Rage Against the Machine’s 'Evil Empire' at 30: How a Revolution in Rock Echoed Through Decades

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 1992 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.

Evil Empire: A 30-Year Legacy of Uncompromising Fury

Their second record, Evil Empire, was released 30 years ago this week. 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, the lyrics drew an apt and disturbing comparison. The riots still loomed 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.

Musical Roots and Influences

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