Sunday, January 20, 2013

Album Review: Rage Against The Machine XX

Rage Against The Machine
'XX'
20th Anniversary Edition


Marking the 20th anniversary of the self titled Rage Against The Machine debut album comes the re-mastered and reissued version complete with the added bonus material every deluxe collectors edition justifies it’s existence with


With their powerfully enraged hostile rants of perceptual subversion against corporate America, Rage Against The Machine earned huge critical support from a frustrated and resentful generation of renegades. The spliced fragments of punk, hip-hop, metal and thrash which bolted their sound together was a compellingly dynamic accompaniment to the lyrical incendiary being hurled at the targets of their scathing resent. The militant poetic mantras of front-man Zack de la Rocha delivered in his distinctively unflinching rap/rant vocal style were further enhanced by Tom Morello’s ingenious guitar work, the deep throbbing bass lines of Timmy C and, pounding out their frustrations brilliantly, drummer Brad Wilk. Not only mouthy instigators but inventive, solid and tight musicianship to back it up with, had such evidence ever been needed. There have been many pretenders to the throne since RATM first screamed a lyric in anger but you can’t reproduce an emotion that isn’t yours to begin with and so they remained an original masterpiece in a world of forgeries. It was the crunching distortion and shattering feedback of their self titled debut album that continued to glorify them best and created such an unstoppable force. Since it’s furious birth 20 years ago the 10 track album, with cover artwork featuring a Buddhist Monk burning himself to death in protest at the oppression of the Buddhist religion, still sounds as assertively hostile now, on this re-mastered Anniversary edition, as it did back then. Belligerent austerity and tenacious dogmatism are a dominant supremacy anywhere, but here, alongside such single minded devotion to the cause, it’s a towering inferno of political vitriol which bristles with conviction and creativity. Highlights are still phenomenal…. Signature tune ‘Killing In The Name’ ..fuck you I wont do what ya tell me’… ’Wake Up’ (the atmospheric yells of WAKE UP as the song nears it’s end remain a stirring resonance) Hard hitting ‘Bullet In The Head’, the simmering ‘Freedom’ and ferocious ‘Fistful Of Steel’ still veer, swagger and growl like callous, blood-starved predators defiantly unyielding in their anger and philosophies.

As well as the original album (re-mastered and with 3 bonus tracks) this Anniversary Edition also includes the full set of original demos ( their first full official release) that would eventually become the album versions we are familiar with – the only real difference is a rougher sounding quality which lends an unpolished feel to each song. A bonus DVD includes three music videos ( Killing In The Name, Bombtrack and Freedom) plus three previously unreleased live clips (Take The Power Back, Bombtrack and Wake Up) filmed at three separate performances during the early 90’s. As appealing as all the additional bonus material may be it wont make any significant difference to the album itself. A historically championed agenda pushing juggernaut of ground-breaking musical expressiveness that’s never been matched pound for pound by anything else since.

http://www.ratm.com/rage20/

Written by Alan Baillie

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