Enjoy Tom Morello reading A is for Activist.
Showing posts with label tom morello. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tom morello. Show all posts
Friday, May 1, 2015
Monday, November 26, 2012
Song of the Day: Motörhead, "Iron Fist"
Man With the Iron Fists was everything that I hoped a RZA-helmed kung fu adventure would be. That being said, I assumed that hearing Motörhead's "Iron Fist" in the score would be too much to ask for.
Kung fu metal is an untapped niche. There are more than enough horror-themed metal bands (White Zombie, GWAR, the Misfits), and some terrible sci-fi ones (anything that sounds like Fear Factory), but no metal band has incorporated martial arts into their music the way that the members of the Wu-Tang Clan have. Most likely, kung fu metal would end up sounding like the System of a Down and Tom Morello collabs with the Wu-Tang on the Loud Rocks comp. But hopefully, it would sound more like Motörhead.
Nothing conjures up action like Motörhead's music--one of the sharpest reviews I ever read compared Lemmy's tones to the sound that Snoopy's plane makes when he's fighting the Red Baron. The lyrics, like a kung fu movie screenplay, are just there to sound cool in the fray. "You know me, evil eye/You know me, prepare to die/You know me, you can't resist/Devil's grip, the Iron Fist" could be dubbed into Shogun Assassin. If Man With the Iron Fists gets a sequel, and it definitely deserves one, I'm hoping that RZA includes "Iron Fist."
Kung fu metal is an untapped niche. There are more than enough horror-themed metal bands (White Zombie, GWAR, the Misfits), and some terrible sci-fi ones (anything that sounds like Fear Factory), but no metal band has incorporated martial arts into their music the way that the members of the Wu-Tang Clan have. Most likely, kung fu metal would end up sounding like the System of a Down and Tom Morello collabs with the Wu-Tang on the Loud Rocks comp. But hopefully, it would sound more like Motörhead.
Nothing conjures up action like Motörhead's music--one of the sharpest reviews I ever read compared Lemmy's tones to the sound that Snoopy's plane makes when he's fighting the Red Baron. The lyrics, like a kung fu movie screenplay, are just there to sound cool in the fray. "You know me, evil eye/You know me, prepare to die/You know me, you can't resist/Devil's grip, the Iron Fist" could be dubbed into Shogun Assassin. If Man With the Iron Fists gets a sequel, and it definitely deserves one, I'm hoping that RZA includes "Iron Fist."
Friday, August 24, 2012
Album of the Day: Rage Against the Machine, The Battle of Los Angeles
"Check this out, you'll like this."
I'm trying to organize a community meeting and my co-worker is holding up a little red listening device with some white ear buds.
"It's a German guy called Jan Delay. You'll like this song, it's kind of funky. It's called 'Rave Against the Machine.'"
I mishear her. "'Rage Against the Machine,' like the band?"
"That's a band?"
I ended up burning her a data disc with Rage's three original albums and their single "No Shelter." The debut gets all the credit as the groundbreaker, and Evil Empire has the biggest hits, but my favorite is The Battle of Los Angeles. The songs are more concise than Rage's, more consistent than Evil Empire's and more diverse than either album's.
Rage had already famously covered Bruce Springsteen, but now they were writing songs that sounded like him ("Born of a Broken Man.") Tom Morello's effects are at their most developed, transforming his guitar into a mouth organ on "Guerilla Radio" and a scratch routine on "Mic Check." Rage's liner notes bore messages like "All sounds made by guitar, bass, drums and vocals," but this was the first time that they really needed to remind us.
Released the same year that Korn and Limp Bizkit had number one records, Rage seemed like they were raging against rap-rock as much as anything else. Not by offering an alternative, but by showing how it was really done, which was in hindsight a much bigger challenge. Zack de la Rocha's fiery bark and off-kilter rhythm reminds me of both Bob Dylan and Chuck D. I remember one review comparing The Battle of Los Angeles to "Led Zeppelin covering It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," and I can't think of a better comparison.
Here they are in a video filmed by Michael Moore for "Sleep Now in the Fire," in front of the New York Stock Exchange, 11 years before Occupy Wall Street.
This was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award, but lost to Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff," featuring Pauly Shore.
The Battle of Los Angeles closes with the absurdly underrated "War Within a Breath," making Rage one of the only great bands to go out at their peak. Sometimes I want more--it's sad to think that they stopped recording music in the year 2000, on the cusp of eight years of a Bush Administration. But on The Battle of Los Angeles, there's enough Rage to go on for decades in this mortal coil.
I'm trying to organize a community meeting and my co-worker is holding up a little red listening device with some white ear buds.
"It's a German guy called Jan Delay. You'll like this song, it's kind of funky. It's called 'Rave Against the Machine.'"
I mishear her. "'Rage Against the Machine,' like the band?"
