Recording
Rise Above
Black Flag
Independently chosen for2 of our lists. Here is what each of them said.
- Released
- 1981
- Label
- SST
- On
- Hardcore Punk and The Eighties
- Updated
- 2026-08-31
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
- estimated from the pitch content
- Dynamic range
- 2.2 dB
- compressed hard — very little between the quiet and the loud
- Length
- 2:27
- measured from the YouTube master
The record, end to end
Click the track to jump · ← → move between sections
- 0:00Aintro0
- 0:10Bpeakbar 4
- 1:26Boutrobar 38
Drop at 0:05 (bar 2). A drop is a moment, not a stretch — marked on the track above rather than shaded across it.
0:00 · A · intro
opens the record below its own average energy · instrumental
- Lasts
- 0:10
- Energy
- 0
- Brightness
- 100
- Density
- 100
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
sits at the top of this record's range · sung · one of 2 stretches of the same music (B)
- Lasts
- 1:16
- Energy
- 100
- Brightness
- 1
- Density
- 30
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
the closing fall · sung · one of 2 stretches of the same music (B)
- Lasts
- 1:01
- Energy
- 95
- Brightness
- 0
- Density
- 0
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
Brightness and density are scored against this record's own sections, not against music in general — they say how its parts differ from each other, and nothing about how it compares to anything else.
- 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
Separated into parts by a source-separation model, so each lane is the instrument it names.
- intro
- opens the record below its own average energy
- peak
- sits at the top of this record's range
- outro
- the closing fall
Measured from the YouTube master on . Section labels describe how the energy of the recording moves, not its musical form — a machine can see loudness climb and jump, it cannot hear a chorus arrive. Anything we were not confident enough to state is left out rather than shown with a caveat.
Ranked No. 1 in 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
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.