Tom Morello discussed his evolution from the early days of Rage Against The Machine to his upcoming solo album The Atlas Underground in a new The Australian interview.
“It wasn’t until right around the time of the formation of Rage Against the Machine that I found my own voice,” says Morello. “I was the DJ in the band, and there were eccentricities in my playing; I began practising those eight hours a day, [rather than] scales or Chuck Berry riffs.”
Morello also told The Australian about his desire to ‘outflank’ his past work with Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave with his new record.
“I have a relentless drive and determination that tonight’s Prophets of Rage show is going to be the best show that any of those f..kin’ people have ever been to in their lives,” he says, banging his open palm on the table for emphasis.
“I don’t want to rest on my laurels. I want this Atlas Underground record to outflank every record I’ve ever made.
“I’ve always aimed that way: sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t.”
Morello recently told Metal Wani about The Atlas Underground, “The new album is a ‘sonic conspiracy.’ It’s a collection of diverse artists who are like-minded who have come together to forge a brand-new genre that combines my Marshall stack, crazy guitar riff rock power with huge bass-drops and forward-looking sonic business. It is a record that has Knife Party, Bassnectar, Big Boi, Killer Mike, Portugal The Man, Vic Mensa, Mumford & Sons, Steve Aoki, Rise Against, K. Flay, Pretty Flights, Gary Clark Jr., Leikeli47 and Wu-Tang clan as your collaborators.
The idea was, I’ve made a lot of records and I wanted to be able to push myself as a guitarist and create something that was a different kind of hard rock music. I discovered Knife Party and Skrillex who are huge Rage Against The Machine fans. I was always against electronic music. To me, it sounded like Italian taxi cab music, but then I found there was this section that sounded, it hit me in the same way that really good metal hit me. It had a lot of the same tension in the release of the Rage song ‘Bullet In The Head’. It had the sonic delivery of some of my favorite AC/DC and Metallica songs. I said ‘What if we replace your synthesizers with my electric guitar and crazy noises? And we’re onto something that hasn’t been done before.”
