Rage Against the Machine - Renegades

So Rage Against the Machine was a pretty popular rap/rock group for most of the 90's with a strong political message, and then they broke up. The singer did his own thing while the rest of the band played with Chris Cornell as Audioslave, although recently that act broke up too, and now Rage is playing shows again and people wonder if they're going to do some recording. Renegades was their last studio album, but it wasn't a normal one, as it's a collection of covers. Some are song by contemporaries like Cypress Hill, others are of more classic bands. Some of them are interesting, although most just transform it into a typical Rage song. That's fine, as a normal Rage song can be pretty awesome. But too much of the same thing can get pretty tiresome, and since they didn't really write these songs, they don't get much credit for crunching, angry guitars and rapping lyrics someone else wrote.

"Microphone Fiend" gets it started just the way you'd expect, a lot of attitude and a lot of bass. "Pistol Grip Pump" is one of the standouts. It's actually quite repetitive, but there's just something enticing about the riff and the beat. "Renegades of Funk" has a catchy sample and is a pretty good single. "Beautiful World" is about the only song on the album that doesn't sound like Rage Against the Machine, very mellow and respectful of the original version. "How I Could Just Kill a Man" is another enjoyable, hard rocking track. "Maggie's Farm" rounds out the album with a loud, angry, typical finish that you expect from a band that rages so much, especially against the machine. My copy is actually a special edition with two live bonus tracks, although neither is especially compelling and just stretch out the experience. They really just lessen the impact of ending on "Maggie's Farm" which was actually fairly good. It's a pretty decent album, although I think huge fans might have wanted a bigger last hurrah.