Hey, you want leftist politics? You go on over to the lyrics websites and read the lyrics to this song, maybe you'll be fine, maybe you won't make it. Can't accuse these guys of being detached or ironic. Sincerity rating: 10.
I'll say this about the lyrics, politics aside. This is the 40th song I've written about, and this is the first song where the lyrics attempt the lofty poetic task of creating new word combinations rather than depending on established phrasing and diction. And it's not a weak attempt! As long as you're not flustered by the ideology of the subjects, you hear concepts that are creatively worded. I'll let you get into close reading if you want to, they don't need me to spell anything out for you.
At this point, I want to ask you to throw all other "rap-rock" bands of the middle/late '90s out of your brain. Throw that reductive term out too. We are listening to sound, not judgements and rationalizations about sound. If the song is too aggressive for you, that's cool. Pardon the rest of us while I hold forth on the qualities of heaviness.
I used to write heavy music. Lots. Screaming music. Shatter drumsticks music. Heavy music is a science, and it is the science of making people move. It's a science in the way that Alfred Hitchcock considered his movies to be devices for eliciting specific audience responses. Often when you are being entertained, you are really being dissected.
I moved away from writing heavy music because there are actually really limited ways to achieve heaviness. You kind of have to stay within the same patterns or the effect is lost. It's a real tightrope, and I had far too many different musical curiosities to keep on mining closely related patterns for the same repeated outcome. And Rage Against the Machine got to so many ideas first anyway.
The song opens with a classic heavy idea: Two notes, wide interval. Often the interval is something a little more dissonant. This song goes with the same note, one octave apart. Creates the added unison bonus. The smashing drums bely the care with which the quick-but-not-fast tempo is minutely calibrated.
Idea two: Hit the tonic note hard. Bonus: Start with a solo guitar introducing the riff, then all other instruments jump in. The drums are able to solo in the spaces between the guitar punches.
Idea three: Blues scale. Excellent syncopation, just really awesome funk teased into fury. Bonus: Patient, lurking sustain on the notes. The notes hang there forever. So many heavy songwriters want to keep those fingers moving, maybe afraid the audience will lose interest. Sometimes, let them hang. The drummer sustains everything with a perfectly resonating ride cymbal, punctuating with snare and kick drum.
Idea four: Two notes, small interval (both the half step up and the full step down varieties). Simplicity is the basis here. Drums are open hi-hat and kick/snare alternating on the beat, the first drum beat you learn. Zach de la Rocha uses the simplicity of this section to simplify his lyrical ideas too, reverting to his favorite propagandistic tactic of repeating a single, short slogan.
Throw in a highly skilled guitar solo of atonal scratches.
Final idea: Mix ideas. Here it's the tonic smashing of idea two with the drumming of idea one. Revert fully to idea one, but scream a new repeated phrase with it to the end.
It's so simple. It is so damned hard to come up with the guitar, bass, and drum parts that take these principles and make them fresh every time. Rage Against the Machine produced so many good heavy songs on three albums, with only a few on each album I'd skip over. But even they hung it up after three.
