Stream Rage Against the Machine’s Debut Album in Full… Remastered!

I have been enjoying the fuck out of the marketing campaign for the 20th anniversary reissue of Rage Against the Machine’s funky radical bombtrack debut album more than I can remember getting into ANY reissue, ever. Several early demos of songs on the album and previously unreleased tracks have been published online, and I’ve been following every step of the way. Part of it’s a trip down memory lane — this album was so huge for me when it came out — but part of it is that this album is so IMPORTANT, 1) in the history of heavy music (whether the bands that stole RATM’s rap-metal formula sucked or not), and 2) the message, man, the MESSAGE! What heavy band, if any, is on the same lyrical tip these days as RATM was 20 years ago? No one.

The icing on the cake with today’s release of the XX 20th anniversary boxset comes in the form of a full-album stream of the new, remastered version of Rage Against the Machine. The remastering engineer doesn’t appear to have committed the cardinal sin of over-compression and maxed-out loudness — I just reffed both versions on Spotify (original here, remaster here) and the levels sound pretty much the same — but everything does sound a tad more punchy (compression), most notably DAT BASS (which sounds huge and AWESOME). Highly recommend a listen, right now.

Stream the remastered version at Revolver and order the boxset here if you’re so inclined.