Bad Brains are one of the few bands whose live albums I regularly pull out to listen to; they embodied the "crucial energy" of hardcore in the live setting more than any other band in the early 80's, and I've listened to all of their old live albums (Spirit Electricity, The Youth Are Getting Restless, and especially Live from 1988) countless times over the past twenty years. Their live documentation on record was terrific, but until a few years ago, there was hardly any high quality live concert footage of their classic 80's era available; that is, until that Live At CBGB's DVD came out on MVD, inarguably the best live video document ever released of the legendary Rastafarian hardcore gods. That DVD featured an exhaustive setlist that was culled from three consecutive shows at CBGB's that were spread over the Christmas holiday in 1982, and includes just about every song from that period that you could possibly want to see them perform live. At the time, the energy and ferocity of Bad Brains was unrivaled in hardcore, and their incendiary performances captured on that DVD proved the point. With amazingly high-quality film and audio, the footage captures the band in the throes of ecstatic fury, surrounded by punks hurtling across the stage and the dancefloor as the band tore through a set list that drew heavily from their early ultra-fast thrashers with a handful of Rastafarian dub/reggae jams.

So now MVD has taken a chunk of these performances and has assembled a new vinyl-only full length album of live material in a limited edition black-and-red splatter colored vinyl pressing, and it fucking smokes. There was a Cd release of the '82 CBGB's performances too, but this has a completely different set of material than that disc, fourteen tracks in all. This Lp features a lot of their reggae/dub material, but the heavy mix and mastering gives the dubbed-out reggae jams a much more bass-heavy, apocalyptic vibe than on previous Bad Brains live discs, and the sequencing of the tracks is perfect, with the speedy, ferocious blasts of Rastafarian thrash sandwiched between the massive reggae workouts of "The Meek" and "Unity Dub". Most of the songs found here are off of their Rock For Light album, but what makes this crucial for hardcore Bad Brains fans is the inclusion of the aforementioned "unity Dub", which to the best of my knowledge has never appeared on any other Bad Brains record, and the only live recording of "Rally Round Jah's Throne". Then there are the blistering hyper speed versions of classic songs like "Banned In DC", "FVK", "How Low Can a Punk Get" and "Right Brigade". Might be the "heaviest" sounding of all of the live Bad Brains albums, but regardless, it's a crucial set of the band at the height of their quasi-mystical, Rastafarian thrash powers, and absolutely recommended to fans. Issued in a limited pressing of just 500 copies.