Rage Against The Machine Rock Oxygen

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis Monday July 14, 2008 22:59 by joans boyfrend

Every generation has its political rock band: The Fugs, The Clash…and Rage Against The Machine.

RATM formed in Los Angeles in 1991 and released the self-titled debut a year later, one of the definitive CDs of the 90s. The cover featured the image of the “burning monk”, who burned himself to death in 1963: an ultimate image of commitment and protest. The music was a highly potent mix of metal, funk, rap, and anti-capitalist politics.

They made two more albums and a hard-driving CD of cover versions of political or socially-conscious rock and rap songs (including Springsteen’s “Ghost of Tom Joad”) after which they fell victim to internal arguments, and split in 2000.

But now they’re back.

It started as an internet rumour that turned out to be true: RATM were playing festivals around the world. We could hardly believe it, but fukit, they were going to be playing the Oxygen Festival! The re-union was a belated response to the Bush administration and the rise of the Right in American politics,

“A good friend of ours once said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. presidents as were applied to the Nazis after World War II... every single one of them, every last rich white one of them from Truman on, would have been hung to death and shot—and this current administration is no exception. They should be hung, and tried, and shot. As any war criminal should be.”

Which led to:

“A couple of months ago, those fascist motherfuckers at the Fox News Network attempted to pin this band into a corner by suggesting that we said that the president should be assassinated. Nah, what we said was that he should be brought to trial as war criminal and hung and shot. THAT'S what we said. And we don't back away from the position because the real assassinator is Bush and Cheney and the whole administration for the lives they have destroyed here and in Iraq. They're the ones. And what they refused to air which was far more provocative in my mind and in the minds of my bandmates is this: this system has become so brutal and vicious and cruel that it needs to start wars and profit from the destruction around the world in order to survive as a world power. THAT's what we said. And we refuse not to stand up, we refuse to back down from that position.”

Judging by the crowd, almost everybody went to Oxygen see RATM. Rage t-shirts were all over the place!

They came on about 10.45 and played a strong, committed set, kicking off with “Testify”. The huge crowd went mental, and insane levels of moshing and crowd-surging continued as the band played some of their hardest, fastest, riffiest songs. A couple of times the band took a breather, almost deliberately taking some of the energy down to more manageable levels.

The stage backdrop was the black flag and red star of EZLN, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Songs included “Bombtrack”, Bullet In The Head”, “Guerrilla Radio”, “Calm Like a Bomb”, “People of the Sun”, “War Within a Breath” and of course they had to finish with the infamous “Killing In the Name Of” and its Fuck You chorus. Throughout, it was a 100% effort by the band, the sound was great, and the songs were just tweaked a little to keep them fresh.

It would have been easy to play their own indoor gigs to fans; playing festivals shows Rage still want to work to bring their music and their message to new people.

Rage Against the Machine operate in the following psychic environment: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”.