Killing in the Name still represents what I think about the world

There can be no doubt that one of the most influential rock bands of the 90s was Rage Against the Machine (RATM). Years ahead of the zeitgeist, they fused hip-hop, rock and metal into one, while formulating harsh criticism of the current power, political elite or even the authorities. Without RATM, the fate of nu metal might have turned out differently, fewer people would have tried to rap over crushing rock music, and the hip-hop or electronic music of the 2010s would certainly have turned out differently.

One of the band’s best-known faces is Tom Morello, who with his unique guitar playing brought never-before-heard elements to the band’s sound, and has been mentioned by the trade press as one of the best of all time for quite some time now. Morello will perform solo in Budapest Park on July 1st. Before his first performance in Hungary, we talked to him for 10 minutes on Zoom.

RATM was founded in 1991, they have released a total of four albums and have many now generational hits to their name. They achieved all this by avowedly (sometimes radically) representing a left-wing ideology from the beginning, and never spared the political elite, American foreign policy, the capitalist economic system or American globalization. On the other hand, they were never really able to stay together for a long time, their last album, released in 2000, for example, was released months after their breakup, and then they only got back together for 4-5 years. The last time they broke up was in January, and it is in the deck that this was really the last time for the band.

Unfortunately, we did not receive an answer to this question from Morello, who is obviously asked about RATM every single time, but he said that he will be proud of the band for the rest of his life, because what he invented and imagined at the time, artistically and politically, was fully realized.

“Nothing could prove the timelessness of our music better than the fact that the lyrics of most of our songs are still relevant today and represent the same message and value as they did even 30 years ago”

Morello told me via Zoom, and he even turned on his camera, so I could see that the bookshelf behind him contained a statue of Lenin or Fidel Castro as well as a Che Guevara book or a waving Chinese cat.

On the other hand, I was surprised that Morello, who is well versed in geo- and foreign politics, had not yet heard that for 15 years there has been a nationalist government in Hungary that is strongly leaning towards the extreme right, which is practically the exact opposite of everything he represents in his music. In the end, we couldn’t even talk about Hungarian politics.

Among other things, we talked about the fact that few guitarists have such a diverse oeuvre as him. In addition to RATM, he was also part of supergroups such as Audioslave, Street Sweeper Social Club or Prophets of Rage, he had his own folk music project (The Nightwatchman), he was Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist for a while, and as a contributor he was around so many artists and genres. , that it is almost impossible to follow.

Yet one of his most bizarre phenomena is the Atlas Underground solo trilogy, where he recorded each song with different collaborators, including artists such as Bring Me the Horizon, Idles, Damian Marley or Steve Aoki. The strangest of these is clearly how spectacularly Morello got involved in today’s modern EDM, which practically means the “Americanized” electronic music after 2010, with styles such as brostep (the screechy kind of dubstep), riddim (different brostep) , big room house (any music you usually hear on the main stage of Balaton Sound) or future bass.

It’s been almost 10 years since I equated brostep and nu metal after a Limp Bizkit concert in Budapest, but my jaw dropped when I asked Morello how he came across Bloody Beetroots, Knife Party or Bassnectar. “Do you think?” – he asks back with a smile, and then I explain to him my statement in the aforementioned article that I think brostep and partly nu metal are based on the same scheme that RATM developed to perfection at the time. That is, on the drop.

“These people all grew up listening to Rage Against the Machine. It would be a shame to deny that we had a huge impact on EDM. The energy, the sound, the song structures can all be found in our old music as well, he says, and when asked why a specifically anti-political genre moves him so much, he answered honestly. – On Atlas Underground, I was specifically looking for a progressive, futuristic guitar sound, in which, say, Knife Party or Bloody Beetroots are very good. And anyway, at that time I was listening to a lot of Prodigy or Crystal Method, I feel the same energy in EDM.”

How influential Morello is as a guitarist can be seen not only in the aforementioned EDM. He was named the 18th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone, and in 2023 he was named among the Immortals of Rock and Roll with RATM. However, a certain age group was first introduced to him when he appeared as a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.

“I had no idea what it was all about, I’m not even interested in video games. They approached me with such an opportunity, that there was a small project that I needed, and I went for it. Then it became one of the most successful video games of all time,” he laughs. And it’s true, in 2007 Guitar Hero III. broke all records: it was the best-selling game of the year, the highest-grossing game of the year, and the first physical video game to cross the $1 billion mark in sales. In addition to Slash, Morello was the other character against whom you had to play a guitar duel (with a guitar theme specially written for the game), and then you had to play RATM’s Bulls on Parade.

The band got back together that same year, so Guitar Hero III had a big impact on RATM’s perception. huge success. “A completely new, young generation got to know our music, our concerts were full of young people. Many times I felt like I was an action figure, because this age group had a completely different attitude towards me and us.

By the fact that our music was known in a completely different context, a completely new audience formed around us during this period. Of course, this was also a good opportunity to convey our message to a new generation.”

Before we even changed the subject, Morello insisted on telling a story about Guitar Hero. “There was a time when my children organized a special program with their friends to play the game at our place.

Imagine a bunch of kids coming and playing my character and my music and they’re going to destroy me every single time.”

– he laughs, then he also says that he personally couldn’t play the game at all, he couldn’t cope with the hardest difficulty level at all, but he also added that it’s basically just a game and has nothing to do with real guitar playing.

At the end of the conversation, we were still curious about what kind of music he will be able to hear at the Budapest Park concert on July 1st. He listed everything from Audioslave to Atlas Underground to Bruce Springsteen, then concluded with a great sense of drama that “of course there will also be Rage Against the Machine.” We had time for one last question, so I was wondering if there is any one of the dozens of albums and hundreds of musical releases that you consider your favorite. Morello responded to this not very complicated question with surprising enthusiasm:

“You know what? Since I will be performing in Hungary for the first time, I will sing a real classic.

Killing in the Name is the song that I think best represents what I think about the world. How to stand up for the downtrodden, teachers, doctors, minorities, and against an oppressive or illegitimate power.”