After being forced to go over two years without releasing new music, Black Flag released three full-length albums in 1984, all of them essential. Following the more more metallic direction on the game-changing My War, new bassist Kira Roessler joined and Black Flag made by far their most experimental album yet, Family Man. Greg Ginn wrote the majority of Black Flag's material early on, but Henry Rollins -- who at this point was established as the face of Black Flag and was becoming as known for his stage banter as his singing -- started writing more on My War and by Family Man he was fully ready to embrace his inner poet. These days, he's busier with spoken word than he is with music, but Family Man was the first time he introduced that side of him to the world. The first half of the album is just Rollins doing spoken word/slam poetry, with no music at all. And even then, he was convincing. Family Man's title track is as memorable and quotable as many of Black Flag's fan-fave songs.

And not one to let Rollins be the only self-indulgent one on this album, Ginn takes the second half for instrumental songs that showed off his increasing interest in avant-garde jazz and jammy psychedelia. "My favorite band was always and still is the Grateful Dead," Ginn told Invisible Oranges in 2013 (and has said many times over the years). So many punks hated them and wrote music in direct opposition to the hippie ideals of bands like the Dead, but Greg Ginn was no average punk and their influence on him really started to show around this time (along with the influence of Black Sabbath and other metal). Longtime bassist Chuck Dukowski, who left the band before My War, was a crucial band member and an excellent songwriter, but Kira Roessler's chops blew Dukowski's away and she was able to complement Greg Ginn's increasingly complex playing with complexities of her own, which really showed on this album. Right in the middle of the Rollins half and the Ginn half is "Armageddon Man," a nine-minute journey through weirdness that had the two artists combining their interests, with Rollins doing his slam poetry-like delivery over Ginn's odd instrumentals. The album would be easier to listen to if it had more songs with Ginn and Rollins together like this and less with them apart, but Family Man remains a curio for diehard fans and an essential document of what they were getting into at the time. Even if it's not the kind of thing to throw on all the time, it's exciting to hear Rollins begin his dive into spoken word and hear Ginn start fulfilling his jammy, avant-garde dreams.

After the highly experimental Family Man, Black Flag concluded their prolific 1984 with one of the most accessible albums of their career, Slip It In. They took the proto-sludge metal they developed on side B of My War earlier that year (including two songs that dated back to the same 1982 demos as most of My War), and made a punchier record with cleaner production and a sharper rhythm section -- thanks in part to new bassist Kira Roessler. It's hard to defend the misogynistic undertones of Slip It In's album artwork or the date-rape theme of the title track ("If this is how you feel about women, then why would you want a girl in the group?" Kira said in the book Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag), but the songs -- including that one -- were among the band's catchiest. The title track featured guest vocals from a then-mostly-unknown Suzi Gardner (who later became famous as a guitarist/vocalist of L7), and her voice combined with Henry Rollins' added a whole new level to Black Flag's sound. (She and Rollins also make mock sex sounds towards the end, which, given the nature of their lyrics, is not always comfortable to listen to. Not that Black Flag ever prided themselves on making people feel comfortable.) And that's not the only song on here like it. "Black Coffee," "Rat's Eyes" and "The Bars" are cut from that same metal/punk cloth and they're just as punchy as the title track.

Greg Ginn's riffs sound big on these songs, and Slip It In is the album where Rollins really starts coming into his own as a metal vocalist (which he'd explore more in Rollins Band). He sounds truly evil on some of these songs. As sort of a streamlined version of My War, this album is more of a refinement than a monumental turning point, but it's fun as hell to listen to. It's Black Flag at their most accessible and most crisp. Slip It In also saves two of the best for last. "My Ghetto" is the most face-paced hardcore song they'd done since the early days, but way weirder than anything they did back then, and album closer "You're Not Evil" is one of the most true metal songs of their career. Sounding something like a cross between Black Sabbath and Diamond Head, it could've come off as a pretty straightforward metal song by a lesser band, but hearing it all Black Flagged up with Ginn's unmistakable guitar style and Rollins' unmistakable bark, it's a classic.

After three EPs with three different lead vocalists, Dez Cadena moved from lead vocals to rhythm guitar, Black Flag recruited Henry Rollins from the short-lived DC/Dischord band S.O.A., and they finally made their debut album. And, armed with two guitarists and a vocalist who wasn't going anywhere for the first time in their career, Black Flag recorded one of the most definitive hardcore albums of all time.

