1. People of the Sun - 0:34
2. Bulls of Parade - 6:47
3. VietNow - 14:18
4. Revolver - 20:32
5. Snakecharmer - 27:20
6. Tire Me - 33:18
7. Down Rodeo - 36:28
8. Without A Face - 47:15
9. Wind Below - 54:54
10. Roll Right - 1:01:40
11. Year of the Boomerang - 1:07:00

Rage Against the Machine self-titled album reaction: https://youtu.be/Dq12E4pUnI8

People always skip over the "I want the machines that are making them" verse but you straight up recommended the Communist Manifesto. Based.

As soon as you started dropping Marx and Engels knowledge in the middle of Down Rodeo I subbed instantly.

You are by far the smartest reactor ive seen on YT, love how you caught all the lyrics, i even learned stuff too.
Keep up the good work sir!

Evil empire is a genius achievement. Listening to it in 1996 at 16 is the same as listening to it at 43 in 2023. No less rage. No less love. No less goosebumps.

Good reaction!

Mexican is a nationality, not an ethnicity. Mestizo is what most Latinos are, a mixture of indigenous and european descent. Spanish is a european language, and catholicism is from Europe not America. The Americas were conquered culturally by the Europeans.

One of the greatest albums ever made hands down.

I believe that Tom Morello once said that "alot of scratch dj's wanted to sound like a guitar. I want to sound like a scratch dj ".

You hit it in the head. There's a social movement amongst many people of "Mexican" and "Latin American" descent saying don't call us Latino/a/x, or Hispanic. Those are just colonizer names to lump a giant group of hugely diverse people into one non-white category. Then I often see someone reply with "but I don't know what tribe or group I come from". That's a problem. There were a lot. And when you say I don't know what to call them, that's exactly their point.
The lineage of the mighty empires has been largely erased. And the big 3 aren't even all that there were. It's a big subject we've barely entered into, let alone that we don't even fully recognize the rights and struggles of the Native Americans in this country.
I love that Zach went for that with this album.

Musically I totally agree. Those like 3 or 4 songs in the middle are alright, not spectacular, definitely more abstract. But the high points are awesome.

The Battle of Los Angeles is a fantastic album that also has its own tone. Rage has this weird ability to have kept evolving while still sounding very much like Rage. Battle of Los Angeles has a lot more funk in it, IMO. It's got some of the big heavy, it's got some of the more spoken slower style, and it's got what I think is Zach's best lyrics. Get ready to really click on those explanations. But it's not as abstract poetically, he's just directly naming things that most of us don't know about in his bars. Like when he mentioned De la O on this record and it's like who is that? And just by clickomg on that name a whole chapter of history opens up.

Being a huge Rage fan in like high school while I was taking the basic white washed history classes provided an amazing counterpoint. One of my teachers once took me aside after class and was like hey you're making some points that are really unexpected for a teenager, and he gave me a copy of Howard Zinn's 'People's History of the United States' and said not to tell anybody. Point being, Rage was a history lesson in so many subjects and no one else ever went that deep for me. Not other bands, not classes. That's why they will forever be in my top 5 all time groups of any genre.

Anyways dope reaction man. Thanks! I hit that subscribe and like.

I'll be eagerly awaiting your reaction to "The Battle of Los Angeles"

Rollin Down Rodeo, is about how if you are Black in an affluent area, you are seen as violent. "Can't waste the day when the night brings a hearse, so make a move and plead the 5th cuz you can't plead the 1st" means when confronted with facts, people choose ignorance. Its about systemic racism at its core.

When he says "mexica" it's pronounced "meh-chee-ca". That's the name of the people most of the world refer to as the "aztecs" Zach's father was a Chicano artist, so Zach's a second generation Chicano or Xicano artist(musician). The term Chicano is derived from the word Mexica(Mechica) or Mexicano, cut off the "Me" & you get Chicano  or Xicano... spelling differs based mostly on personal preference. The Chicano movement was part of the Civil rights movement of the late 60s,-early 70s, which Dela Rocha's father was heavily involved in.

Some of these songs require some context to fully grasp, like "Vietnow" is referring to the rise of conservative talk radio in the 90s. Guys like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage churned out hateful rants every morning for millions to consume. Racist attacks against immigrants crossing the southern border, sexist garbage about the evils of feminism and abortion, etc. Extremely popular radio programs. And NAFTA, like all US trade policy, was designed to maximize advantage for US corporations to outsource labor to Mexico (no minimum wages, union rights, or environmental regulations), to purchase Mexican goods for pennies on the dollar, and to convert the Mexican countryside into a plantation economy for wealthy US companies. "Without a Face" refers to this as well; DDT/insecticide rain is what Central American field workers ingest on a daily basis as they pick the produce we consume across the US. They risk their lives to cross into the US only to become slaves in fields across California, Georgia, Florida, and elsewhere.

Tire Me was celebrating the death of Richard Nixon in 1994. His highly televised funeral featured lots of flowery, flattering eulogies, even as Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam struggled to locate and dispose of the literal millions of unexploded bombs dropped in those countries during the Nixon administration. Also in 1994 it was revealed that Jackie O had terminal cancer, just like all the aforementioned countries that Nixon coated with Agent Orange during the war.

When he refers to slavers in People of the Sun he is referring to the Spaniard Colonizers, when they came to eradicate and enslave the Maya and Aztec. The reason Mexicans speak Spanish and not our native language.

Down rodeo is the strongest track. One sic bar after another. Zack’s flow is perfection, BARZ!!!!!!!

What I would give to be able to listen to this record for the first time! Zack's lyrics are a little more cryptic here compared to the first album, but generally cover the same kind of topics: the injustices of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, and organised resistance to these. There is definitely a socialist consciousness running through much of the RATM catalogue.

The beauty of the lyrics is that they can always be interpreted in different ways, but I always took "weapons, not homes, not shoes, not food, not need" referred to the military industrial complex. I took the "they ain't got to burn the books they just remove em" to refer to the running down of public services, and particularly the closure of public libraries through austerity measures.

You've got two more albums to go - enjoy them!

My take on Bulls on Parade:
it is about US domestic policy prioritizing the military industrial complex over education. And they like pointing to family values to push their agenda whilst sitting on a weapons arsenal (rally round the family, pockets full of shells)

I think you synthesized very well the differences between this album and the self-titled. Choosing between those two is very difficult, but yes, I feel that the self-titled is more complete, although the evil empire has aspects that personally contrast for good with its predecessor being more funky perhaps, bulls on parade seems to me as a perfect RATM song, and the dynamics on this album are more versatile and sophisticated, tom morello's work is exceptional,  without underestimating tim on that bass and brad on the drums, zack's lyrics are smarter, overall it sounds great. People of the Sun, Bulls on Parade, and Down Rodeo are some of the best songs in the rage repertoire without a doubt.

sorry if I didn't imply any idea, I'm writing from the translator lol

Evil Empire is a declaration of war, really really deep album, the best from Rage.

Great reaction my man, salute from Brazil.