Rage Against the Machine is one of a very few rock bands left that still hold any interest whatsoever for me. They are intensely
sonically creative; their music nonchalantly
crosses genres as if the lines they draw through were never there, and in the process they
warp both genres they touch. They make their music
completely on their own terms. They refuse to touch
synthesizers, building all of their otherworldly noise out of nothing but electric guitar, filters, bass, drums and vocals. It takes you a really long time to believe there are no
keyboards or
samplers involved. Their sound is powerful, indescribable,
alive.
People tend to ignore this. People tend to see the political aspects of the band and nothing more. A lot of people trash Rage randomly for hypocrisy, and Rage is an easy target because so many of their fans are under the delusion that going to a concert for a politically motivated band actually changes anything, and Rage does little to correct them. Rage may indeed be hypocritical, but i don't care. I'm listening for the music; and the way i look at it, anything that gets mtv to admit for just a moment that the sweatshops (the ones that make all that Fubu merchandise mtv hawks so mindlessly) exist is a good thing. Maybe Rage could do more to actually help things; maybe too much is being expected of them. At the least De La Rocha's lyrics, which oscillate wildly between mind-blowing and awkward (usually both within a single song), raise issues no one else would be raising to a lot of people were Rage not there.
As of October 18, 2000, Zack de la Rocha is no longer a member of Rage Against the Machine.
In a flurry of vague, vitriolic and extremely polite comments on the parts of Zack and Tom Morello ("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..." -Zack) one group of four people became one group of three people and a solo artist.
I expect now that De La Rocha will give up music and just write, freeing him from rap's constrictive structure and allowing him to write the moving, powerful poetry he is so obviously capable of, and Rage Against the Machine will stay together and just do instrumentals, freeing themselves from the limitations imposed by accommodating vocals to create pure, unadulterated music the likes of which has never been heard before.
Just kidding. That's not what i expect. It could happen.. but what i expect to happen is that Zack will embark on a series of promising but very unevenly produced and frequently hollowly scored solo albums, Rage will release an album or so of meandering guest vocalists before eventually finding some new permanent vocalist who will spend the rest of his career living in Zack's shadow, and Spin Magazine will shake their head and go tsk, tsk. In the meantime Zack's solo debut album is already being worked on, and Rage has an album's worth of cover songs recorded before the split and now being prepared for release.
(Update: The cover album in question has been released, under the name "Renegades".)
(Another update: The remaining members of Rage have apparently re-entered the studio and are as of this writing actually recording an album with (of all people) Chris Cornell. The resulting product will not be released under the name Rage Against the Machine, and no other name has been decided on yet for the project. Music executives have been quoted as saying "Rage Against the Machine no longer exists"; the actual members of Rage seem to be acting as if they may someday use the name again if they can find a fitting vocalist. As far as the new project goes, both Cornell and Morello are telling the press that they all consider the material they are recording now to be the most exciting music of their entire careers. Well, something interesting is definitely going on here.)
The project in question has now been released. See Audioslave.