What Better Time Than Now

The Battle of Los Angeles is the third studio album by Rage Against the Machine and their last album of original material. It’s our favourite album and it deserves to be held in the same esteem as Rage Against the Machine and Evil Empire. Where the eponymous debut album is raw and Evil Empire is brash and blistering, The Battle of Los Angeles is sharp, focussed, and with all the vitriol that the band are famous for.

Rage come out swinging with “Testify”, the first of several nods towards Orwell’s 1984. This is a glorious assault of unique guitars and blistering vocals. The sense of urgency is pronounced on this single, it’s right outside your door, and it permeates the rest of the album. Now is the time. There’s so much that we could say about the second track, “Guerrilla Radio”, but Guerrilla Radio is Guerrilla Radio. If you grew up in a certain scene then you know this song even if you don’t know Rage. The soundtrack to the 2000 US election where the People were forced to pick the least worst option at the ballot. More for Gore or the son of a drug lord indeed.

There’s a brief moment during the intro to “Calm Like a Bomb” where you wonder if it is going to be a quieter moment. This lasts all of thirteen seconds when everything bursts into life. The excoriation of the soul of capitalism never sounded so upbeat. “Sleep Now in the Fire” is pure, refined bombast, supported by a video (directed by Michael Moore) that sees the band force the doors of the New York Stock Exchange to be locked, albeit briefly. This song was played so much that we could tell you that the radio recording at the end was Korean and not Japanese radio.

The record turns introspective with “Born of a Broken Man”, the darkest point on the album and incredibly personal. “Born as Ghosts” and “Maria” explore the terror that immigrants and their families face every day and that we overlook. We’re the children born as ghosts, is a message we would all do well to remember.

“Voice of the Voiceless” uses 1984 for framing, this time to highlight the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Rage remind us that the oppressed will always be watching for their moment, but this little brother is watching you too. This warning marks the final pivot in the album as “New Millennium Homes” and “Ashes in the Fall” set out what the revolution will be like.

And we close with “War Within a Breath”, a song about the Zapatista movement and EZLN uprising in Mexico. It is the ultimate example of those who felt betrayed by the excesses of capitalism rising up. The urgency is still there, the struggle is real and for some people it really is land or death.

There is no denying that The Battle of Los Angeles is more polished than Rage’s earlier work. But the polish is not a compromise. It means songs that could be played on the radio to reach a wider audience. “Guerrilla Radio”, “Testify”, and “Sleep Now in the Fire” have all earned their places in the band’s canon and the deeper cuts like “War Within a Breath”, “Calm Like a Bomb”, and “Born of a Broken Man” all deserve to be heard. This album is the equal of the others.

And the thing that brings us back to Battle is the sense that if you made a few tweaks to the lyrics Rage could have been singing about 2016 or 2024 or today. It is what they should have been singing about today because we need Rage now. We needed them yesterday. There have been glimpses. A reunion tour curtailed by pandemic and injury and a series of solo projects. Tom Morello ceaselessly fights the good fight, including the guitars on Bruce Springsteen’s updated version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad”. But we don’t have Rage Against the Machine. At least we have The Battle of Los Angeles, which is as relevant to the political turmoil of today as it was in 1999.

What better time than now?

The Battle of Los Angeles is Taped

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