Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups Share Covers of Black Flag’s “My War” & “Scream” In Honor of My War’s 40th Anniversary

Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups’ Anthony Van Hoek & Jaqueline Blownaparte (CREDIT: Rusty Glessner)

40 years ago this month (some sites say March 1, 1984,) Black Flag—in their penultimate configuration with bruiser Henry Rollins on vocals—unleashed their sophomore album, My War, on their own label imprint, SST Records. This line-up of Black Flag had shrunken from five members to three when compared against its predecessor, Black Flag’s long-in-the-works 1981 debut, Damaged. My War showcases Rollins alongside Balck Flag founder, guitarist, and bassist (credited as “Dale Nixon,”) Greg Ginn and Descendents’ drummer Bill Stevenson, who had previously played across Side 2 of the band’s 1982 T.V. Party EP. My War is sludgy, drudgey, trudgey, down-tuned and heavy; drawing influence from Black Sabbath, Flipper, Void, Fang, Dio, Ted Nugent, Black Oak Arkansas, MC5, ZZ Top, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and the then still-growing Doom Metal scene spearheaded by SST’s own Saint Vitus. Over the years, Black Flag’s My War has become a cult favorite amongst Punks and Metalheads alike bolstering major influence on the eventual development of Post-hardcore, Sludge Metal, Grunge, and Math Rock. Amazingly, MY War was just the first of what would end up being FOUR full-length Black Flag releases issued throughout 1984: Family Man in September ‘84, Slip It In in December ‘84, and the fittingly-titled Live ‘84 also released in December of ‘84.

Anyways, all fantastic albums definitely worth checking out, if you aren’t exactly familiar with one or more of them! If not, there’s a great recently published article at Discogs that goes into the story surrounding My War and the makings-of Black Flag’s 1984 quadruple releases. As per usual, this is a somewhat long and distorted way of bringing us to today’s featured artist… Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups. A couple years ago, the Brooklyn-based Punk/Metal maniacs dropped their cover of My War’s title track over Super Bowl Weekend. Now, they’re back with a two-song single/EP showcasing “My War” from Side A and “Scream” from Side B of My War. While the current Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups line-up is just frontwoman Jaqueline Blownaparte, guitarist/graphic artist Anthony Van Hoek, and bassist Rusty Blades, the band line-up at the time of the My War/Scream recordings additionally consisted of bassists Diablo Rodriguez and drummer Biff Jergens. Also, if you’re a drummer looking for a part-time touring/recordings gig, hit Chesty up! “At one point, strictly for sh*ts and giggles, we wanted to cover the entire [Black Flag] My War album. I had started learning “My War,” the song, just for something to do and, then, I started to get ambitious, so I learned “Scream,” too,” Van Hoek told The Witzard via email. “I called our friend, John Bechdel (who plays keyboards in Ministry) and asked if he’d be into recording it. Luckily, he said “yes,” so we banged that out at his studio. He’s always on tour, so we left it at those two songs, for now. Incidentally, John is, also, recording our new upcoming 4-song EP, entitled Hell Is Full & We Need The Room,” Van Hoek continued.

Chesty and the boys, of course, put their own even more sludgy Punk/Metal-indebted Horror Punk spin on two Rollins era Black Flag classics. We would, personally, love to hear Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups’ charismatic takes on the rest of My War’s remaining seven tracks and/or Family Man OR Slip It In, too! Van Hoek under his artistic guise of Anthony Allen Begal/AAB designed the painting seen adorned across the cover of the Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups My War single cover in direct homage to Raymond Pettibon’s original My War imagery. AAB also designed a super-sick My War “tattoo flash” style art print (pictured below) featuring 10 images—one image for each of My War’s nine tracks, as well as an additional tenth bonus image for “Three Nights." In addition to the digital 2-song single itself and the My War art print, Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups are also selling custom-made Chesty Malone MY WAR T-shirt on their Big Cartel band page. So, go check out Chesty Malone & The Slice ‘em Ups’ My War/Scream double-single exclusively on Bandcamp and YouTube and Follow them on Facebook and/or Instagram for updates on their upcoming Hell Is Full & We Need The Room EP and whatever else Chesty may have in store for us!

My War Flash Art Print (ART CREDIT: Anthony Allen Begnal)