Seditious fury

To find a precedent for Rage Against the Machine's seditious fury -- unapologetically self-righteous, gravely serious, and rooted in the pragmatics of grassroots political activism -- you'd have to go back to the MC5 (with a brief pause in remembrance of Corrosion of Conformity's "Vote with a Bullet" single a few years ago). No rock-and-roll outfit since has so earnestly embraced armed insurrection -- and anyway, heavyhanded political messages went out of style when the whole world sighed, "Oh well, whatever, nevermind."

You almost have to believe in windmill dragons to accept Zack de la Rocha's wrath; the language of revolution almost always takes on a quixotic hue, if only because you can't point a gun at a concept or a way of life. But that's just what de la Rocha does on "Down Rodeo": "So now I'm rollin' down Ro-day-o with a shot-gun. These-people-ain't-seen-a brown-skinned man since their grand-parents bought one." As the car crawls down the street and nervous eyes stare back from the sidewalk, guitarist Tom Morello lays down an animatronic parade of special-effects bleeps and whirs and a saccharine-toned riff, as if this were a Disneyland caravan. De la Rocha adds a few more strokes to the world of entrenched systematic annihilation he's been painting: "flesh on the floor" of a factory, hungry children, crying mothers, deserted playgrounds, a state of affairs too far gone and too urgent for diplomacy. "Can't waste the day when the night brings a hearse, so make a move and plead the fifth 'cause you can't plead the first," he sings.

You already know what he's building up to, caught between a life of indignity in the margins on one side and a cartoonish gangsta stereotype -- ironically, a reinforcement of the worst fears of the nervous eyeballs on the sidewalk -- if he pulls the trigger. Even when the song explodes, the two-chord riff is cathartic and somber in the same moment. "Shot the quiet peaceful dead!" he screams, wiry and hysterical. "I shot the quiet peaceful dead!" As the guitar thins out, retreating to a one-note pulse like a heart monitor going flat, he whispers it again, "Shot the quiet peaceful dead," and then a little lower in a way that lets you know he's still unfulfilled, "for the things we'll never have."

It's these broad implications -- between the most personal indignities and the largest betrayals -- that are Rage's central tenet. "Undressed and blessed by the lord," he shouts on "Vietnow," "The same devil that ran around Managua with a sword/Check the new style that Ollie found/I tune in with a bullet to shut down the devil sound." On Evil Empire de la Rocha sounds like nothing if not a preacher testifying to fire and brimstone and an ancient, elemental vengeance. Aztec gods are invoked, a pox on the houses of the mass media. (One would think that pox would include major-label recording artists who get radio airplay, but maybe Rage have lamb's blood on their doors or something.)

Given that nearly every rap-rock fusion has been stillborn or sterile -- a destination instead of a launching pad -- Evil Empire could easily have turned out sober and academic, a Hispanic companion to the Unabomber's manifesto. But it doesn't. The rhythm section uncannily mimics Led Zeppelin's kinetic bedrock. Morello's bag of guitar tricks is big enough to keep the entire Berklee student body in knots well into the next century. A barrage of industrial whirs, buzzes, scrapes, and nervous tics peppers their sonic landscape. It's as if the music were trapped in a literal machine.

Morello's also the lead conversationalist -- switching from muscular riffing to tortured post-hardcore dissonance, or reinforcing de la Rocha's raps with hip-hop trappings (including an unbelievable scratch solo, and a good approximation of Cypress Hill's trademark alarm whine). And de la Rocha bounces back and forth between the styles like a caged animal, affecting a slightly scrawnier version of Chuck D's authoritative style; or varying his emphasis, pitch, and tone over repetitions of a phrase until it resounds like the word of God. Whether he's whispering or shouting, it's a voice that won't be denied a hearing . . . whether it's at the end of a microphone cord or at the barrel of a gun. Either way, you've been warned.