloscope/Megaforce
Published by Saby Reyes-Kulkarni on Aug 15, 2007
Revered but never quite properly captured on record, the notoriously unstable Bad Brains return in 2007 with No. 1 fan Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys in the producer's chair. Kudos to him and recording engineer Matt Marinelli for being foolish enough to think they could somehow catch the band's old glory. Double kudos to them for succeeding. Loyalists may gripe about vocalist HR's performance here, but Marinelli and Yauch give the band a fat mix that perfectly straddles the lines between its disparate hardcore, metal, and reggae inclinations. To say nothing of the band itself: almost 20 years removed from its last output that anyone cared about, Dr. Know, Darryl Jennifer, and Earl Hudson play on this record with twice the energy you'd expect from men half their age. Even if Bad Brains implode again following this release (as the band has so often in the past) the group will have finally reached Zion after decades of wandering lost.
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