Most of these songs dated back to the pre-Rollins era (and you can hear versions of most of them by previous singers on the Everything Went Black compilation), but Rollins breathed new life into them. Much more so than Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena, Rollins had real charisma and he had a way of making a song his own even when he didn't write it. The Rollins-sung versions of classics like "Six Pack," "Police Story," "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie," and "Depression" are the most iconic versions for a reason. His lean, mean bark totally reinvented these songs, and helped establish the way hardcore would sound for decades to come. While Keith Morris' nasally shout-singing inspired more melodic punk bands, Rollins became more responsible for helping establish the sound of finger-pointing, sloganeering hardcore. It's also on Damaged where Black Flag perfect the gang vocal shouts that you still hear in hardcore today. It's right there on the forever-classic opening track "Rise Above." Even more important than what Rollins says in the verses are the gang vocal shouts that punctuate them. Where would hardcore be without "RISE ABOVE, WE'RE GONNA RISE ABOVE"? In the same song, Greg Ginn comes up with one of his best combinations of off-kilter leads and driving power chords, while drummer Robo helps Black Flag branch away from the straightforward punk beats of the first couple EPs. The gang vocal thing happens again and again: "SPRAY! PAINT! THE! WALLS!," "SIX! PACK!," "TV PARTY TONIGHT!," etc etc. They're among the most memorable and influential parts of Black Flag's whole career, and they're all right here on Damaged.

As far as full-lengths go, Damaged is Black Flag's only pure hardcore album. It's a rush of short, mile-a-minute songs that have become embedded in punk's DNA and are just as essential today as the day they were released. These songs are so influential and covered so frequently and remain so popular that it's impossible to imagine a world without them. The tough-sounding "Rise Above" and "Spray Paint" are as effective as the dark "Depression" and "Life of Pain," which are as effective as the humorous "TV Party" and "Six Pack." Black Flag quickly realized that Rollins was more suited for the darker, heavier stuff than the jokey stuff, and it's a good thing they did, but that doesn't stop "TV Party" and "Six Pack" from remaining essential songs both within and without the context of Damaged.

The album deserves all the praise it continues to get, and it's completely void of filler, but it's also only the tip of the iceberg of what Black Flag would accomplish with Henry Rollins on board. He did a killer job with the songs that were presented to him when he joined Black Flag, but it's not until the last two songs on the album that Rollins-era Black Flag start to find their sweet spot. The album ends with "Life of Pain" and a new version of "Damaged I" (which existed in noticeably different form with vocals by Dez Cadena as the B-side to Black Flag's "Louie Louie" cover), and those songs are much more indicative of the direction Black Flag would go in on Damaged's followup My War. They show Black Flag beginning to experiment with doomier, more metallic guitar parts, and they show Rollins taking on the darker, more serious tone that he would maintain for most of Black Flag's career. They're outliers on Damaged but they foreshadowed the brilliant and fruitful Ginn/Rollins relationship to come.

With punk, it's so common that the instant-classic debut album towers over the rest of the band's discography until the end of time, probably because of how common it is for punk bands to perfect their sound early on and then stay in the same lane until they break up. And while Black Flag did have an instant-classic debut, the kind that you'll always see near the top of "Best Punk Albums of All Time" lists, Black Flag themselves topped Damaged three years later on their followup, My War. The album wasn't supposed to take as long it did; if it seemed from afar that Black Flag took the long gap between albums in order to come up with such a drastic progression of their sound, that wasn't the case at all. Most of these songs were demoed in 1982 (and later bootlegged) when Chuck Dukowski and Dez Cadena were still in the band, and the seeds were already being sewn on Damaged's "Life of Pain" and "Damaged I," but legal issues with MCA subsidiary Unicorn Records prevented the band from releasing a new album. (Compilations of pre-Rollins material came in the form of 1982's Everything Went Black and 1983's The First Four Years while the legal issues were sorted out.) Finally, Unicorn went under, Black Flag banged out My War, and their career -- and eventually popular music -- was changed forever.

If Black Flag sounded like an entirely different band by the time My War finally did come out, well, they sort of were. Everyone from the Damaged-era lineup was gone except Rollins and Ginn. Plus, so many of the Damaged songs were written before Rollins even joined the band. For My War, the songs were all written with him in mind, and Rollins himself began increasing his own role as a songwriter. It's really the true beginning of the Rollins/Ginn sound that would come to define Black Flag until the end of their initial run as a band. With no bassist in the band at the time, Ginn recorded all the bass parts himself, and they brought in Descendents drummer Bill Stevenson as a full time member. Stevenson would remain with the band on every subsequent Rollins-era album, and his airtight, slightly more complex style put a hop in My War's step that the 1982 demos didn't have. (The demos were recorded with drummer Chuck Biscuits, previously of D.O.A. and later of Circle Jerks, Danzig, and more.)

Though Dukowski was forced out of the band by Ginn before My War was recorded, his songwriting contributions to the album were crucial. He penned the title track, which may very well be the best straight-up, finger-pointing hardcore song of the Rollins era, better than anything on Damaged. The way Rollins barks "you're one of them!" is about as classic as it gets. Dukowski's also responsible for the deceptively-sentimental, actually-dark "I Love You," which presumably influenced some of Rollins' own lyrics on albums to come. The rest of the album was written by Ginn and Rollins, and these were their finest collaborations. Ginn practically creates Kurt Cobain's lead guitar style with the chorus of "Can't Decide," and the song's introverted, depressing themes can be heard resonating throughout the entire grunge era. "Beat My Head Against the Wall" basically put it in writing that Black Flag would be avoiding major labels for life, and "The Swinging Man" was one of the earliest examples of Ginn's fascination with the avant-garde, and one you could still mosh to.

