Rage Against the Machine The Battle of Los Angeles (Epic, 1999)
reviewed by Micah Holmquist
December 3, 1999

My primary attraction to Rage Against the Machine is the group’s left-wing politics. That and the fact that I did meet Rage guitarist Tom Morello -a very down to earth and likable person- in August of last year while flying.

Those reasons aside, Rage does produce very interesting music. Many have prefaced the popularity of Limp Biskit by saying that Rage is the granddaddy of hip-hop/rock hybrid. This might be going a little too far. There were many attempts to combine rock and rap before Rage and some bands, such as Urban Dance Squad, did make this mixture into a consistent recipe. Nonetheless Rage is by far the most successful band to combine these styles over several albums. This is true both artistically and commercially -this last area is quite a feat because the group’s political stances.

The Battle of Los Angeles is not exception. Like their self-titled debut and Evil Empire, this disc has plenty of firepower. It is always exciting when vocalist Zack de La Rocha gets going with his politically charged rhymes and Morello, drummer Brad Wilk, and bass player Tim -he changes his full name from album to album, here it’s Y tim K- join in. None of the material is surprising but Rage does show a small level of musical development. Morello continues to use a wide variety of effects to produce sounds that you weren’t quite sure could come from a guitar. "Calm Like a Bomb," "Voice of the Voiceless," and Ashes in the Fall" are all good example of this. What Morello continues to avoid is any blues influence. This may be original but it does have its drawbacks.

Rage produces intensity like few other rock or rap acts could ever aspire to. Anger rests in all of this music and it sometimes gets a bit grating. Technically they are tremendous but this music sometimes lacks feeling. The groups has long prided itself on avoiding the cliché of love songs but they also are intent on avoiding anything that is not fast and furious (f&f). This does not help them get their message across. Politically infused performers of both the overt and not so overt variety have long used different tempos and feelings to make their point. John Coltrane produced music that was as f&f as anything that Rage does but "Alabama" -a song dedicated to the four young black girls who died in the infamous 1964 white supremacist bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama- is slow and needs to be. You need to mourn or at least show a full range of emotions in order to come off something more than angry.

This does not mean that Rage fails to make an earnest effort to get their politics across. If anything, The Battle of Los Angeles is more political than their previous two releases. By this I mean that here the group uses more than abstract expressions to make its points. There are still lines like "a hungry people don’t stay hungry for long" but now they also have make overt comments about Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Zapatista rebels. This is a positive sign and strong evidence that Rage really does prioritize conveying politics in all areas.

This disc is as good of an introduction to Rage as any but the most receptive audiences will be the band’s long time fans. Rage may not have a musical vision as large as their political outlook but this disc makes it clear that neither is really lacking all that much.

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