ALBUM OF THE DAY: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE (20 YEARS OLD THIS NOVEMBER)
Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut came out on November 10, 1992. It was easily the heaviest, most aggressive, most visceral, and angriest record I had ever heard; the Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica albums I’d been listening to didn’t hold a candle. It was also one of the first CDs I ever owned; I felt so bad-ass when I brought my rinky-dink Discman on school trips so I could listen on the school bus — the newest technology and the newest album! Man, those fucking things sucked; they would’ve skipped if you dropped a feather on them.
I listened to the album on repeat. I attempted to learn all the lyrics to “Take The Power Back,” bouncing around my bedroom, feeling all empowered, rebelling against the system (of what, doing dishes for my allowance? lol). I was never very good at learning lyrics — I’m still not — and gave up about halfway through. But goddam, that riff, it’s a classic. As is pretty much every riff on the entire album. And that cover — oh man, that cover! — I was too young to know or care about Thích Quảng Đức or the importance of that photo in U.S. geopolitics, but it inspired fear in my gut even so.
BRING THAT SHIT IN!!!!
Seven years later I’d attend a concert at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey, the proceeds of which benefitted the high-profile case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a man who may or may not have been wrongly convicted of killing a Philadelphia police offer. My parents forbade me to go to the show after a write-up in the New York Times decried the violent protests associated with the case, but I went anyway. I proceeded to have the shit kicked out of my tiny, 5’8″ 140-pound frame and I loved every second of it.
Many credit Rage Against the Machine for ushering in the nu-metal/rap-metal era, and to some extent they did. But fuck that. They shouldn’t be blamed for all the crap that followed; their music was genuine and heartfelt, and it broke new ground. Rage Against the Machine’s level of musical heaviness seems paltry compared to today’s metal — and even some metal that existed twenty years ago — but they’re one of those bands that served as a gateway for me into the heavier stuff. And their music still holds up.
All that started 20 years ago. Man, I feel old. And I’m not really even that old.
Share your memories of Rage Against the Machine at a special Tumblr site Rage Against the Machine has set up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their groundbreaking, landmark debut album.
Stream Rage Against the Machine in full on Spotify.
-VN