"That's a band?"
I ended up burning her a data disc with Rage's three original albums and their single "No Shelter." The debut gets all the credit as the groundbreaker, and Evil Empire has the biggest hits, but my favorite is The Battle of Los Angeles. The songs are more concise than Rage's, more consistent than Evil Empire's and more diverse than either album's.
Rage had already famously covered Bruce Springsteen, but now they were writing songs that sounded like him ("Born of a Broken Man.") Tom Morello's effects are at their most developed, transforming his guitar into a mouth organ on "Guerilla Radio" and a scratch routine on "Mic Check." Rage's liner notes bore messages like "All sounds made by guitar, bass, drums and vocals," but this was the first time that they really needed to remind us.
Released the same year that Korn and Limp Bizkit had number one records, Rage seemed like they were raging against rap-rock as much as anything else. Not by offering an alternative, but by showing how it was really done, which was in hindsight a much bigger challenge. Zack de la Rocha's fiery bark and off-kilter rhythm reminds me of both Bob Dylan and Chuck D. I remember one review comparing The Battle of Los Angeles to "Led Zeppelin covering It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," and I can't think of a better comparison.
Here they are in a video filmed by Michael Moore for "Sleep Now in the Fire," in front of the New York Stock Exchange, 11 years before Occupy Wall Street.
This was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award, but lost to Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff," featuring Pauly Shore.
The Battle of Los Angeles closes with the absurdly underrated "War Within a Breath," making Rage one of the only great bands to go out at their peak. Sometimes I want more--it's sad to think that they stopped recording music in the year 2000, on the cusp of eight years of a Bush Administration. But on The Battle of Los Angeles, there's enough Rage to go on for decades in this mortal coil.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Song of the Day: Rage Against the Machine, "Know Your Enemy"
This week, VP hopeful (not Origin guitarist) Paul Ryan turned a few extra heads when he expressed an appreciation for Rage Against the Machine. It doesn't sound quite as strange when you remind yourself that Ryan was 22 when "Killing in the Name" dropped, but the ideological contrast between the most outspokenly left wing rock band on the planet and a man who claims that Ayn Rand inspired him to get into public service is still fun to look at.
"Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades," guitarist Tom Morello recently wrote in Rolling Stone. "He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage."
Morello continues, "Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta 'rage' in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions."
In honor of Paul Ryan's commendable musical taste and abhorrent policies, here is Rage Against the Machine's "Know Your Enemy." That's Tool's Maynard James Keenan singing and Jane's Addiction's Stephen Perkins drumming on the bridge.
Nobody literally puts the pedal to the metal like Tom Morello. His riffs are pretty straightforward (in fact, this one sounds a little like Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein,") but his brilliance lies in his limb-like effects. I'm also sold on Zack De La Rocha's spitfire delivery, if not his claim that hypocrisy and brutality are American dreams. But when the music is this great I can overlook disagreeable messages. Kind of like Paul Ryan.
"Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades," guitarist Tom Morello recently wrote in Rolling Stone. "He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage."
Morello continues, "Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta 'rage' in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions."
In honor of Paul Ryan's commendable musical taste and abhorrent policies, here is Rage Against the Machine's "Know Your Enemy." That's Tool's Maynard James Keenan singing and Jane's Addiction's Stephen Perkins drumming on the bridge.
Nobody literally puts the pedal to the metal like Tom Morello. His riffs are pretty straightforward (in fact, this one sounds a little like Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein,") but his brilliance lies in his limb-like effects. I'm also sold on Zack De La Rocha's spitfire delivery, if not his claim that hypocrisy and brutality are American dreams. But when the music is this great I can overlook disagreeable messages. Kind of like Paul Ryan.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
The Five Best Metal Interpreters
Frank from Metal Injection once told me that he thought Testament deserved to be in Metal's Big Four and not Anthrax. This seemed like it was worth fighting over, so I informed him that he was wrong. I stand by my case, but he did make one point that I could not counter, which is that Anthrax's best songs are all covers.
Recorded metal covers don't usually do much for the original or the interpreter. Watching the Dillinger Escape Plan roar into Nine Inch Nails' "Wish" in person is a favorite memory for anyone who's been so lucky, but no one who owns Broken needs another version. It takes some extra character to successfully reimagine a song with a tape rolling, and for that we salute these five.
1. Anthrax
Anthrax have no shortage of great originals, but it was their charisma--Scott Ian's tones, Charlie Benante's blast beats, the entire band's penchant for comedy, comic books and Stephen King--that edged them past Testament, Exodus and Overkill. They elevated Public Enemy with "Bring the Noise," spanked Trust with "Antisocial" and topped themselves with this d-beat breakdown of of Joe Jackson's "Got the Time." Flea once observed that this song "made my kidneys flip upside down."
