Depending on who you ask, Bad Brains might be the greatest hardcore punk band that ever lived. I myself certainly subscribe to that line of thinking. While their career and recorded output has been anything but consistent, when these legendary Rastafarian punks were "on", they were an unstoppable force. Starting off as a bunch of jazz-fusion musicians outside of Washington DC who became attracted to the fire of punk rock, the Bad Brains added speed and complexity, metallic fury and Rastafarian spirituality to an amped up and groundbreaking version of punk that gave birth to hardcore as we know it, while at the same time creating their own unique sound that has never been replicated. If you're a hardcore fan, this is all old news, but nothing can take away from the epiphanic power of hearing this band for the first time. The closest I can get to revisiting that experience is by pulling out the bands very first 7", the Pay To Cum single from 1980, which for years was a holy grail of hardcore vinyl collectors and fetched hundreds of dollars for a copy. Now, the band has reissued this 7" in a limited edition, featuring one of the best hardcore songs ever on the a-side, "Pay To Cum", a ferocious speeding blast of light with an instantly hummable chorus hook, total joyous aggression distilled into one minute and thirty three seconds. And probably the fastest song ever recorded up to that point. On the flipside, the band does "Stay Close To Me", a prescient piece of punk reggae that is just as soulful and catchy as the previous track. Absolutely crucial.