Build A Nation Pop Bad Brains

considering that the beastie boys were a fledgling punk group before they were rappers and mca adam yauch was often seen slam dancing front and center at bad brains legendary early performances he would seem the perfect candidate to produce and resurrect the newly reunited group in truth he does a fantastic job capturing bad brains on build a nation and they rock nearly as hard as they did in their glory days before they switched to funk metal yauch explained that his goal was to replicate the raw sound that he remembers from their live shows and the first self titled reach out international records tape although the group recalls some of its best hardcore roots with an added concrete shattering low end not found in a lot of its early recordings the problem is that frontman h r simply doesn t have the energy or larynx that he once did and has to resort to a lower octave and sing in an anthony kiedis give it away vocal style but who can blame him it was over 25 years ago when he unleashed his furious shriek and wide array of spastic crooning voices and it takes a young man s fire to spew microphone venom with that ferocity often he moans his vocal lines in an imitation lee perry reggae voice even on the punkier songs and has to resort to a lot more studio trickery and delays to make up for his lack of dynamics this washy style of singing doesn t always feel completely appropriate but it fits perfectly when the brains flip the switch to their reggae grooves which now sound more authentic than ever this should be no surprise since their last album consisted of only dub music and their yellow red and green album art looks remarkably like a marley bootleg with a track listing that includes natty dreadlocks pon the mountaintop and jah people make the world go round since the album was recorded at the b boys oscilloscope laboratories many of the reggae numbers have elements of the beasties instrumentals on the mix up it sounds like keyboardist for hire jamie saft may have