ROLLINS BAND - LIFE TIME

Released: 31/05/2024

Imagine having Minor Threat/Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye as your A&R man – can you imagine how much that would improve your already-pretty-great songs? This is just what happened when the ex-Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins and his band went about recording their incredible 1987 debut, Life Time, now remastered and reissued. As the story goes, the group had just started recording the record in a Leeds studio, when Rollins had a crisis of confidence, about which he said later: “I had no producer … and feared that since everyone in the band had strong opinions on how it all should be done, if we tried to do it ourselves we would do more harm than good. I called Ian MacKaye and asked for help. He got on a plane and came right out. That's Ian.”

With MacKaye’s help, Rollins Band ultimately made one of the greatest post-hardcore records of all time, featuring a remarkable style of music epitomised by the track ‘One Thousand Times Blind’, which sounds like Slint and Minutemen having an almighty scrap, before it hits the incredible anthemic chorus, which marries 13 Songs-era Fugazi with ferocious Melvins-esque metal.