Rage Against The Machine - Live At The Olympic Auditorium (DVD)

Rage Against The Machine - Live At The Olympic Auditorium (DVD) ... Rocha, Tom Morello ... / DVD released 08 December, 2003 at Sony Bmg / Features of the DVD: PAL / This imaginatively titled release contains both footage of Rage Against the Machine in concert and uncensored versions of six of the group's videos. This isn't quite the value for money it might sound, since most of their videos are heavily reliant on concert footage anyway, and in a couple of cases it's difficult to tell one from the other. That said, the concert footage, taken from a few different RATM shows, is crisply shot and conveys enough of RATM's intoxicating (if one-dimensional) ferocity to be effective. A couple of the videos are also worth seeing, if only because they wouldn't have much hope of getting played on television: the clip for "Freedom", especially, is a clever and acute retelling of the story of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, shortly to complete his third decade of imprisonment. On the DVD: Rage Against the Machine on disc has a choice of stereo sound or Dolby Digital 5.1. English subtitles are available on most tracks. Special features include a track selector, contacts for organisations with which RATM are sympathetic, and a book list largely comprising indigestible polemical tracts of the sort often bought, but rarely read, by the earnest students who constitute Rage Against the Machine's core audience. However, given that most bands use any spare capacity on their DVDs to flog T-shirts, RATM deserve credit for trying something different. --Andrew Mueller