Too much is not enough

Rage Against the Machine (also Rage and RATM) is an American rock band, noted for their blend of hip hop, heavy metal, punk and funk as well as their revolutionary politics and lyrics. During their initial nine year run, they became one of the most popular and influential political bands in contemporary music.

The band split up in 2000, with vocalist Zack de la Rocha starting a low-key solo career, and guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk forming the supergroup Audioslave along with former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. In April 2007 Rage Against the Machine performed together for the first time in seven years at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.




Rage Against the Machine drew inspiration from early metal instrumentation, as well as rap acts such as Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa. Their music was based primarily on de la Rocha's rhyming styles and vocals along with their sound, especially Morello's unusual extended techniques.

In 1991, guitarist Tom Morello left his old band, Lock Up, looking to start another band. Morello was in a club in L.A where Zack de la Rocha was free-style rapping. Morello was impressed by de la Rocha's lyric books, and asked him to be the vocalist in a band. Morello called and drafted drummer Brad Wilk, who had previously auditioned for Lock Up, while de la Rocha convinced his childhood friend Tim Commerford to join as bassist.

The newly christened Rage Against the Machine named themselves after a song de la Rocha had written for his former popular underground Hardcore band, Inside Out (also to be the title of the unrecorded Inside Out full-length album). Kent McClard, with whom Inside Out were associated, had previously coined the phrase in a 1989 article in his zine No Answers.

Shortly after forming, they gave their first public performance in Orange County, California, where a friend of Commerford's was holding a house party. The blueprint for the group's major-label debut album was laid on a twelve-song self-released cassette, the cover image of which was the stock-market with a single match taped to the inlay card. Not all 12 songs made it onto the final album—two were eventually included as B-sides, with the remaining three songs never seeing an official release.

Several record labels expressed interest, and the band eventually signed with Epic Records. Morello said, "Epic agreed to everything we asked—and they've followed through.… We never saw a[n] [ideological] conflict as long as we maintained creative control."

The band's eponymous debut album, Rage Against the Machine, reached triple platinum status, driven by heavy radio play of the song "Killing in the Name", a heavy, driving track repeating six lines of lyrics. The uncensored version, which contains 17 iterations of the word fuck, was once notoriously played on the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 singles show. The album's cover pictured Thích QuŁng Đéc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963 in protest of the murder of Buddhists by Prime Minister Ngô Đěnh DiÇm's regime. To promote the album and its core message of social justice and equality, the band went on tour, playing at Lollapalooza 1993 and as support for Suicidal Tendencies in Europe.




After their debut album, the band appeared on the soundtrack for the film Higher Learning with the song "Year of tha Boomerang". An early version of "Tire Me" would also appear during the movie. Subsequently, they recorded an original song, "Darkness", for the soundtrack of The Crow and also "No Shelter" appeared on the Godzilla soundtrack.

Their second album, Evil Empire, entered Billboard's Top 200 chart at number one in 1996. The song "Bulls on Parade" was performed on Saturday Night Live in April 1996. Their planned two-song performance was cut to one song when the band attempted to hang inverted American flags from their amplifiers, a protest against having Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes as guest host on the program that night.
RATM is known for its energetic live shows

In 1997, the band opened for U2 on their Popmart Tour, for which all Rage's profits went to support social organisations. including U.N.I.T.E. , Women Alive and the Zapatista Front for National Liberation. Rage subsequently began an abortive headlining US tour with special guests Wu-Tang Clan. Police in several jurisdictions unsuccessfully attempted to have the concerts cancelled, citing amongst other reasons, the bands' "violent and anti-law enforcement philosophies". On the Japan leg of their tour promoting Evil Empire, a bootleg album composed of the band's B-side recordings titled Live & Rare was released by Sony Records. A live video, also titled Rage Against the Machine, was released later the same year.

The following release, The Battle of Los Angeles also debuted at number one in 1999, selling 450,000 copies the first week and then going double-platinum. That same year the song "Wake Up" was featured on the soundtrack of the film The Matrix. The track "Calm Like a Bomb" was later featured in the film's sequel, 2003's The Matrix Reloaded. In 2000, the band planned to support the Beastie Boys on the "Rhyme and Reason" tour; however, the tour was cancelled when Beastie Boys drummer Mike D suffered a serious injury. By the time he recovered, Rage Against the Machine had disbanded.

On October 18, 2000, de la Rocha released the following statement:

“ I feel that it is now necessary to leave Rage because our decision-making process has completely failed. It is no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively as a band, and from my perspective, has undermined our artistic and political ideal. I am extremely proud of our work, both as activists and musicians, as well as indebted and grateful to every person who has expressed solidarity and shared this incredible experience with us. ”

— Zack de la Rocha, MTV News

Renegades, released shortly after the band's dissolution, was a collection of covers of artists as diverse as Devo, Cypress Hill, Minor Threat, MC5, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. The following year saw the release of another live video, The Battle of Mexico City.

Following the September 11th attacks, Clear Channel created a list of "songs with questionable lyrics"; RATM has the distinction of being the only band to have all its songs on the list.

On September 12 and 13, 2000, Rage Against the Machine performed their final two concerts at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Rage performed with special quests B-Real and Sen Dog from Cypress Hill on a cover of their song "How I Could Just Kill a Man". A live album titled Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium, an edited recording of the two concerts was released in 2003. It was accompanied by an expanded DVD release of the September 13 show, and also included the previously unreleased music video for "Bombtrack".