As near-perfect as side A is, the three 6+ minute songs on side B are what cemented My War as one of the most crucial underground rock albums of all time. Side A hints at a more metal influence, but side B slows it down to a doomy, Black Sabbathian pace and more or less invents sludge metal in the process. At its most basic definition, sludge metal is doom metal riffs with hardcore punk vocals and attitude, and that's literally what Black Flag were on side B of My War: a hardcore punk band incorporating doom metal riffs. It was revolutionary, and the amount of bands those three songs influenced is countless. It's hard to imagine Melvins, Neurosis, or any sludge metal band sounding the way they did without My War, and by extension, the grunge era may have never even happened. And if the "Can't Decide" lyrics weren't depressing and introverted enough for the teenage angst of '90s alternative rock, the "Nothing Left Inside" lyrics definitely were. Black Flag's lyrics dealt with darkness and mental illness from day one, but they were never as bleak as they were on "Nothing Left Inside."

Black Flag's metal/punk hybrid continued on every subsequent Rollins-era album, and they continued to toy with it in new and interesting ways each time. But even with the rest of those albums, even with the thousands of bands who built careers inspired by My War, nothing's ever sounded like it, especially side B. All these decades later, even with its influence so widespread, My War still sounds like a revelation. Its raw production is as timeless as the songwriting, and while it's obvious in 2019 that My War isn't modern, it certainly isn't at all dated. It's blown so many kids' minds and inspired so many people to start bands over the years, and it's the kind of album that can and probably will continue to do that for generations to come.

It feels weird to pick a #1 that doesn't have Black Flag's best-known and longest-running singer, and even weirder to pick one that's five minutes and 15 seconds long, but not one of those seconds is wasted (no pun). Nervous Breakdown is the band's most perfect, most flawless release, and the one I always find myself coming back to the most, no matter what mood I'm in. It was written and recorded in 1978 and came out in January 1979 (happy 40th!), just as the first wave of punk -- as defined by bands like the Ramones, Sex Pistols, Dead Boys, etc -- was coming to an end. Punk was splitting in two, as bands were getting poppier and new wave and post-punk were taking over, while other bands took the Ramones' formula to an even shorter, faster, and louder conclusion: hardcore. Nervous Breakdown, which sounds like the first Ramones album on steroids, was one of the very first true hardcore records and it remains one of the best. Darker and more minor key than the Ramones, more pissed-off than the Dead Boys, Nervous Breakdown became the new standard for short, simple, three or four chord punk. The Ramones changed the way thousands of bands played guitar, but while they were taking their cues from '60s pop, Black Flag's meaner and less melodic sound helped usher in the generation of downer rockers that hit it big in the '90s, and that's clear from the first few notes of this EP.

It opens with its title track, which, at two minutes, is the longest song on the EP and the only song on side A, and as soon as you hear that first four-power-chord guitar riff, you're transported off this earth into some kind of punk rock heaven (or, more accurately, hell), and it happens every single time you hear it. It's up there with "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "Search and Destroy" as one of the most iconic, ass-kicking power chord riffs in history. It's so simple, but there's somehow nothing else like it, and it never gets old. And then Keith Morris comes in shouting his head off, and with all due respect to Henry Rollins, this song alone is enough to call Keith Morris my favorite Black Flag singer. You can only open the first song on your band's first EP with the line "I'm about to have a nervous breakdown" if you sound really convincing, and holy shit he does. The way he yells "going bersERRRRRRRRRRk" is like he's truly possessed, and by the end of the song, he's totally lost it. "I just wanna... DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHIIIEUH," he shrieks, basically cementing what we now think of as the hardcore scream.

And it's not just that he sounds like a literal maniac. He's also got the kind of youthful, snot-dosed delivery that would define punk for decades to come, and a subtle knack for melody always stirring beneath the yelled surface. And if "Nervous Breakdown" is a 10/10 punk song, the three that follow are like 9.5s. They all come with their own iconic power chord riffs from Greg Ginn, their own demonic hooks from Keith Morris, and they zip by at a relentless pace. Morris and Ginn clearly didn't take long to have a falling out, but they had some truly unique chemistry. As good as Black Flag's subsequent releases are, they never had this type of magic, and as good as Circle Jerks and OFF! are, Keith Morris never sounded as at home as he does over Greg Ginn's guitar riffs. I wish the EP was four times as long, but you can just play it four times in a row and still wanna hear it again. Nervous Breakdown is one of the records where I can remember exactly how it knocked me off my feet the first time I heard it, and every listen since then has felt like it's the first one all over again.