★★★★★
First, to say that What The... doesn't "sound" like a Black Flag album makes no sense. Since the band's very inception, they have consistently bucked what came before them, challenging their fans and their fandom in the process. When second and now most recent but also now ex-vocalist Ron Reyes replaced Keith Morris for 1980's Jealous Again, the punk community criticized the band for losing Morris' snarl...
- www.punknews.org
2013-12-17
★★★★★
Black Flag - What The...
"It still defies belief that 'What The...' should ever see the light of day..."
Posted Friday, 13 December 2013 in ,
Rating: 4 If you'd helped define hardcore, forged a DIY touring network, nurtured the talent of numerous genre-bending punx and influenced countless more, you might consider it a job well done and enjoy your dotage...
- www.rocksound.tv
2013-12-14
★★★★★
There's no reason to dismiss Black Flag's new album, What The..., out of hand. True, it's the legendary hardcore band's first proper studio full-length since 1985's In My Head, Yes, it comes out amid a lot of acrimonious drama between former bandmembers, including those who have chosen to tour as FLAG minus the group's founder and sole constant member, guitarist Greg Ginn. Granted, the cover art is fucking heinous...
- www.avclub.com
2013-12-04
★★★★★
Even before its release, What The..., the new seventh Black Flag LP, seemed like a footnote. The primary narrative was, of course, the Great Black Flag Debacle of 2013, a yearlong mire of dueling reunions, media mudslinging, a failed lawsuit and--less than a week prior to the record's street date--a face-palm-inducing fallout with vocalist Ron Reyes, who appears on the album. In this tabloid-ready context, it wasn't surprising that advance press for What The.....
- pitchfork.com
2013-12-03
★★★★★
Black Flag What The...By Vish KhannaIt's impossible for Black Flag to win this one. There's too much riding on the legacy the band have built up for this album -- their first in 28 years -- to satisfy people who hold them dear. That's the first thing. Then there's the fact that founding guitarist Greg Ginn is a divisive, litigious figure, going after former bandmates, including those who formed FLAG to tour and play Black Flag songs live, just before Ginn's plans to reform a version of the band...
- exclaim.ca
2013-12-04
★★★★★
But since they are releasing fairly dismal new records on the same day, we might consider what they had in common. Black Flag and Boston were founded in 1976 by young electronics ninjas on opposite coasts: Mr. Ginn running a mail-order radio equipment business in Hermosa Beach, Calif., and Mr. Scholz working at Polaroid in Massachusetts after graduation from M.I.T. Black Flag's no-budget guerrilla touring plowed a circuit for punk bands, and helped make it America's most important punk band...
- www.nytimes.com
2013-12-03
★★★★★
For almost three decades now, Black Flag has existed in the hearts and minds of hardcore fanatics young and old the way that former presidents do in history books. By 2013, their story had long been written, the pages dog-eared and yellowed with age. They're iconic, not simply in terms of the savage sounds they committed to record, but in how they bled, physically and metaphorically, for this thing called hardcore...
- consequenceofsound.net
2013-12-03
★★★★★
Three decades ago, Black Flag helped invent hardcore punk, a form so raging and reductive it always threatens to obliterate all musical distinctions. Yet these Southern California deviants kicked off their 1981 breakthrough "Damaged" by pledging to "Rise Above," and by the time they disbanded in 1986 they had done just that. "Damaged" and the best from the over-productive years that surround it still distinguish themselves with jabs of menace and humor, stoicism and hysteria...
- www.bostonglobe.com
2013-12-30
★★★★★
Staff editor/writer/podcaster/mascot John Gentile and I went to see the Greg Ginn-led Black Flag reunion at Philadelphia's Union Transfer Mon., June 17. What follows is our civil discussion about how tru punx it may or may not have been. John Gentile: First off, there were two things that really impressed me about Ginn's Black Flag. Ron Reyes sounded absolutely fantastic...
- www.punknews.org
2013-06-26
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