Renegades.

Rage Against the Machine, Renegades (Epic)

Rage Against the Machine (Zack de la Rocha, Brad Wilk, Tom Morello, and Tim Bob Commerford) has achieved renown as leftist guerrillas, much like the MC5 did some decades ago. And for all of their Maoist (uh, guys, he's been discredited) leanings, blood-red flag waving, and cause sympathizing, Rage is one hell of a foul-mouthed rock`n'roll band. Okay, we have lots of language in this column, and, truth be known, Rage isn't the worst of the lot. But de la Rocha's expletive-laced exhortations somehow lose their potency if only because one has to fight through the language to hear the message. If de la Rocha is this generation's McLuhan, and the medium is the message, then this generation's message is excremental, oedipal, coital, and generally unpleasant. I mean, if I were in the audience, and some guy at the mike sez, "So all you f**ckers wanna hear the sh*t we're puttin' down?," I guess I'd be flattered at the personal characterization, but genuinely alarmed at what was to be flung from the stage.

But once de la Rocha shuts up, the medium, hard-edged, seminal, grind-it-out rock, is very much the message. Rage broke up some time ago, and left behind a legacy of hard rock hip-hop, laced with leftist rap sentiments, and propelled by a ferocity, indeed a rage, I've not heard since the MC5. Renegades is mostly a collection of covers and live cuts, the detritus of its recording career. Rage covers the Stones' "Street Fighting Man," Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad," and of course MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" with seething intensity, a commitment as frightening as it is compelling, elemental rock`n'roll at its very, very best.

Renegades' cover art arranges the word "RAGE" in a Clarendon Bold type stacked square, a fiendishly clever send-up of Robert Indiana's "LOVE" from the days of yore. Kid Rock may ballyhoo his own history, but Rage Against the Machine absorbed rock's history, and in a larger measure cultural history, and has fed it back on this disc with an honest vengeance. R.I.P.