Before Rage Against the Machine there was Living Coloür, a group of outcast African-American rockers intent on breathing diversity and the politics of social activism back into rock and roll during the jaundiced, Reaganized 1980s. The difference is that Living Coloür were a firebrand of musicality — a titanium-hard guitar virtuoso and a wide-ranged singer backed by a rhythm team as comfortable with P-Funk bombast and rap backbeats as with heavy-metal thunder. Rage were more a hip-hop-geared rhythm machine, from the snap of their street beats to the deaconized delivery of frontman Zack De La Rocha and Tom Morello’s staccato turntabulist-inspired guitar. Rage never really discovered melody; Living Coloür could paint it thick or peel it off at will.

Another difference is that Living Coloür have returned. After a five-year hiatus, the band began performing again in 2000, and as their Paradise concert a week ago Wednesday proved, they remain nearly the same. What’s different about the New York City foursome is their expanded improvisational sensibility, which is now more akin to that of the cutting-edge jazz outfits from which founder-guitarist Vernon Reid emerged, but with a decidedly rock and hip-hop bent. To the nearly full house’s delight, the band played their old catalogue and reveled in their activist lyrics, with singer Corey Glover floating lines like "You can tear a building down/But you can’t erase a memory" (from "Open Letter to a Landlord") into shimmering falsetto and spiking so improbably high in "Sacred Ground" ("For all those trying to make a stand/Trying to protect their tribal land") that he sang in unison with the wailing, violin-toned finish of Reid’s note-blizzard solo. A new song veered from polemics to love and commitment, steered that way by an African guitar line and call-and-response vocals. But the freshest moments were in jams like the free-form explosion of sound — drummer Will Calhoun churning jagged blocks of blast, bassist Doug Wimbush coaxing ghost screams with a harmonizer, Reid surfing feedback — at the end of "Wall."

Wimbush, who replaced original bassist Muzz Skillings in the mid ’90s, was indispensable, adding samples from a keyboard beside his bass rig and bringing his on-the-fly chops from groundbreaking pre-techno outfits like Tackhead. Dashing from samples to pedalboard to KAYOS pad, he was like a kid whipping the controls of a sonic Etch-A-Sketch — especially during the improvised introductions that at one point found Glover playing human beatbox through a toy megaphone in the midst of a noise storm. The night’s blend of new musical freedom and old songs seemed right for Living Coloür, who honor their past while leaning into the future.