Two notes. Two notes that hit like a freight train hurled by a tornado. Two notes that blew out stereos across America, made radio DJs quake in fear, and created a new generation of guitar heroes. Fuck a molotov, it was a city-wide riot condensed into four minutes. “Bulls on Parade” was incendiary. Rage Against the Machine was incendiary. The most fearsome and feared band in rock crammed all its volatility into one song. Rage reveled in their greatest strengths while revealing what would eventually tear them apart.
Rage came together over a shared love of Public Enemy, Brit-punk, and hyper-leftist anger. Their 19992 debut was revolutionary in sound and politics. It was also messy energy from a bunch of twenty-somethings funneling all their fury into ten songs. Unexpected hit “Killing in the Name” was released the same year as Body Count’s “Cop Killer.” Together, they inspired a sharp, swift turn in rock music’s larger consciousness, urging listeners to become politically brutal and suspicious of power.
The band refused to tone down its fervor between albums. Their second record, Evil Empire, was released 30 years ago this week, and it began with a call for all colonized people to take up arms. Over a riff that sounds like Tom Morello is winding zip-ties around his guitar, Zack de la Rocha roars, “That vulture came to try and steal your name but now you got a gun / And this is for the people of the sun,” comparing the pillaging of Latin American empires by Spanish Conquistadors to cops terrorizing minority communities in Los Angeles. It’s an apt and disturbing comparison, the riots still looming over Los Angeles in 1996.
Morello claimed Evil Empire was the “middle ground between Public Enemy and the Clash.” There’s nary a touch of the latter’s punk rock but plenty of their political ideology. The bands that held sonic commonalities with Evil Empire were the gnarliest parts of the ‘80s DC scene. Bad Brains was the obvious comparison, but the beautiful thrashing of Rites of Spring was also encoded in Rage’s DNA. Though de la Rocha, Morello, and co. helped create a new sub-genre of metal, their closest peer in ethos and technicality was Fugazi. Tim Commerford’s bass interlocked with Brad Wilk’s drums with the same rubbery heft that propelled the D.C. post-hardcore band’s “Waiting Room” into a punk classic in 1988.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. And a whole sea of mediocrity flattered Wilk and Commerford over the next decade. Rage, at its best, sounded like Helmet covering the Meters. Limp Bizkit attempted to capture the same dense osmium bounce that structured the backbone of every Rage song. But Wilk was too creative to be directly copied. Morello’s shift to the hyper-textural lets Commerford’s bass have plenty of leg room, taking up the melodic center of Evil Empire. The slinky growl he achieves on “Without a Face” remarkably replicates the grit in de la Rocha’s voice when they both snarl. And the thunder Wilk and Commerford bring to “Vietnow” sounds like tectonic plates shifting below Morello and de la Rocha. The whole band surfs the earthquake that roils through the song.
It’s a mistake to say Rage Against the Machine was a rock band backing an emcee. The bass on “Without a Face” nods to Ice-T’s “Colors,” the tea kettle whistle Morello produces on “Wind Below” quotes Public Enemy’s “Rebel Without a Pause,” and the guitarist slathers G-Funk squealing over “Down Rodeo.” de la Rocha has always been considered a brilliant frontman and vocalist, his street-preacher charisma and steely gaze underpinning the emotional impact of Evil Empire. But as a rapper, he’s deeply underrated.
On Rage’s covers-only album Renegades, de la Rocha reaffirmed his love of Rakim and KRS One. On Evil Empire he flexed both deliveries: Rakim’s understated danger and KRS One’s booming threats. The hazy psychedelia of “Revolver” could be mistaken for Soundgarden if it wasn’t for de la Rocha’s soft voice, which never diminishes the menacing tone. He surveys the wreckage of domestic abuse in the verses, vocals floating atop Morello’s trembling guitar. Then the song tears itself asunder when de la Rocha screams violent revenge: “Hey revolver, don’t mothers make good fathers?” He shrieks when the trigger is pulled, signaled by Wilk’s snare hitting like God’s Smith & Wesson. It’s de la Rocha’s call for revolution in the micro. The solution for domestic fascists is the same for autocratic governments.
de la Rocha shows astounding range across Evil Empire; his quaking delivery on “Snakecharmer,” the strutting, incandescent charisma of “Down Rodeo,” and the most straightforward rap of his career on “Roll Right” were all natural and welcome evolutions from Rage’s self-titled debut. “The jura got my number on a wire tap / ‘Cause I jack for Similac, fuck a Cadillac,” he raps on “Born Without a Face,” relishing the click of every consonant slipping through his teeth.
