Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine, released on 3 November 1992, is the debut that tied Zack de la Rocha's urgent rap, Tom Morello's uncanny guitar sounds and the heavy groove of Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk together. The band had formed in Los Angeles the year before, and a self-released twelve-song cassette won them a deal with Epic. The sound can read as mechanical, but the tension and physicality of four people playing is cut deep into it — indeed the sleeve states plainly that no samples, keyboards or synthesizers were used. The political language is not ornament; it runs straight into the anger of the riffs and rhythm. After the opening “Bombtrack,” “Killing in the Name” is an objection to police violence and structural racism, and it brought a new aggression and a new voice to 1990s rock. Track six, “Know Your Enemy,” features Maynard James Keenan of Tool. The cover is the photograph of the monk who burned himself in South Vietnam. Its ten songs went triple platinum in the US, and it is still called the first successful fusion of rap and metal — and one never since surpassed.