Rage Against the
Machine – Rage Against the Machine
(Epic, 1992)
Buy the album
here
Sitting
in the back seat of my Dad’s car with a personal cassette player listening to
Rage Against the Machine en route to a family holiday in Florida is not the
most rebellious thing I’ve ever done.
But hearing those words and crazy guitar sounds burning in my ears during
those hours, I felt ready to protest everything, to jump out of a moving car, to
tear the branded holiday wear from by body, and live a life outside of the
machine. While this has never actually
happened (it’s a work in progress…), this was a watershed moment for me
musically, culturally, and politically.
It’s not every day that a kid goes to Disney World a neatly dressed,
rule-obeying lad, and returns a ferocious, politically minded and opinionated
nuisance. My Mum and Dad are probably
angrier at RATM than any other band.
But
RATM are just as angry at us. Tracks
like “Killing in the Name” and “Wake Up” throw our passive complicity with injustice
in our faces, asking us to arm ourselves with knowledge and act. While live recordings from the time betray vocalist
Zack de la Rocha’s youthful idealism, the band’s integrity and intent cannot be
questioned. They used their major label
status to support causes and protests standing against global injustice, with
the band’s very real support of the Zapatistas in Mexico even resulting in
rumours of Zack de la Rocha being involved in gun-running for the organisation. Guitarist Tom Morello’s recently created Firebrand
Records for protest and rebel music exemplifies his dedication to spreading the
word and giving a platform to otherwise unknown political music acts. It’s this dedication to their causes and the
very real burning anger at the heart of each song that makes this album so
moving and inspirational. While the
teeth of mainstream metal seemed to have fallen out in the early 90s, RATM came
screaming to life, tearing through the posturing of MTV metal bands with
incisor-like efficiency.
“Know
Your Enemy” is one such track. Morello’s
killswitch shifting of reality is grounded by Tim Commerford’s enormous funk
bass before the speedy punk riff kicks in and takes us into the song’s anti-establishment
heart:
Yes I know my enemies
They’re the teachers who taught me to fight
me
Compromise, conformity, assimilation,
submission
Ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the
elite
All of which are American dreams.
The
final repeated line is the blood-boiling, condemnatory conclusion to a furiously
tight, funk-punk attack on the figures of authority who distort and abuse the system
to keep others down. But we should also celebrate
the musical diversity on display: Morello’s riffing takes on classic mid-paced
metal stylings as well as deeply heavy modern metal “chugging”, not to mention
his almost indescribable solo on this track, while Maynard James Keenan’s guest
vocal adds texture and a different delivery of anger. If you are seeking the most direct delivery of
anger then preceding track, “Bullet in the Head”, has all you need. Commerford’s bass and Zack de la Rocha’s
vocals form the foundation of this track while Morello’s killswitch antics keep
the listener guessing where this song might go.
It’s a relatively slow build, but for the song’s final two minutes that
tension and anger are focused on powerfully delivering you the message that you
have “a bullet in your fucking head”.
And while it’s easy to dismiss this as just a catchy, violent image, or
as an interesting metaphor for being brainwashed by the “system”, it’s
important to remember that RATM mean this literally too. Then as now, innocent people are being shot
in America by figures of authority, and it’s an injustice that somehow seems to
divide people, such as the political/media/societal fallout of Colin Kaepernick’s
beautiful and brave protest of police brutality and systemic racism. Rage Against
the Machine is arguably as relevant today as it was the day of its release.
While
album opener “Bombtrack” perhaps feels dated and “Killing in the Name” is over-exposed,
a classic track like “Wake Up” is just as violently potent today, and there are
less discussed songs that deserve recognition.
“Settle for Nothing” and “Fistful of Steel” are just two examples of an
album that is quality from first to last.
The former is a quiet, slow-build to unbelievable waves of heavy rage
crashing around your ears intended to motivate immediate change. The latter is a pounding lesson in the immediacy
of heavy metal and rap music combined; “Fistful of Steel” is simple, direct,
heavy as hell, and with as much attitude as you could ever need. But for me, all that built up rage and the
message at its heart is perfectly distilled in closing track, “Freedom”. Bursting in on a bouncing riff, it has as
much positive energy as any song on the record.
The stop-start power of the instrumentation, Brad Wilk’s control of the
pace and anticipation, and Zack de la Rocha’s spit-filled tirades combine to
make me thrash and sing along for seemingly minutes on end without ever
breathing. It’s a suitably destructive
and constructive ending to an icon of resistance.
Fusing
funk, punk, metal, and rap Rage Against the
Machine reshaped rebellion in an age when it became acceptable to add the
prefix “pop” to the term ”punk”. But the
commercial success of the band has taken us perilously close to taking this
protest music for granted. Rap-metal became
a synonym for shit metal later in the 90s, but RATM are not to be blamed for
that development. In many ways, their
final studio album of original songs, The
Battle of Los Angeles, is a better album than this iconic debut. Their legacy should remain untarnished after
the bone and brain rattling attack of “Testify”, “Born of a Broken Man”, and “War
Within in a Breath” from that album. However,
the band will always be remembered for reminding us to scream, “Fuck you I won’t
do what you tell me!”, but to always, and more importantly, back it up with knowledge
and action. So while it is important to
know your enemy, it might mean more to know yourself first.
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