10 Most Badass Songs Of All Time
9. Black Flag - Rise Above
Not the first punk rock band but arguably the purest, Black Flag borrowed the simple chord progressions, removed the fashionable, gimmicked, aesthetic - and petty, snotty rebellion - and infused it with the most righteous of anger.
Black Flag stood for something, and their integrity remains intact all these years later, informing the credibility of their legacy and preserving its power. Henry Rollins never ended up selling butter, and he didn't insidiously enter the mainstream back then under the cool veil of counterculture. He was uncompromising.
'Rise Above' is the band's masterpiece and manifesto - a searingly earnest and defiant hardcore banger introduced with a subversive riff, tuning you to a different station, before Rollins delivers that manifesto backed by a relentless, prolonged burst of the rawest rock n' roll. It is timeless.
"They distort what we say! / Rise above, we're gonna rise above!" - the screamed dual vocals act like a one-two punch, the most twisted derangement of harmony, musically, but one that creates a unifying effect that places both band and empowered audience together in a fight against authority.