15 Rage Against The Machine, ‘Killing In The Name’; 16 Rammstein, ‘Asche Zu Asche’; 17 Avenged Sevenfold, ‘Almost Easy’.I’m not insane, I’m not insane, I’m not insane! So says M Shadows, vocalist for Avenged Sevenfold. I’m not – and I love these three songs. Energy? Dialled up to 11! Attitude? Of yeah – see the post’s title. Repetition? Sure – repeat with me -now you do what they taught ya!! Loud? Eh? Each of these uses all these tried and true rockist features in new ways. In short, they rock like motorfingers!
Every once and a while I need to blow out the cobwebs with something obnoxious and there we go. The fact that I (either as teacher or authority figure or whatever) am often the target of the rage makes it all the more deliciously ironic. Isn’t it amazing, too, how quickly, what you thought was a threat to common good and decency is soon supplanted by something else.
The Sex Pistols and The Clash were evil incarnate to many in the late 1970s. Pretty tame now huh. The first Rage Against The Machine album was Mr Angry – not for nothing did The Matrix use the Rage’s Wake Up over their title credits, but Zach and his mates couldn’t sustain that for long and by album three they were raging against radio! Rammstein’s first few albums were dark and potentially alienating to my generation. But the fact they sang in their native German became less shocking with time. Compare their genuinely scarey Live in Berlin DVD with Volkerball and it’s obvious they’ve become more obviously cartoon-like with time. Now we have a new breed, as is the way.
I like listening to bands like Rammstein and The Lost Prophets for all of the usual reasons – they write catchy songs with power, youthful enthusiasm and total commitment, pounding rhythms and REALLY LOUD GUITARS. Isn’t that why we’ve always liked rebel music/ rock ‘n’ roll/ rock/ heavy metal – call it what you will?
Bring on the noise!
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