Not What I Expected At All... (Evil Empire - Rage Against The Machine)

Member Name: n1x0r

Product:	Evil Empire - Rage Against The Machine
Date:	13/05/01 (175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 which are truely amazing

Disadvantages: rest of the album

This is a problem faced by many bands....

1990 - Your band explode onto the international rock scene with a revolutionary debut album, that was, and still is an absolutely fantastic album...

1994 - After four long years you release the follow up to the debut mentioned above. How could any band follow up such a great album? Zak De La Rocha, Tom Morello, Brad Wilk and Timmy C set out to find a way...

This album is very different to their self-titled debut. The rapping and lyrics are greatly improved and their is far more variety in between the individual songs, this is the story of an ever changing band...

Track 1 - People Of The Sun:

The opener for this album, is 'People Of The Sun'. The rapping on this track is probably the best on any rage track, except maybe 'Sleep Now In The Fire'. This song is primarily about Mexico and their battle for freedom. It is an excellent album-opener and is typical rage in the way it is presented, with yet another excellent riff from Tom Morello.

Track 2 - Bulls On Parade

The main single to come from this album and a favourite of the band at live events. 'Bulls On Parade' is typical of teh band in that the song is about war and its effects and more importantly the killing of innocent families. This song is uptempo but still quite slow moving, this is yet another example of Zak's much improved rapping ability as well as his lyric-writing greatly improving, but for the most part this is a fairly average effort for such a band, however it does have a fantastic guitar solo.

Track 3 - Vietnow

This song is fantastic. It is about how during a war, peoples only rest from the fear is the propagandist-radio. This is another song with a fantastic Tom Morello riff (I've got to stop praising him!) and also excellent drumming from Brad Wilk. This is another up-tempo song and is yet another example of just how tight this and compl
imentary this band can be.

Track 4 - Revolver

After a while of listening, this has become my favourite track on this album. It is not as immediate as the three tracks before it is about the bad relationship between a mother and a father of a child, opening with the line ''His spit is worth more than her work'' and also containing ''Her body numbs as he approaches the door''. This song is yet another bouncy, 'Sleep Now In The Fire', type song, which has very calm verses and a very loud, brash chorus. Possibly the best part of the song is where it winds down at what appears to be the end, only to launch into another chorus, which is even more vicious and biting than any other I've heard before.

Hmm....seems like I've praised the first four tracks of this as much as I possibly could. So, you are currently asking yourself, how can an album have such a good review but get an average mark still? There is a simple answer, the rest is crap.

Dont get me wrong, it isn't all THAT bad, the next two tracks, 'Snakecharmer' and 'Tire ME' are both pretty good, its just that they are both very...well....average for such a special band.

However, this is normally where I stop this CD and remove it from my CD player. To be honest, I am a huge rage fan, yet none of the remaining 5 tracks interest me in the slightest. I'm not even going to bother reviewing them seperately...

Tracks 7-11: 'Down Rodeo' 'Without A Face' 'Wind Below' 'Roll Right' 'Year Of Tha Boomerage'

The reviews for these are interchangable so I will do it as one... This track is very boring, dull and monotomous. The band seem to have just...run out of ideas, even though they had 4 years to make this album. The lyrics just aren't special enough. This is just a real let down.

Overall, the first 4 tracks of this are truely amazi
ng, the rest ...are not.

Summary: