Three 65, Day 48
Rollins Band, The End Of Silence

I first got into Rollins Band shortly after high school; I thought, based on the title of the song "Blues Jam" and Rollins' poetry, that he was going to be some kind of grizzled, laid-back jazz/blues dude a la Tom Waits. God, how wrong was I.

Henry Rollins (or just Rollins, as he prefers) was the frontman for the influential punk band Black Flag. When that band imploded, he formed Rollins Band, a hard rock / funk metal collective that carried the "Rollins message" to the four corners of the universe.

"Low Self Opinion," the first song, hit me like a ton of bricks, because after high school, I had no esteem for myself - at all. "If you could see the you that I see / when I see you seeing me / you'd see yourself so differently / believe me" is the ultimate line; I nearly broke down crying when I understood it. Because there were people in my life that felt that way, I just had to find them. Corny as it sounds, the first song on Silence was the beginning of the end for the high school bullies that sought to keep me under foot.

Rollins also tackles relationships on songs like "Grip" and "You Didn't Need." But the real meat of the album comes towards the second half, when the songs slow down, get all groany and feedbacky, and it becomes a grind of pain and loss: "Obscene," "Just Like You" (about Rollins' relationship with his much-hated father), and the aforementioned "Blues Jam" (anything but).

True, Rollins' lyrics are a bit hokey, and the music is a bit same-y over the course of the album. But if you're going to have just one album by Rollins Band, forget something like Weight, which was successful only thanks to the videos, and pick up End Of Silence.