Rage Against the Machine‘s Zack de la Rocha has announced the band are forced to cancel their 2023 North American tour dates due to a leg injury he sustained on the second stop of their tour. (The complete statement is below.) The tour was initially announced in 2019 and postponed from 2020 until this year as a result of the COVID pandemic.
But we were lucky to catch Rage Against the Machine during their five-night run at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The August 12th show was a straightforward run-through of their touring set (with no appearances from openers Run the Jewels or other guests), which kept the band on point. Although de la Rocha remained seated for the entirety of the set, he stretched and bounced furiously to punctuate the music.
The show was a bombastic set of hits and anthems, with a few pauses in between four or five song runs where a video played and Rage Against the Machine (and audience) could get a breather. Neither de la Rocha nor Tom Morello directly addressed the crowd about the current political climate. There was no mention of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, white supremacists, or Trump. But they made it clear that the fight is never over.
The hard-hitting set included songs like “People of the Sun”, “The Ghost of Tom Joad”, and “Guerilla Radio”. As Rage Against the Machine performed, video projections conveyed the group’s political views. During “Sleep Now in the Fire”, the screens showed the dangers of facial recognition technology. Another video showed indigenous folks clad in baklavas (similar to those Pussy Riot wears) in the forest, seemingly ready to take back their land. More interestingly, a message noted that Madison Square Garden hosted a Nazi rally in 1939. Despite the current liberal projection of New York, there remains an unpleasant racial and political history of which this was just one example. Lincoln Center will recognize its creation that resulted in the destruction of San Juan Hill’s diverse neighborhood in October.
Rage Against the Machine ended the show with the defiant “Killing in the Name” with the house lights up. Morello’s guitar punctuated each cry of “Fuck you, I won’t do what ya tell me!” as the audience screamed along or continued their frenzied mosh. It’s hard to believe the political situation will make some of these nearly 30-year-old songs irrelevant, but hopefully, fans will get to hear the songs live again soon.
