by Buzz Drainpipe // for Outer Order Zine no. 5
(Unearthed from the crawlspace where old riffs go to rot)
“This isn’t music. This is a protest lodged in the bones.”
When people talk about the so-called doom era of Black Flag, they usually drop the needle on Side B of My War. They freeze-frame on that moment when punk got slow, when hardcore broke its own neck in slow motion. Sure. That’s the pivot point. But that’s not the summit.
The summit—the altar, the burnt offering, the machete lodged in the spinal column of hardcore—is Slip It In.
I. THE DESCENT BECOMES A RITUAL
My War was a panic attack.
Slip It In is a possession.
Where My War experiments with slow, dirge-like punishment, it still clings to the chaos of its past. It’s an album torn in two: three head-first pit anthems followed by three songs that crawl like open wounds. You can hear the band mutating in real time—but they’re not all the way there yet.
By the time Slip It In rolls around, the mutation is complete. The songs are longer. Meaner. Dirtier. There is no speed safety net. This is not a transitional record. It’s a statement of arrival.
II. KIRA’S GROOVE VS. THE VOID
Nobody talks enough about Kira Roessler, but Slip It In is her kingdom. Her bass doesn’t just hold down the groove—it drags it through tar, anchors the whole slow-motion collapse. Where Chuck Dukowski was chaos incarnate, Kira is doom’s metronome, pulsing steadily through the sludge like an old diesel engine coughing out the last fumes of hope.
She’s the pulse you hear in your ears when you’re alone in the dark and the lights won’t come back on.
III. GREG GINN’S GUITAR = THE SHRIEK OF THE WIRETAP
Greg Ginn was never interested in rock and roll. On Slip It In, he finally gives up the act entirely. His guitar playing becomes aural self-harm—bent strings, negative solos, jazz as venom.
His solos don’t go anywhere because there’s nowhere left to go.
You can feel him strangling the strings for sound.
This is guitar as feedback loop.
Guitar as desperation broadcast.
Guitar as hate mail to melody.
IV. LYRICS FROM THE MAINTENANCE CLOSET OF THE HUMAN SOUL
The title track is pure provocation. “Black Coffee” is insomnia set to three chords and a panic grin. “Obliteration” doesn’t want to talk about it—it wants to drown you in it. These aren’t songs, they’re statements of no intent. They’re locked room monologues from men who stopped caring about the audience somewhere in Arizona.
This isn’t about rebellion anymore. It’s about resignation.
V. NOT A RECORD. A MANIFESTO.
Slip It In is the true doom gospel, the black sermon at the end of the punk dream. It told Eyehategod and Melvins and Neurosis how to rot with purpose. It planted seeds in hostile soil and waited. You can draw a straight line from this record to every amp-blown-down-the-stairs sludge band that ever played to five people in a basement and loved it.
LAST PAGE FROM A BURNED BIBLE:
“Slip It In doesn’t beg you to listen.
It sinks into your room like mold.
It’s what happens when the scream becomes the hum.”
—Buzz Drainpipe
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