When I was 15, Black Flag was in town and Henry Rollins was doing an in-store reading at Open Books & Records in Miami. Afterwards he took some questions from the dozen or so people there. I was so baffled by the direction that Black Flag had taken with My War that I used the opportunity to ask Mr. Rollins what records he had been really into lately. Without hesitation he mentioned Trouble's debut released one year earlier. He likened it to the sky just before a terrible storm. Open didn't carry much metal, so I would have to wait and pick this up at Vibrations, which was like a head shop that sold a few random punk records and Metalblade releases. After the reading Henry, browsed around the store a bit and then bought a stack of Blowfly cassettes, which further confused me. Anyways, Rollins was 100 percent, absolutely correct about Trouble. Psalm 9 was so heavy, so completely menacing and foreboding I didn't even care that they were christians. In a way, it almost added to the mystique. It wasn't nicey-nice, smiley face Ned Flanders christianity, this was serious, cataclysmic, Asa Hawks type shit. To this day I still listen to this album weekly, and I still get chills.
I gotta add that I just got back from seeing Harvey Milk in Oakland. They were so good that I teared up, lamenting dead friends that weren't there to see such a great, cathartic, and beautiful band. So deep, so natural. It's been years since a band moved me so. Goddamn!
