page_title: My War
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: My War / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Trade ad for Black Sabbath's album Black Sabbath (1970). From left to right: Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne.
context_page_description: My War is the second studio album by American band Black Flag. It polarized fans on its release in 1984 on SST Records over the LP's B-side, on which the band slowed down to a heavy, Black Sabbath-esque trudge, despite the reputation the band had earned as leaders in fast hardcore punk on its first album, Damaged.
  After a period of legal troubles which prohibited the band from using its own name on recordings, Black Flag returned to the studio with a new approach to its music that incorporated a greater variety of styles, resulting in a sound orthodox punks found difficult to accept. The line-up had shrunk from five members to three: vocalist Henry Rollins, drummer Bill Stevenson, and co-founding guitarist Greg Ginn. Ginn doubled on bass guitar under the name "Dale Nixon" for the recording as co-founding bassist Chuck Dukowski left the band shortly before recording; the album includes two tracks Dukowski wrote.
  The A-side of the LP is composed of six generally high-paced, thrashy hardcore tracks, featuring guitar solos unusual in punk music.
context_section_description: In 1978 Black Flag guitarist and cofounder Greg Ginn converted his ham radio business Solid State Transmitters to SST Records to release the band's first EP Nervous Breakdown.  Soon SST was releasing recordings by other bands as well, beginning with Minutemen's Paranoid Time in 1980.
  Black Flag recorded its first album Damaged in 1981 at Unicorn Studios and arranged a deal with the studio's record label Unicorn Records, which had distribution with MCA Records.  MCA label president Al Bergamo halted the release after hearing the record, calling it "anti-parent"—though SST hand Joe Carducci asserts this was a pretense for MCA to sever relations with the financially troubled Unicorn.  The band obtained and distributed the already-pressed 20000 copies of Damaged and adorned it with a label displaying Bergamo's "anti-parent" quote.  Legal troubles erupted when SST claimed unpaid royalties from Unicorn and Unicorn successfully counter-sued, resulting in five days in jail for Ginn and co-founding bassist Chuck Dukowski and an injunction prohibiting the band from releasing material under its own name.  The double album Everything Went Black—a compilation of earlier, unreleased material—appeared from SST in 1982 without the band's name on it.  Unicorn's bankruptcy in 1983 freed the band from the injunction.
  Following the release of Damaged, Black Flag absorbed a wider range of influences, such as the doom metal of Saint Vitus (who released via SST) and the more experimental hardcore of Flipper, Void, and Fang.  The band revisited early influences such as Black Sabbath, the MC5, and the Stooges for new approaches to songwriting other than relying on the high speed that had become the Black Flag hallmark.  In an interview in 1983 with Mark Arm the band declared its admiration for heavy metal band Dio; when asked, "Dio?  What's that?" Ginn responded, "It's Italian for God."  Ginn jealously guarded the new material, fearing other bands would capitalize on the new approach.
  The band toured extensively in North America and Europe to often hostile, violent hardcore punk crowds.  The disciplined group rehearsed obsessively, but there was little friendship between members: vocalist Henry Rollins was introverted and Ginn cold and demanding.  Dukowski felt that Rollins' vocal approach was better suited than that of the band's earlier three singers to the new material he was writing such as "I Love You" and "My War".  Dukowski, who also wrote poetry and fiction, encouraged Rollins to write as well, and Rollins found inspiration in Dukowksi's bleak lyrical style.
  The band recorded a set of ten demo tracks at Total Access studios in 1982 for a planned follow-up to Damaged on which Chuck Biscuits replaced Damaged drummer Robo.  The rest of the lineup consisted of Ginn and former vocalist Dez Cadena on guitars, Rollins on vocals, and Dukowski on bass.  The band explored new sounds on these tracks, which tended to feature a riff-heavy heavy-metal edge and noisy, energetic free guitar soloing from Ginn.  The album never materialized, and the heavily bootlegged demos have never been officially released; re-recordings of several of the tracks from the session were to feature on My War and other later albums.  The line-up did not last long—frustrated with the band's legal troubles, Biscuits left in December 1982, replaced by Bill Stevenson, and in 1983 Cadena left to form DC3.  Ginn had been frustrated with Dukowski's sense of rhythm, and in Germany during a European tour in 1983 gave Dukowski an ultimatum to quit, or Ginn himself would leave.  Dukowski left the band, but stayed on to co-run SST.
  With Unicorn's demise in 1983 Black Flag was able to release the material they had written since 1981.  Eager to get back in the studio but still without a bassist, Ginn took on bass duties under the pseudonym "Dale Nixon" and practiced the new material with Stevenson up to eight hours a day, teaching the drummer to slow down and let the rhythm "ooze out" at a pace Stevenson was unused to; the band called this approach the "socialist groove", as all beats we
caption: Black Sabbath was a major influence on My War's B-side.
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