97. Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine (Epic, 1992)
I recently learned that Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction (who broke up pretty bad the week I wrote this) at one time had in his house (when he was on MTV's Cribs, I haven't been to his house) a blown up photo of Eddie Adams' Pulitzer-winning photograph “Saigon Execution”. Mural-sized, filling a whole wall. In front of the gunman, a table with lit candles, like a shrine to the gunman. Obscuring his victim's face, a candlestick with lit candles. The intended meaning of such a rogue piece of design is lost to time. The episode of Cribs isn't. Pity the help who had to light those candles every day.
The cover of Rage Against The Machine's debut is another photo I first saw in my Cold War history textbook, Malcom Browne's Pulitzer-winning photograph of Thích Quảng Đức's self-immolation. This is likely the first album that I downloaded on Napster, so I didn't see the album's artwork until about a year later when I saw it in Virgin Megastore. I downloaded once more for this review and the artwork on the download is obscured, with a sticker over it saying 'the blistering debut album now with a FREE BONUS TRACK'. This unintentional or intentional but either way awful sticker is in turn obscured by a Virgin Import sticker and a price tag. This jpeg exposes just some of the pitfalls of revolutionary rock, but I bet none of Rage are twatty enough have a Thích Quảng Đức wall in their house.
In 1991 Tom Morello, a hard rocker kid whose mum formed the protest group Parents For Rock And Rap (in 1987!) had a band that went kaput (accomplished hard rock with shite vocals and lyrics). He started jamming with Brad Wilk, who was also in a failing band (accomplished hard rock with shite vocals and lyrics again), Zach De La Rocha, a hardcore kid also in a failing band (they broke up because one guy wanted to go leftist hip hop, the other guy wanted to go Hare Krishna, guess which was which) and Zach's mate Tim Commerford whom Zach coaxed into learning the bass. A year or so later, this album drops.
Putting this on is a bit like sitting down to The Matrix again. Both are kind of perfect things that go hard from start to finish, but both feel like shattered naive pipe dreams, or carry the weight of our own shattered naive pipe dreams. The Internet has found much mirth in their earnestness, all while the cruel forces they oppose have gained more success than ever and the corprorate compromises of their widespreadness are laid bare. But all is not lost: There's a lot of worthwhile sentiment in these pills and much to savour in their coatings.
The messages still hold up: fuck KKK-controlled cops (“Killing In The Name”), J. Edgar Hoover was a piece of shit (“Wake Up”), accept no compromises on indigenous people's rights (“Freedom”). Good shit to internalise. The songs are great: Zach's timing is as slick any rapper around at the time and he sounds incredible across his whole volume and emotional ranges, Tom's Led Zep power chords and octave squeakery still rule and the rhythm section's pretty playful (“Township Rebellion” isn't played enough, the arrangement at the start of that is something else). The song structures are brilliant at keeping you lucid. Borrowing from hardcore they shift tempo and groove at will, Zach hopping from whispers to triplets to his scream, which sounds like an incoming TIE fighter.
What Kind Of Splash Did It Make?
The bastards continue to grind us down. Our future is sabotaged daily by the richest people who have ever lived, the planet is becoming uninhabitable and genocide is more important than God. Plus, Gen Z loves Limp Bizkit now. The racial unity implicit to rap rock fusion never translated that well to later, all-white outfits and the genre has waned pretty hard in popularity since Rage broke up in 2000, but a lot of people are still wandering around with Rage's revolutionary riffs and messages in their hearts. Many of them are on the side of truth too.
Where To Go From Here?
Zach was the man who dissolved Rage. He has pursued activism and purity, recording music for the joy of it and then ensuring no-one hears it (he has at least three unreleased solo albums, including one produced by Trent Reznor). In fact, he tried to ensure no-one heard Rage's final album of covers, Renegades. All four Rage albums including that one are pretty great, as are some of the surviving glimmers of Zach's work. I can't say the same for all of the projects that the other band mambers have got up to. After Rage, my Napster habit moved on to System of a Down, who were similarly minded eclectic misfits with an unfortunate respect for Michael Moore. I definitely stole Steal This Album!, but their debut, again self titled, remains my favourite. The Deftones definitely needed Rage to exist and they are another band who immediately weld rap rock to much grander visions. Start at the start with them. If the message of Rage is more appealing to you than the rock music, hit up early KRS-One (start with “You Must Learn (Live From Caucus Mountain Remix)”) and Gil-Scott Heron (Glory is a great anthology).