Bad Brains: Next Steps

Even as they pushed hardcore to new extremes, Bad Brains were already blowing their sound wide open, with the blitzkrieged stomp of 1983's “Coptic Times” dissolving into a jazzy bass breakdown. That genre-jumping impulse would later go into overdrive: 1989's “Gene Machine / Don't Bother Me” cycles through jackhammered punk thrash, mammoth metallic grooves and dubby reggae in three minutes flat.