# Black Flag — Rise Above Black Flag’s Rise Above (1981) appears on 2 of our lists — Hardcore Punk and The Eighties, highest at No. 1 in Hardcore Punk. Every verdict, in full. - **Released:** 1981 - **Label:** SST - **On:** Hardcore Punk and The Eighties - **Updated:** 2026-08-31 - **Artist:** [Black Flag](https://waxonia.com/artist/black-flag/) - **Canonical page:** https://waxonia.com/track/black-flag--rise-above/ ## What 2 lists say ### No. 1 in [Hardcore Punk](https://waxonia.com/genre/hardcore-punk/) Henry Rollins's first record with the band, and the closest hardcore came to an anthem it could admit to. Greg Ginn's guitar is atonal and completely deliberate about it. ### Picked by [The Eighties](https://waxonia.com/theme/the-eighties/) Greg Ginn ran SST out of his own electronics business and put out the records nobody would touch. American hardcore did not get signed; it built a distribution network out of vans and mail order, and this is the record at the front of it. ## Analysis 3 sections, the first drop at 0:05, 4% of the way in. - **Tempo:** 215.4 BPM — the pulse reads at half this too — counted the way the genre counts it - **Key:** D minor - **Dynamic range:** 2.2 dB — compressed hard — very little between the quiet and the loud - **Length:** 2:27 - `0:00` A · **intro**, instrumental — opens the record below its own average energy — playing: other - `0:10` B · **peak** (bar 4), sung — sits at the top of this record's range — playing: drums, bass, vocals, other - `1:26` B · **outro** (bar 38), sung — the closing fall — playing: drums, bass, vocals, other **Drop** at 0:05 (bar 2). A drop is a moment, not a stretch. **What is playing.** Separated into parts by a source-separation model, so each lane is the instrument it names. - **drums:** the drum kit, separated from the mix - **bass:** the bass part, separated from the mix - **vocals:** the voice, separated from the mix - **other:** everything else — synths, guitars, keys, strings Measured from the YouTube master on 2026-08-29. Section labels describe how the energy moves, not musical form. Anything we were not confident enough to state is omitted rather than hedged. ## Listen [Search Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/search/Black%20Flag%20Rise%20Above) · [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=wDUYCyajDcs) --- Hand-curated by Waxonia. We host no audio; all links point to streaming platforms.