|
|
Rodrigo Pena / The Press-Enterprise
Rage Against the Machine rocks the house during the final day of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio on Sunday.
|
Rage Against the Machine may have been the most important and historic performance in Coachella existence.
It was the first time the politically-charged band played together in nearly seven years and they closed the first three-day installment of the Indio festival.
As soon as Zack de la Rocha, Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk played the opening of “Testify” it was like an instant time warp to a time when there was no war in Iraq and before 9-11.
A sea of digital camera screens lit up the crowd and 60,000 fists pumped in the air.
The set hit the best of the band’s three original albums, as well as included their cover of “Renegades of Funk.”
During “Sleep Now in the Fire,” a track from “The Battle of Los Angeles,” pieces of fire flew up in the air facing the left side of the stage. However, the sporadic flames were quickly controlled.
The band may have played harder than any other at the festival, with de la Rocha bounding across the stage, jumping higher with each beat. Morello and Commerford followed suit and Wilk wailed on the drums.
However, it seemed to me that the sound wasn’t as strong for Rage as it was for all of the other mainstage acts. You could tell the guys were playing ridiculously hard but it seemed toned down in the mix.
The politics the group is famous for didn’t come into play until near the end of the main set, when de la Rocha raged against the current administration.
“They should be hung and tried and shot,” he said.
“It’s a system that we have to break down generation after generation,” he continued.
Whenever de la Rocha pointed the microphone to the crowd, the audience gladly filled in the blanks of the well-known songs, as if they were a national anthem for Generation X.
Rage came back for an encore and performed “Freedom.”
The band closed the encore with “Killing in the Name,” the explosive hit off the band’s self-titled debut.
The foursome locked arms and bowed to the packed crowd.