Bad Brains: God of Love

Bad Brains: God of Love

1995

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Cool Mountaineers  2. Justice Keepers  3. Longtime  4. Rights Of A Child  5. God Of Love  6. Overs The Water  7. Tongue Tee Tie  8. Darling, I Need You  9. To The Heavens  10. Thank Jah  11. Big Fun Come  12. How I Love Thee

Bonus 7-inch: 1.  Let's Make Love (Demo)  2.  It's Agreeable (Demo)


Aye yi yi...This was an album that I totally spaced on at the time of release...I thought "Rise" was alright-ish, but it definitely  put them in a "maybe I'll check out their next album, maybe I won't..." category... Despite the return of HR, and producer Ric Ocasek ("Rock for Light" ruled, right?)  the album received very poor word of mouth...I normally don't pay much attention to such things, since I routinely love albums most people seem to hate, but in this case I listened and never really looked back...

Since this came out in the mid-90's when vinyl was at its dead-est, a vinyl version wasn't easy to come by until it was released on wax for Record Store Day 2011...I ran across a copy at a deep discount and the vinyl presentation was so handsome I went for it...After seeing the poor reviews for "Into the Future" (an album I loved and still rock often to this day), I figured the time had finally come to give "God of Love" a chance...

And...It starts out like it's going to good.."Cool Mountaineers" gets things off to a great start, contrasting zippy hardcore with slow heavy riffs... The big-budget production adds a lot of heft to the band's punch and HR is much more interesting than Israel Joseph-I or whoever did the HR impersonation on "Rise." "Justice Keepers" isn't bad either, basically the same heavy-funky style they mastered on "I Against I" and "Quickness." Very easy for me to get into...Then things go downhill very quickly...

  I've made it very clear that I greatly enjoy the Bad Brains' reggae style and I do find the idea of HR tackling a dancehall/toasting style appealing, but a listen to "Longtime" reveals a very fatal flaw in the album...The reggae songs all have a very cheap 80's sound despite this coming out smack dab in the 90's...I guess if you find 80's Aswad or Ziggy Marley rewarding then you might get something out of this, but I usually find reggae to be a genre that can greatly suffer from artificial sound...Reggae sounds best when it has a deep, real, rootsy sound, which despite the Bad Brains' recording limitations in the past, they've always managed to tap into...It's weird that once they finally had a large, professional budget that it sounded so cheap...And that Ace of Bass whistling synthesizer sound doesn't help much either...And there's an awful lot of reggae here (about half the album), which is too bad this time around since they managed to get such a good sound on the heavy stuff...

But not all the heavy stuff is good either...There's this weird wimpy, watery guitar tone that wrecks a few tracks, most notably "Rights Of A Child" which was probably doomed from the get-go anyway (good intentions don't always result in good songs.)... I have to say, looking at the title, I figured "Tongue Tee Tie" was going to suck, but it's actually one of the better songs...Come to to think of it, a lot of this reminds me of the HR solo stuff from the 90's, only not as good...If you like the "God of Love" album, I'd imagine you'd really enjoy those more...

Maybe the bonus 7-inch is better...Maybe all the prime stuff ended up on the cutting room floor...Who knows? It happens from time to time....

Nope. Not really. "Let's Make Love" is an 8-minute mess of plodding, crispy, come-ons...Beyond boring...On the other hand, I'm strangely drawn to "It's Agreeable." It's so normal that it seems weird coming from the Bad Brains...Reminiscent of 1988 dance pop...Think Janet Jackson or Paula Abdul or something...When the chorus goes into falsetto-disco meltdown it's pretty amazing, actually....Oh yea, my copy has the same sticker on both sides, so if you read the label it would appear that both sides consisted of "Let's Make Love"...I'm very thankful that wasn't the reality of the situation...

Yea, I just don't know what to make of this "God of Love" record...It's not like it's actively terrible on a Nickelback or Taylor Swift level...It's just sort of "blah" and "dated." And I'm usually drawn to "dated" so if I declare it dated, then I can't imagine how it must sound to other folks..I'd probably rank this at the bottom of the list of the band's studio albums...

Let's do that actually...That sounds kind of fun...This is my personal ranking of the Bad Brains studio albums (I haven't included any live albums, EP's, or compilation...I've also never heard the dub reggae instrumental "I and I Survived  album"), you can share your personal ranking too, if you like:

1. Bad Brains (Self Titled/ ROIR  cassette or whatever you call it...The one with the awesome cover with the lightning bolt striking the Capitol building...)

2. I Against I

3. Rock For Light

4. Into the Future

5. Quickness

6.  Build A Nation

7. Rise

8. God of Love

Weee...That was fun...Here's "Cool Mountaineers" by the Bad Brains...Enjoy: