Henry Rollins
Hot Animal Machine

After completing the seminal experience with Black Flag, Henry Rollins decides to embark on a solo career. It's 1987 when "Hot Animal Machine", the first album of the Rollins Band, is released. Times have changed since Rollins was with Black Flag. Back then, Henry's overwhelming personality had to contend with that of Greg Ginn, one of the most original and influential guitarists in the history of hardcore. Having furloughed (not without bitterness) the Black Flag, Henry Rollins (writer, singer, and composer) became the absolute protagonist of his music. Overflowing, fierce, aggressive, beastly, furious, menacing, neurotic, Henry Rollins dominates the scene in this dazzling debut. The hoarse tone of his voice is, all things considered, a detail compared to what remains his peculiar stylistic mark: singing "out of line." Rollins’ lyrics (read: invectives) are often very articulate and sung (or rather: recited) in a convoluted, theatrical manner, unafraid to spill over from the verse. They are raging torrents, always on the brink of breaching the banks. They are free outbursts about the ills of America and, in general, contemporary reality. Henry Rollins is the Patti Smith of hardcore. And like the godmother of new wave, Rollins also needed a supporting band that could "keep up with" his vocal improvisations, his delusions, his urgent needs to communicate something significant. Rollins needed a guitarist different from Greg Ginn, who had a predisposition for free-form accompaniment but preferred well-structured compositions, supported by granite riffs and suffocating rhythms. Henry found the right man in Chris Haskett (like Smith did in Lenny Kaye), an intelligent and versatile musician, able to transition from rock'n'roll to noise, from hardcore to garage, endowed with an amorphous, frayed, weakened, malleable guitar playing, always at the service of the leader. A diligent rhythm section completed the lineup.

"Black And White" opens the proceedings with a sense of hallucinatory tension; it is a track that makes one uncomfortable, evoking the most troubled states of mind and denying the frontal assault of the Black Flag: the times of "Rise Above" feel so distant...Then comes "Followed Around", one of the best tracks on the album, a dizzying roller coaster between the voids of a sly Rollins and the fullness of a tormented Rollins, while the guitar never reaches levels of cathartic intensity, remaining always paradoxically feeble and subdued even in moments of release. The sound of the Rollins Band is a rock’n’roll veered towards the black or a weakened metal, depending on the perspective. The beach-punk of "Lost And Found", despite the fractured rhythm, is one of the album's more relaxed moments; the exact opposite of "There's A Man Outside", a perverse psychobilly corroded by the most unpleasant dissonances and disturbed by random percussion, an effective demonstration of Rollins' animalistic vocal qualities, here seemingly caged, suffocated, strangled by a hostile Haskett. Even "Hot Animal Machine 1" barrels ahead at breakneck speed, laden with a suspense that neither diminishes nor intensifies, not even among the guitar sparks of the steady refrain. Rollins’ is an unresolved tension, incapable of finding release: it is like a breathless race, with no possibility of stopping.
 The band's grounding in tradition is demonstrated by the presence of no fewer than three covers. There’s a well-rounded "Crazy Lover" (Chuck Berry), a thunderous "Move Right In" (Velvet Underground), and a surprising "Ghost Rider" (Suicide); surprising because it replaces the original’s claustrophobia with an almost epic flair and, amidst the screeching feedback, the overall effect is almost cow-punk.
 But the most authentic Henry Rollins is probably found in the free-form tracks: "A Man And A Woman", "Hot Animal Machine 2", and "No One". In the first, a hobbling rhythm and a shredded guitar provide the background for one of the album’s most irresistible vocal escapades, with Rollins delivering lyrics laden with sarcasm, with a cadence bordering on rap. In the second, for the first and only time, Rollins’ voice takes a back seat, dissolved as it is in its echo and submerged in an intoxicating guitar merry-go-round. The third, finally, settles the score with the Black Flag of "Damaged". Do you remember it? It began like this: "Hello, my name is Henry..." and ended with a enraged Rollins, at odds with the whole world, shouting with contempt "No One Comes In! Stay Out! Damaged!". The story repeats in "No One", if possible with an even more disconnected harmonic fabric, an even higher level of anxiety and terror, and with Rollins starting softly only to explode suddenly: when he finally reaches the point of yelling "Just Bring Your Little Eyes Over Here!" he seems truly possessed by a demon.
 It is the seal on an album able to represent, in all its facets, the personality of one of the leading figures of modern American rock.