| reviews | clubs by night | bands in town | club directory |
| jazz clubs | pop concerts | classical concerts | jazz concerts | hot links |

***1/2 Rage Against the Machine

RENEGADES

(Epic)

Rage Against the Machine have always had a taste for radically revamped cover songs, from their oft-bootlegged metal version of N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” to their hit overhaul of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” On singer Zack de la Rocha’s final studio recordings with the band, everything from hip-hop to hardcore to classic rock gets the Rage treatment. Relieved of his grandstand on hip-hop party anthems “Pistol Grip Pump” and “Renegades of Funk,” de la Rocha for once seems to be enjoying himself as much on the mike as his bandmates are on their instruments. Rage do punk at least as well as Slayer on “Kick Out the Jams,” “Down on the Street,” and especially the Minor Threat hate-edge anthem “In My Eyes,” where de la Rocha goes completely off the hook in a valiant effort to relive his hardcore days. They get more experimental with the straight-ahead rock stuff, and that yields an inconsequential rap-metal version of “Street Fighting Man.” De la Rocha’s rumored replacement, Cypress Hill’s B-Real, even makes an appearance on a stomping live version of “How I Could Just Kill a Man.” About the only thing missing is P.O.D.’s cover of U2’s “Bullet the Blue Sky.”

— Sean Richardson