Description
What better place than here? What better time than now?Rage Against the Machinecouldnt provide a more urgent thesis statement for their third album,The Battle of Los Angeles, which turns 26-years-old. The album depicts the quartet vocalist Zack de la Rocha, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford, and drummer Brad Wilk at their most viscerally immediate and politically decisive. Its the sound of four punks from Los Angeles attempting to use their seismic platform to unify their audience in anti-colonial rage. Those two central questions from Guerrilla Radio werent just rhetorical calls to action; they would eventually signify the bands political relevance for decades to come, especially as their fight against white supremacy and fascism reaches a new desperate peak over 26 years later. Over and over again, Rage Against the Machine prove that the here and now is worth fighting for.
ThoughBattlewas released an entire year before one of the most consequential presidential elections in US history, the stakes were already high for Rage. As they jumped yet another rung of the ladder with their ruthless second albumEvil Empirein 1996, the groups rap-rock fingerprints started to show up on numerous bands du jour: Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Kid Rock each capitalized on elements of their powder keg formula and found mainstream attention in the process.Rather than the resistance that RATM had used to their advantage in their punk-addled early days, they were no longer on the fringes of popularity or pioneering their own genre they were front-and-center fixtures of a rock scene bursting with mainstream potential.
But Rage Against the Machine, as they had on both albums beforeBattle, refused to sacrifice their creative ambitions and anti-oppression ethos. While producer Brendan OBrien kept Rages sound as faithful and barebones as necessary, Morello in particular takes some intriguing stylistic leaps onBattle. Theres the barnstorming riffs, sure, but theres also the hair-raising harmonics on the verses of Voice of the Voiceless, the brassy, clown-esque tone on the Guerrilla Radio solo, the John Carpenters Halloween Theme-meets-dial tone feedback on the opening of Ashes in the Fall. Its strangely fitting thatThe Battle of Los Angeleswas RATMs swan song, because they seemingly perfected the RATM formula with it. To say they were firing on all cylinders is an understatement;Battleis Rages whole arsenal and more. Its their heaviest record and their most accessible, with some of their sharpest and most prophetic lyrics in their catalogue. via Consequence
Label: Epic, Legacy, Sony Music
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Repress, 180g vinyl
Reissued: 2024 / Original Release: 1999
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Rock, Hard Rock, Funk Metal, Conscious
File under: School of Rock
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