Morello, already turning himself into a guitar iconoclast, went tortured and warped his instrument. The famed “wah-wah” record scratch on “Bulls on Parade” and the otherworldly spectrograph solo on “Without a Face” made a whole generation of metalheads realize the pedal board could be a weapon. Morello would go farther on Rage’s next album 1999’s The Battle of Los Angeles with the hallucinatory lead of “Maria” and the howling maelstrom of “Testify,” but Evil Empire hit the sweet spot between Bomb Squad production replicas and steely riffs. “Tire Me” has Rage leaning back into its post-hardcore roots, a ferocious, entwining guitar-bass lead running ragged under de la Rocha screaming, “We’re already dead!”
Rage Against the Machine’s debut was the sound of young radicals taking a sledgehammer to the foundations of the conservative world. Evil Empire was more focused. It was meaner, sleeker; the anger simmers before exploding. The CD booklet featured pictures of what we can assume was de la Rocha’s reading list, from Mumia Abu-Jamal’s memoir Live from Death Row to James Baldwin’s Another Country. Even the album covers signaled a change: Rage Against the Machine showed Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức self-immolating in protest of Buddhist repression in the 1960s. Meanwhile, Evil Empire is adorned with an illustration of a fake superhero with a self-assured smile verging on a smirk, taking aim at America’s own mythos and self-hero worship.
“The title actually came from a speech by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and he addressed the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire.’ If you look at the atrocities committed by the U.S. in the latter half of the 20th century, we feel that tag could be easily used to describe the U.S,” said de la Rocha, succinctly surmising 40 years of conservative political platforms in two lines: “Rally around the family / With a pocket full of shells.”
Left-wing politics point out the hypocrisy of the right and stop there, expecting a reward. The thing is, fascism is inherently full of paradoxes; laws that protect the powerful do not bind, while laws for the poor bind but do not protect. Rage Against the Machine would attack the lies of a post-Reagan world. But that was just the first step. On the astonishingly prescient “Vietnow,” de la Rocha raps, “The transmissions whippin’ our backs / Yeah, comin’ down like bats from Stacey Koon,” tying the rantings of Rush Limbaugh to the beating of Rodney King. Conservative talk radio stations were the backbone of right-wing politicking in the ‘90s, paving the way for Fox News to become kingmakers. As de la Rocha puts it, “Fear is your only god!” But he doesn’t come without a remedy for the problem: “a tune with a bullet, to shut down the devil sound!”
“Vietnow” encapsulates what separates Rage from nu-metal dipshits. Limp Bizkit used their platform to complain about other bands on MTV. Rage looked at the man behind the throne, reminding us that no one is immune to propaganda. And, in the modern era of bot farming and influencer culture, “Vietnow”’s central message of not trusting the voice whispering fear into your ear is more important than ever. Nu-metal bands mistook the righteous anger of a well-read, multi-cultural band as the childish thrashing of “fuck you, you’re not my real dad!” Is there any comparison between Fred Durst coughing up “infredible” and de la Rocha rapping “My stories shock ya like Ellison / Mainline adrenaline / Gaza to Tiananmen”?
You can blame knuckleheads like VP flop Paul Ryan for not listening to Rage Against the Machine’s lyrics, but it’s rare to find art this political and this fun. de la Rocha never sounds preachy. He comes bearing gifts: a hand in solidarity, or a lit molotov. There’s a swagger to every second of Evil Empire. “Bulls on Parade” ended up being their biggest song next to “Killing in the Name.” Despite its deconstruction of the military industrial complex, the groove and confidence were so undeniable that rock radio started programming it. Morello’s vinyl-scratch solo would blow minds then and again ten years later on Guitar Hero III.
“Bulls on Parade” was, and is, an utterly mind-warping display of creativity. It’s a middle finger to the sanctity of rock guitar. It was also exactly what rock music needed in 1996, as the sludgy wave of re-fried grunge acts were becoming radio staples. “The microphone explodes, shattering the molds / Either drop the hits like de la O, or get the fuck off the commode,” sneers de la Rocha, at once referencing himself, Mexican revolutionary Genovevo de la O, and De la Soul before moving onto the “cannibal animal” of the Pentagon. He’s not dour or lecturing. He’s got time to flex some lyrical muscle and enjoy himself. And why shouldn’t he? This was the best two-note kickoff since Gang of Four’s “Damaged Goods.” With Wilk commanding thunderclaps on his crash cymbal and the Richter scale crunch of Morello and Commerford, Rage created an iconic intro.
