Rollins Band: Get Some Go Again : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Is being an outsider a matter of circumstance or of sensibility? As he nuzzles close to forty, makes records for one of the most powerful entertainment companies in the world and does voice-overs for Merrill Lynch, Henry Rollins raises that question. Certainly, his music has remained consistent since his get-in-the-van days with Black Flag. For Get Some Go Again, his first Rollins Band studio album since 1997, the singer brought in new support musicians - the Los Angeles trio Mother Superior, consisting of guitarist Jim Wilson, bassist Marcus Blake and drummer Jason Mackenroth - and they roar with the sheets-of-sound assault that has been Rollins' hallmark. But on songs like the title track, "Monster" and "Illumination," he comes on more like Jim Morrison on steroids than the screeching hate machine he has often been in the past. He even teams up with Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham on a blistering cover of Lizzy's "Are You Ready?" Still, he's not happy, of course - not with himself, and certainly not with you, ya fuckin' wimp.

"You Let Yourself Down" reads like a men's magazine sex advice column written by Yukio Mishima: "You said you'd go all night long/You let yourself down again." Former MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer joins in on the fourteen-minute "hidden" track, "LA Money Train," on which Rollins attacks the Offspring, Beck (by implication: "Now what about that new visionary, turned big spender/Takin' all those musical genres and puttin' 'em in a blender? . . . It's just more crap from a culture that's evaporating") and just about anybody else who has ever had a hit. It's meant as cultural critique - or something - but comes off as sour grapes. It's even a little poignant. But mostly it just seems like ol' Hank ranting yet again. Still, after all these years, we'd sure miss him if he stopped coming around. (RS 835)

ANTHONY DeCURTIS