Tom Morello has announced bad news for Rage Against The Machine fans in a new interview with Lou Brutus of HardDrive Radio.
On the status of Prophets of Rage, Morello said the band is working on a new record and should have new music out by the end of 2019. Unfortunately, he said that same thing won’t be happening with Rage Against The Machine.
“There’s no news on the Rage Against The Machine front,” he said. “The times demand people standing up. That’s what I’m doing with my stuff, what Prophets of Rage is doing. Don’t wait around for Rage Against The Machine. Form your own band and get it done.”
He also said, “I had some of those riffs that eventually ended up on the first Rage record on a cassette,” he said. “I was jamming with every musician in Hollywood with some of the riffs that would become ‘Bombtrack’, ‘Freedom’, ‘Township Rebellion’, ‘Know Your Enemy’. They didn’t sound like that until I played with Brad Wilk, Tim Commerford and Zack De La Rocha.
Didn’t sound anything like that. The second we were in a room together — it’s something I try not to over-intellectualize, it’s just something that happens. If you really pay attention to it, it’s because I play those huge riffs with a single coil pickup, so my guitar has sort of a springiness to it that’s not very metal. Timmy C. plays with a bass sound that sounds like three Black Sabbath’s playing at once, so it fills up that mid-range.
Brad tends to play behind the beat; I play in front of it; Tim plays right on it, so these riffs become these huge, sort of slabs of rhythms that is only because of the natural way we play together to the first rehearsal to the last gig.”
He also said, “I was an anomaly in ’90s rock, in that I was a self-described ‘gunslinging’ electric guitar player,” he said. “I came out of that ’80s era that guitar is a competition. In the ’90s, there was none of that, so I was the last man standing in a way. It was awesome to be at those shows and just have that lane to be able to shred.”