2. Faith No More
FNM won metal hearts in 1989 with a take on "War Pigs" that remains the best cover of the most-covered metal band in history, then proceeded to weird out listeners with faithful, unironic takes on the Commodores' "Easy" and John Barry's Midnight Cowboy theme. Check out their video for the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke" and keep waiting for the punchline. There isn't one.
3. Guns N' Roses
They did "Live and Let Die" better than Paul McCartney, "Mama Kin" better than Aerosmith and "Since I Don't Have You" about as well as the Skyliners. Other than the obvious choice of Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," I have never heard a better Dylan cover than GNR's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." It reminds me of Nick Hornby's take on pre-sellout Rod Stewart in 31 Songs*.
4. Metallica
It takes more than original songwriting to become the greatest metal band of all time. The $5.98 E.P: Garage Days Re-Revisited did more for underground metal than any fanzine ever did, and its '90s sequel is Metallica's most underrated release. Who knew what a great song "Breadfan" by Budgie was until James Hetfield's downstrokes invigorated it? When Hetfield retires, his right hand should be enshrined in a museum, next to Axl's larynx and Ozzy's liver.
5. Rage Against the Machine
On their last studio album, Renegades, RATM ran Dylan, Springsteen, Eric B. & Rakim, the Stones, Minor Threat, EPMD, Devo and more through Tom Morello's effects pedal wizardry and Zack de la Rocha fiery delivery. It all sounds like Rage; in short, it's fantastic. Any other metal band would be laughed at for taking on Afrika Bambaataa's "Renegades of Funk," but with Rage at the helm it's as potent as "Bulls on Parade."
*On Stewart's version of "Mama You've Been on My Mind." "Stewart's evident love for the song rescues it, or at least spotlights it: where Dylan almost throws it away, with the implication that there's plenty more where that one came from, Stewart's reverence seems to dignify it, invest it with an epical quality that Dylan denies it. I probably like both version equally now, but if it hadn't been for Stewart, I never would have been able to spot that there was anything there."
Recorded metal covers don't usually do much for the original or the interpreter. Watching the Dillinger Escape Plan roar into Nine Inch Nails' "Wish" in person is a favorite memory for anyone who's been so lucky, but no one who owns Broken needs another version. It takes some extra character to successfully reimagine a song with a tape rolling, and for that we salute these five.
1. Anthrax
Anthrax have no shortage of great originals, but it was their charisma--Scott Ian's tones, Charlie Benante's blast beats, the entire band's penchant for comedy, comic books and Stephen King--that edged them past Testament, Exodus and Overkill. They elevated Public Enemy with "Bring the Noise," spanked Trust with "Antisocial" and topped themselves with this d-beat breakdown of of Joe Jackson's "Got the Time." Flea once observed that this song "made my kidneys flip upside down."
2. Faith No More
FNM won metal hearts in 1989 with a take on "War Pigs" that remains the best cover of the most-covered metal band in history, then proceeded to weird out listeners with faithful, unironic takes on the Commodores' "Easy" and John Barry's Midnight Cowboy theme. Check out their video for the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke" and keep waiting for the punchline. There isn't one.
3. Guns N' Roses
They did "Live and Let Die" better than Paul McCartney, "Mama Kin" better than Aerosmith and "Since I Don't Have You" about as well as the Skyliners. Other than the obvious choice of Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," I have never heard a better Dylan cover than GNR's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." It reminds me of Nick Hornby's take on pre-sellout Rod Stewart in 31 Songs*.
4. Metallica
It takes more than original songwriting to become the greatest metal band of all time. The $5.98 E.P: Garage Days Re-Revisited did more for underground metal than any fanzine ever did, and its '90s sequel is Metallica's most underrated release. Who knew what a great song "Breadfan" by Budgie was until James Hetfield's downstrokes invigorated it? When Hetfield retires, his right hand should be enshrined in a museum, next to Axl's larynx and Ozzy's liver.
5. Rage Against the Machine
On their last studio album, Renegades, RATM ran Dylan, Springsteen, Eric B. & Rakim, the Stones, Minor Threat, EPMD, Devo and more through Tom Morello's effects pedal wizardry and Zack de la Rocha fiery delivery. It all sounds like Rage; in short, it's fantastic. Any other metal band would be laughed at for taking on Afrika Bambaataa's "Renegades of Funk," but with Rage at the helm it's as potent as "Bulls on Parade."
*On Stewart's version of "Mama You've Been on My Mind." "Stewart's evident love for the song rescues it, or at least spotlights it: where Dylan almost throws it away, with the implication that there's plenty more where that one came from, Stewart's reverence seems to dignify it, invest it with an epical quality that Dylan denies it. I probably like both version equally now, but if it hadn't been for Stewart, I never would have been able to spot that there was anything there."
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