But there’s a secret to Evil Empire. “Bulls on Parade” isn’t its best song. That honor goes to “Down Rodeo,” which features the greatest opening lyric of the 1990s: “Yeah, I’m rollin’ down Rodeo with a shotgun / These people ain’t seen a brown-skinned man / Since their grandparents bought one.” Vibrant bursts of shuddering guitars make an inverted Death Wish paradigm. Instead of porcelain-white Charles Bronson getting a tidy reason to destroy Black and Brown bodies, de la Rocha leads a class revolt in Beverly Hills. “Can’t waste a day when the night brings a hearse / So make a move and plead the fifth ’cause ya can’t plead the first,” he commands, as the chorus enters a flow state of menace and funk. The song ruptures into volcanic rage and de la Rocha enters the same inner fury he found on “Freedom.” He screeches like a god of vengeance.
Rage Against the Machine was a band that could only be sustained by angry young men. One more full length, a covers album, then de la Rocha dipped. Morello recalled, “We would even have fist fights over whether our T-shirts should be mauve or camouflaged! It was ridiculous. We were patently political, internally combustible. It was ugly for a long time.” After the breakup, every member of Rage took strange paths: Audioslave, Prophets of Rage, Street Sweeper Social Club, Morello’s solo turn into folk protest by way of Springsteen. de la Rocha would appear suddenly, like a desert mystic carrying a new tablet transcribed from God. His sermons came alive on 2008’s deeply underrated synth-punk transmission One Day as a Lion and the dystopian, El-P-produced banger “diggin’ for windows” eight years later.
In the wake of dozens of chowderhead copycats, Rage’s legacy looks strange. Jay-Z’s Black Album and cash grab/collab with Linkin Park made rap-rock more popular, but it’s hard to imagine a figure more diametrically opposed to Rage, as Jay became a billionaire and gleefully evolved from a businessman to a business comma man. The true punk torchbearers weren’t to be found in postering mooks who were safe enough for Clear Channel to play after they banned Rage from radio. The most immediate comparison is System of a Down, whose hyper-literate, hyper-political Toxicity would be impossible without Evil Empire. Equally, the cold, paranoid empire El-P created with label Def Jux was flush with Rage’s influence. His own “Request Denied” and Aesop Rock’s “ZZZ Top” were mutated versions of rap rock. El-P even ruefully admitted that he, rap’s sci-fi king, had been beaten to the brilliant line “Phillip AK Dickin’ you / With clips in the bottom” by de la Rocha when Rage’s frontman appeared on Run the Jewels 2.
From Saul Williams to Death Grips to Denzel Curry (who did his own ferocious version of “Bulls on Parade”), Rage acted as a north star for rappers who grew up in punk scenes, wanting to create mosh pits rather than bops. And Armand Hammer, the best, most vicious rap duo of the last decade, has a slew of tracks that dance on the edge of rap rock, fusing industrial basslines with memories of African communist revolutions. billy woods’ own “Crocodile Tears” could’ve closed Evil Empire. His fluid mix of political theory and punchlines makes him de la Rocha’s greatest disciple. “N***a had the nerve to say / “You can’t take it with you” / Fuck would I want with any of this shit? / Dummy!” is as easy to hear in de la Rocha’s growl as woods’ sardonic rap.
Evil Empire is cyclical. Closing on “Year of Tha Boomerang,” de la Rocha’s last words are “now it’s upon you.” Let the boomerang come back and you wind up at “People of the Sun,” de la Rocha again prophesying “it’s coming back around again.” There’s a cynical way to read these dispatches. Humans create their own hell, shackled to our mistakes, ego, and greed. The battle for freedom never ends due to our own actions. But in Rage Against the Machine’s fiery world, it’s a call to action and a self-affirming screed. The fight never ends because every battle is the same battle. From the domestic abuse victims to riots spilling into the streets, none of us are free until all of us are free.
Nathan Stevens is a musician, archivist, and podcaster whose work has appeared in Spectrum Culture, Stereogum, and Popmatters. He currently runs the music interview website Woodhouse.
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