#053 Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine

Looking over best of the 90's lists made me realize I'd not heard any of these guys albums.

This's a complex one. I had always enjoyed this band's riffs and jagged sound, but dismissed them because I thought their politics were a bit put on, the whole thing a bit hypocritical, a bit too /white/ somehow - which I know doesn't make any sense, not least because de la Rocha is half Mexican. But then again, back then, I dismissed rap and country, so, surely by now I know better and can embrace the good parts of this album and enjoy it, right?

That's what I expected, and I do like the riffage, but I still can't really get past the frontman. Its for slightly different reasons now, I'm more inclined now to believe that de la Rocha really believes what he's saying, that he really does care, and that he would like nothing more than to convince the youth of the world to enact change. Its really just that his nasal shouting just doesn't convey power to me, it comes across as frustrated, and sincerely trying, but ultimately whiny. And I think I have an even more unfair problem with the album, which is just the context it was created in.

Here's a thought exercise, imagine this album came out in the early 70's. Man, it would be a legend - this kind of fury would have blown the wheels off that era. Back then, it would have been really raging against a world that wasn't ready for this music. But by the 90's, the world was ready for this music, and it was gobbled up by angsty teenagers by the millions. When the vocals sound whiny and I get the idea much of the audience was a bunch of privileged kids who wanted to rage against things just for the sport of it, it kills my buzz. Worse still, I probably would have liked this if I'd heard it then - I'm not at all convinced that I'm projecting into the past correctly. Maybe this is me still clinging to my first impressions, maybe I haven't come as far as I'd have thought.

But shit, my impressions now are what they are. So, sorry? Also, I think I have the right to judge this album by when it came out, I don't have to give every schlub who drops paint on a canvas the same due that Pollock got - Pollock doing that when he did, in the climate he did, was most of what made him great. It was a daring act then, and this album, at this time, was simply not as daring as it would have been 5, 10 or 20 years sooner. Maybe it was more daring in '92 than I realize, but my memory is that plenty of punk and gangta rap had largely beaten it to the punch.

If I want to set all that aside, the vocals just don't work. The music sounds awesome, for sure, though the riffs all start to sound the same after a while (I kept saying "is this killing in the name of, again?"), and when its not copping itself, its copping an awful lot of classic rock lines. This is all to say, after all these years, my opinion's still basically the same: 4 amazing riffs, with great production and good beats. Around here, that earns you a 3.5/5