Rage Against the Machine [Import] [Vinyl LP]

On paper, Rage Against The Machine reads like Beavis, Boogie Down Productions and Butt-Head: an angry and enlightened rap frontman who preaches a multi-cultural alternative to what they teach you in schools and show you on TV, backed by a funky heavy metal rhythm section whose vampage and riffing pay direct tribute to the likes of the Edgar Winter Group and Led Zeppelin. But there's no sense of fusion here. Neither a metal band toying with rap nor a rap group fronting as a rock band, R.A.T.M. is four guys who were never told that there's a difference, and who don't care to know. The knowledge-is-good-but-schools-are-bad rap, "Take The Power Back," gives way to a metal instrumental bridge; and the guitar that introduces the Martin/Malcolm/Cassius homage, "Wake Up," pays its own tribute to Zeppelin's "Kashmir." The closest spiritual--but not stylistic--reference point are the alternative raps of the Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy; and Rage's "Bullet In The Head" may be the best song about TV since the Heroes' "Television, The Drug Of The Nation." Rapper Zack De La Rocha has a thin voice that sounds more like a bored suburban thrasher than an inner-city rhyme animal, but his lyrics are something else altogether. Rising high above the nihilism of both hard-core rap and punk, he offers not just good slogans for a t-shirt, but the promise of a system to replace the one he's bent on destroying. His is a revolution with a purpose.