Rage Against The Machine reuniting just in time for a whole bunch of new stuff to be angry at
It’s like the old modern-rock soothsayers always used to say: As My Chemical Romance goes, so, too, must Rage Against The Machine. (Note: No one has ever actually said this.) Hot on the heels of news about the resumption of the Black Parade yesterday, Forbes reports today that vocalist Zack de la Rocha is getting back together Tom Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk for a series of dates that will presumably include some combination of anger, machines, and the direction of one against the other.
The band announced five new dates on its Instagram today, including a two-weekend headlining stint at Coachella. In previous years, you could catch three-quarters of the original group (sans de la Rocha) as part of Prophets Of Rage (and before that, Audioslave), but this is the first time that fans of the Evil Empire will be able to see the full ensemble smash their way across the stage since 2011. (Technically, this isn’t even really a reunion, since the band never formally broke up after their first big burying of the hatchet in the mid-2000s; they just stopped making new music or performing together. Semantics!)
The first of these new dates lands in El Paso in March of 2020. Given the band’s fiery and outspoken political background, the city’s close proximity to the Mexican border, and the oncoming 2020 election, we can’t help but imagine it’ll be full of the same deep-seated anger and calls to action that’s driven the group’s activities (off-and-on, admittedly) for much of the last 30 years.