Customer Reviews

Life Time

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All the Rollins Band albums are great, Hank has never put out a bad record, but this one and the 'Flag's MY WAR stand as two career highs for the man.

Bluesy, loose AND tight at the same time, perennially pissed-off and alienated. Urgent, desperate, fierce, focused. Whenever I hear someone say that there was no good rock-and-roll in the 80s, I think of this overlooked diamond in the synth-and-hairspray rough. Ian McKaye produced this album and the Do It sessions (together now on the one CD), and I don't think the band was ever produced better. They had a sound that is hard to define, it was heavy, but very clear. Awesome job that really suited the blues feel to a lot of the music.

I think of the European tour they did in '87-88 and how skinny poor Hank looked in pictures from that era. He looked to be in great shape, but atrophied from poverty and malnutrition and trying to hold this genius thing together while on a hard-nosed tour playing to half-empty rooms. I think of the self-belief and love of the music that must have been the only sustaining thing for the band that year, and I get inspiration for when things are dark. That's what Hank did and does for kids growing up: shows them how to hold on, to not go spinning off weakly into addiction or acquiescence, but to darkly endure and succeed and push thru life in their own ways. Henry Rollins is a tough guy, Henry Rollins is the anti-bully. This album altered the course of my entire life. Henry Rollins, Black Flag, and the first six Black Sabbath albums raised me to trust in myself and to bite back.

Once, back in 1988 or 89, I counted how many times Hank says "yeah" on this whole album. If I remember right, it was something like 156, with 89 of those being in the last song, "Turned Out".

I discovered the Rollins Band in 1991 as the opening act for Janes Addiction. I was completely blown away by Rollins' power! The songs on this album are hard, brutal, chokehold grabbing anthems of independent fury! At the start of their set, Henry Rollins said, "strap yourself in, this is going to hurt!" Truer words are rarely spoken! Listen and enjoy.

next to "damaged" and "in utero" this has to be my favorite album ive ever heard.from the opening song "burned beyond recognition",to "gun in mouth blues" and all the ohter gems including "what am i doing here?", "lonely", "turned out", "1000 times blind", this album is brilliant.the lyrics arent for the cool kids, rather anyone who see's things for what they are and is not happy about it.that means the world around, but mostly they are directed inward.the sound quality is wonderfull, sharp, lean and raw at the same time.the drums sound like hammers on brick and rollins vocals havent been this intense since "damaged".people try to label this band as punk/metal, or post punk, but none of them apply.its what rock is all about.honest, hard, and completly non-pretentious from the heart (and gut) music.

1. Burned Beyond Recognition;
2. What Am I Doing Here?;
3. 1,000 Times Blind;
4. Lonely;
5. Wreck-Age;
6. Gun in Mouth Blues;
7. You Look at You;
8. If You're Alive;
9. Turned Out;
10. What Am I Doing Here (Live);
11. Burned Beyond Recognition (Live);
12. Move Right In (Live); &
13. Hot Animal Machine II (Live).

The great first release from the Rollins Band is now available on Henry's own 2.13.61 label. Rollins had done self-titled album with other musicians, as well as a joke album under the moniker Henrietty Collins and the Wife-Beating Child Haters called "Drive By Shooting" (which is a lot of fun - anyone should look it up), but he must have not enjoyed those bands because this is the unit that he had for many years, minus a bass player or two. The album was produced by Ian MacKaye (of Minor Threat/Fugazi/Dischord Records fame), and the songs don't pull any punches. Opening track "Burned Beyond Recognition" is a fantastic screamathon that opens like Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf", with Henry's voice dominating the mix. "What Am I Doing Here?" screams and yells, and "One Thousand Times Blind" commands the listener "don't love me, you'll hate yourself." Lots of wordplay like that. "Lonely" and "Wreck-Age" are pretty regular musically, and again they're dominated by Rollins' superb voice. Lyrically they're all good. "Lonely" posits that "there's nothing like finding someone when you're lonely", and "Wreck-age" talks about individuals that have been crushed by the world that they live in. "Gun In Mouth Blues" is probably the most intense Henry Rollins has ever recorded - and that's saying something. It starts off slow, with drums, then a bit of bass, some guitar comes in, and it builds up to a slow, plodding, wallowing thump, and Henry's voice comes in with a low voice, saying "you've got hard times... oooh... you've got blues... you've got, got, got, got, got.... YEAH!!!!!!!" It just shatters any stillness in life. They really don't make music like this any more, not even Rollins himself. If you play this so anyone who owns a Coldplay album they will definitely run screaming from the room (i.e. how to lose friends and alienate people). The song winds down, the narrator has a gun in his hand, he ask himself "should I pull it? Should I pull it? Pull it? Pull it? PULL IT??!!??" Then all hell breaks loose with intense screaming and a long burnout jam.

The rest of the album is relatively anti-climatic now. How can it not be? But there are still some gems. "You Look At You" is a relatively straight-forward rocker, as is "If You're Alive." "I've Been Turned Out" has a bit of a rap in it, it's slow in parts but has great lyrics. "You say that you're my friend, but I don't know you/ I'll trust you just as far as I can throw you/ No I don't know you, I know my enemy/ They're the ones that look at me with honest eyes/ They hate my guts, but at least it's the truth/ I'll trust them just as far as I can throw them off the roof." Naturally it ends with a pure jam, and some of that bungee bass and band wallop that we know and love from releases like "The End of Silence". The release also comes with live versions of "What Am I Doing Here?" "Burned Beyond Recognition", "Move Right In" (a Velvet Underground cover) and "Hot Animal Machine II" are pretty good, especially "Move Right In" with its short bass solo and the mini drum solo that busts out with the blazing "Inna Gadda da Vida" lick. Stellar. "Hot Animal Machine 2' appeared on Henry's solo album of two years earlier, but by now the version is much longer and full of craziness, with atmospheric beginnings and insane drum beats and full on screams and love dripping off the world. Love it all!!!

