Rage Against The Machine-Evil Empire (1996)


 

Artist:  Rage Against The Machine

Title: Evil Empire

Label:  Epic

Format: CD

Cat: EK-57523

Year of Release: 1996

Country and Year of Edition: US 1996

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+ 

Sell Date: 5/7/22

Sell Price: $2.99

Discogs Last Sold:6/19/22 NM/NM $4.99

Low: $1.98

Median: $3.98

Average: $4.47

High: $12.00

Current low price:$1.00

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 30

Have/Want: 2593/345

Where Sold: Valrico, FL

Time it took to sell: 11 years

Where and When Bought: guessing record club probably Columbia House

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B

Sad To See It Go: No

I've had a recent run on Rage CD's probably due to their return as an active touring band.  This one has the 1-2 punch of "People of the Sun" and the undeniable 'Bulls On Parade."  That wah probably was the best use of the pedal in the 90's, certainly on commercial radio.  I can't deny that song no matter what I think of the rest of the record.

Certainly RATM distills much of things I liked before it.  You hear echoes of Chuck D, Led Zeppelin ("Vietnow" nicks "The Wanton Song"), Alice In Chains ("Down Rodeo" made me think of "Rain When I Die") and even a hint of Fugazi ("Snakecharmer" sorta like "Give Me The Cure" or one of the Guy songs).  They mined their own territory in many ways.  Trumpers today like Rage Against The Machine the way many Hardcore fans like Skrewdriver.  The politics may be completely opposite to your belief system, but the single minded dedication to their belief system may model one whose opinions are everything you are against.  With the political left (as opposed to street left) today I call it a "Mirror-Trump" syndrome.   Real thinkers don't feed into their opponents tactics to ultimately defeat themselves.  They come up with new ones and bide their time.   

With Rage Against The Machine, the Achilles heel to taking them seriously is the reliance on the corporate music industry.  That it was the ONE that could do it--incorporate left of Public Enemy politics more effectively than an anarcho-crush-punk entity, was original but ultimately not subversive.   Kudos to Rage, they are left standing among the rubble to ineffectively complain to the inconvertible while their belief system is systemically eviscerated in real time.  At least they won capitalism.  Maybe in the battle of authoritarians, someday Rage will even be BANNED.  Until then, they are free to greatly profit from an infrastructure that somehow includes them despite it all. They are at one with the machine they rage at.  Coopted like Saul Alinsky. Sure beats hot war that only the dumb and the sadists far away from them want.

My desktop fucked up  the rip of this CD, so I had to write about it based solely on streaming listens which I've done a few times to get familiar with the rest of the record to see if anything really stands out track wise the way "Bulls On Parade" did for me.  After a few passes, I'm gonna say after the first couple it's form over substance and I start to get bored.

I'm holding this one to a higher bar, listenability.



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