Rage Against The Machine Are Back, Exactly When We Most Need Them
The band have have emerged from an eight-year hiatus.
1991 was a pretty shitty year. George H. W. Bush was the President, American imperialism was ramping up to another level, and austerity measures were making the poor poorer and the rich richer. Enter Rage Against The Machine from stage right.
A group of fiery rebels who combined the best of hip hop with the best of metal, the band made speaking truth to power their entire deal. They spent the next two odd decades writing some of the most energised punk music that America had ever seen — and then, in 2o11, they dissolved.
Don’t really need to tell you what the world has been like since then, given that it’s been hard to ignore this furore of horror and constant, slow-motion collapse. But it is worth pointing out that the last decade has been one of the eras in history when we’ve needed bands like Rage Against The Machine most — musicians thoroughly prepared to disrupt the status quo.
So, to that end, here’s some extremely good news for you: Rage Against The Machine are back.
Yep, the band have announced a string of 2020 dates, chief amongst them a performance in California on the weekend of Coachella 2020. Looks like they’ll be headlining that major festival, as well as playing a series of shows around America.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the band are totally back. Sometimes a reformation begins and ends with a couple of shows — just think about Eddy Current Suppression Ring, a band that’ll play a few festivals every odd year, and then go silent again.
But there is some reason to be hopeful. This could always turn out to be a new phase in the band’s career — particularly given the horrendous times that we live in. After all, writing a Rage Against The Machine record in the year of our lord 2019 would be as easy as looking around, taking it all in, then putting pen to paper.