About 12 years ago, I made a forlorn pilgrimage to a Bad Brains reunion show at a small venue in upstate New York that sat in the middle of a mini-mall. On the three-hour van ride there, I struggled mightily against my own unreasonable expectations. I had missed my chance by about 20 years to witness the Bad Brains of my imagination-- the ones you see immortalized in this iconic Glen Friedman photo, for instance-- perform live. Those guys no longer existed, and hadn't since the second Reagan administration. I was late by two decades. This was probably going to go poorly.
It did so, more than I could ever have imagined. Lead singer H.R. wandered onstage several uncomfortable minutes after his bandmates had taken their place. He conducted the band with limp hands in a way that seemed to be directly mocking them. He stopped frequently to look up at the venue's squat ceiling to seemingly address Jah. Bassist Darryl Jenifer fixed a thousand-yard stare to the back of the venue and played dutifully. The only member who seemed to enjoying himself was guitarist Dr. Know, who shredded joyfully through the solos in "Let Me Help" and "Re-Ignition". The set leaned heavily on the bleary reggae that absolutely no one in the audience had come to hear and after perfunctory run-throughs of two or three hardcore classics, H.R. thanked Jah, thanked us, and they left. Filing out crestfallen, I caught the eye of another foolishly hopeful kid visibly doing battle with disappointment. "They didn't even play 'F.V.K.'," he said plaintively.
This is the unique curse that sometimes visits legendary bands who have the audacity to stay together, or even worse, keep recording, once their legend has crystallized. Bad Brains’ thunderclap fusion of hardcore, metal, and reggae into a single righteous roar is still probably the greatest thing to happen to hardcore punk, and their 1982 self-titled ROIR record remains, in the words of Adam Yauch, "the best punk/hardcore album of all time." What happened after that-- the downshift into metallized reggae for 1986's I Against I, their brief major-label dalliance in the 90s, reggae albums, name changes, and more-- can only feel like denouement. The mere fact of their survival into a third decade is surprising; the band I saw in 2000 seemed minutes away from gratefully quitting each other's company forever. But the band stubbornly persists.
Into The Future is their seventh label-sanctioned studio album, depending on how you count their early breadcrumb trail of fabled pre-1983 releases, but they've passed through so many iterations in the intervening years that the through line is hard to trace. Their last studio album, 2007's Build A Nation, was produced by Yauch, whose above-mentioned sticker quote probably did more to disseminate the band's music than any label (it was certainly the reason I bought it at age 14). On that album, they attempted to reignite the fury of their "Banned in D.C." days, but the lurching, muddy, tuneless results testified to the same tug of war that was painfully obvious onstage: the band eager to re-ignite, H.R. content to warble Rasta homilies and indulge in his most eccentric vocal tendencies.
Into The Future finds the band louder, darker, and more unpredictable than they have sounded in awhile: Their metal riffs have notes shaved off their phrases, which lends the music a drunken gait. H.R.'s vocals have veered into such idiosyncratic territory that he now belongs to a select group of all-mannerisms vocalists: late Tom Waits, Mike Patton, late Gil Scott Heron. He yelps and gibbers and whines and does that startling valkyrie shriek he unleashed on "Supertouch" and "Return to Heaven". On "Popcorn" he does a routine that feels far too close to Anthony Kiedis circa "Funky Monks". He bursts out out into his wild scatting on "We Belong Together". Into the Future is the most interesting Bad Brains reunion album in part because it allows H.R. to be as weird as he likes.
The band has also found a way to sneak the sweetness of melody back into their music, always an unremarked-upon secret weapon in their best work. "Into The Future," "We Belong Together", and "Fun" are more memorable songs than anything on Build a Nation. "We Belong Together" is probably the best full-throttle punk-metal song they've written since "Soul Craft". They seem to be enjoying each other, and their music, for the first time in years. Their reggae detours don't have the advantage of surprise anymore, but they are nice reminders of the band’s formidable chops and range.
H.R.'s lyrics have never been celebrated for their coherence or profundity, and the chorus of "Fun" ("Let's have fun/ We all need fun/ Music is fun/ School is fun/ Love is fun") is a moment you wish he hadn't sung straight. But it's rewarding, or at least a relief, for longtime fans to hear H.R. and his band locking into a shared groove. Sloppiness has crept into their once-perfect attack, and there is a certain any-era-of-modern-rock, unstuck-in-time vibe to the production choices and songwriting. But such is the plight of a band whose 30-year-old debut still feels like future music.____
