A dreadlocked warrior's last tune: Renegades
In an attempt to generate a bit more consistency in my posting I’d like generate a new feature called Did you miss this one? And I hope you missed this one. The goal being to look back at albums, movies, and other forms of media from a years back that you may have overlooked.2000. The year when all the computers in the world were supposed to rebel against us, and humanity would crumble soon after. Sadly the only real damage was to my 1990 PC resulting in a date change to somewhere in the 70s. Yes, it seemed the new millennium would certainly be as boring as the last, with a few exceptions. 2000 was the year Rage Against Machine would release their swan song, Renegades.
Renegades, every bit just as good as any of Rage's other CD’s, but the funny thing is that none of the tracks were written by Rage. Remember "Renegades of Funk? that was all over MTV? It was originally by Afrika Bambaataa. Aside from the fact that the album consists completely of cover songs, the sound is the same style and sound that is trademark Rage Against The Machine.
I hope it isn’t too hard to imagine the band covering Bob Dylan’s “Maggie's Farm", but, they did. The fusion of rap and metal is still there with Zach de la Rocha flowing through the lyrics like a hot knife through butter and Tom Morello providing guitar that can’t be compared to anything or anyone else. It's amazing.
Because of the band's breakup before the release, this album was mostly ignored, and it’s a real shame because it was just as amazing as any of their other three. The only flaw I could find is since the lyrics weren’t written by Rage, they lack the same political furry that could be found in their previous works. It's disappointing, but Zach does an excellent job providing the same intensity to the songs, a great example would be the cover of the Minor Threat classic “In My Eyes”. It’s just a real shame that this would be the end of such a great band, and they hardly went out with a bang. It was more like a wimper.
Sidenote: The version currently available in stores also features two live tracks “Kick Out the Jams” and “How I Could Just Kill A Man” the latter featuring Cypress Hill themselves, a real treat.