I don't remember how I happened to buy this on cassette as a teenager at a mall in NJ in 1993, but it couldn't have happened at a better time. (I also marvel to this day how this indepedent label production happened to be for sale at a Sam Goody back then!) My girlfriend had just broken up with me a few weeks prior, and I was in the "teen angst" mode that we all go through at some point at that age. I couldn't have prepared myself for the onslaught which tore out of my stereo speakers later that night, and needless to say I've been hooked on Rollins Band ever since. I can remember actually being startled when Henry's screams started at the beginning of "Burned Beyond Recognition", and as much as he would probably hate the comparison due to his self deprecating nature, I can only equate it to the first time I heard The Stooges, one of his favorite bands. The intensity of these songs really threw me for a loop, and as fate would have it a few weeks after I bought this tape I inherited my next door neighbor's weights when he went to college. I think I must have listened to this album a few hundred times in my parent's basement while doing my epic workouts my junior and senior years of high school. To this day, I have never heard anything as intense as "Gun In Mouth Blues", EVER. Hank was fresh off his six year stint in Black Flag, and in my opinion his voice never sounded better than it did during the sessions that produced this album and on the subsequent tour of Europe that resulted in the "Do It" album. I don't think I have ever listened to a song or two off of this album, I have played it all the way through every time. I also adopted Hank's habit on this album of yelling "YEAH!!!" in my own singing for a couple of years, although I definitely didn't do it with as much conviction as he did! (I thought it was funny that another reviewer actually counted the number of times he said it on this album; I thought about doing that at one point but was sure I would lose track!) This album to me represents what Rollins has expressed admiration for in some of his favorite albums such as Black Flag's "The First Four Years" or the Stooges "Fun House": bursts of intensity condensed into a batch of hard hitting jams. In addition, I have to note that Chris Haskett's guitar playing was so above the average hardcore playing style that it led to my eventual interest in jazz. The whole band was just amazing; to this day seeing this band (although without bassist Andrew Weiss, who was eventually replaced by Melvin Gibbs) play in Washington D.C. in 1994 was the best show I have ever seen. Of course the year after I got this album Rollins became the "Liar" guy on MTV when the band really broke, but this is the one that got me hooked and I've been looking for music that will knock my socks off the way this one did ever since. (I even became known as the "Rollins guy" in high school and college due to constantly wearing my End of Silence t-shirts.) I don't have the shirts anymore, but I do have this album's cover art tattooed on my shoulder. This disc is one that I don't listen to much anymore but its influence has been absorbed into my DNA, it's undeniable. Very rarely in my music listening life have I been changed by hearing an album, and the older I get the more I chase moments like the time I first heard this one. I used to say to all my Metallica loving friends that these songs make Metallica sound like a symphony orchestra, and that was years before James and company actually made an album with one! The CD reissue includes four live songs recorded in Belgium on the Lifetime tour in 1987, and they are just as slammin' as the studio songs. "Move Right In" is one of my favorite songs from this era of the Rollins Band, and the live version included here doesn't disappoint. They just don't make 'em like this anymore...

really good.I mean it. I genuinEly like it."Burned Beyond Recognition","Wreckage","WhEn your Lonely" I think it's called,for goodness sakes!Poetry's so important,it's what makeS Henry.I love poetry.suzanne VegA,Ani DiFranco,good poetry.This is a hardcore cd.Very disciplined songs.Musicianship improved. So worried it seems is Henry and co. of not repeating black Flag lackluster Musicianship that the songs don't vary except in the Sabbath like (and Black Flag) guitar solOs.Take care,Vanes.

this is Hardcore:It's not Punk, I don't think that Hardcore's a style of Punk.It's metal mixed with punk according to slang on the street.A far cry better Musicianship than BlacK Flag.Songs sO Real.Is Selena Fox the best author?F Yeah!

Just spacin

Double time..

There..Did it again..

This, the first CD from what would be the 1st touring Rollins band (HR, Andrew Weiss, Chris Haskett and Sim Cain) is a fantastic CD; hard, uncompromising and honest. From the brutal, screaming intro to "Burned beyond recognition" to the alienation anthem "Turned out," this CD rocks as few other can. "Lonely" may be the most transecendent song ever written about being alone and the pain-filled "Gun in mouth blues" (should I? pull it?) is simply awesome. The bonus tracks are the studio outtakes that originally were on the Do It CD. Great, essential CD

The inital release for the Rollins Band that has maintained itself as the apex of the groups output to this very day. The music is a jazz/metal hybrid that is truely frightening, especially with the serious and intense Hank out in front of it. The ultimate document of alienation, Rollins has yet to equal (or even come close to) the fury that "Lifetime" is. The rerelease adds the three tracks leftover from the sessions that later formed the studio side of the "Do It" EP (which is also well worth seeking out for it's live side..possibly the best of Rollins live recordings). They are covers that Rollins makes his own (a problem he had on "Hot Animal Machine") they also fit with the seamless whole of "Lifetime".
A great achievment, one of the essential underground CD's of the 80's and a must for any alternative music collection.