Fighting Words

Only in America would a young quartet of musicians calling for the armed destruction of the country wind up as the most popular band in the land. The contradictions inherent in Rage Against the Machine’s success only underscore the naive intent of their lyrics: The band calls for nerve-gassing the media establishment while appearing in heavy rotation on MTV and reaching No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts. They call for the machine-gun takeover of weapons corporations and for the bombing of General Electric while accepting an invitation to perform on Saturday Night Live, which airs on G.E.-owned NBC.

As a rock group, the Los Angeles-based band is wildly inventive and energized. Musically, they’re what the Who were to the ’60s, Led Zeppelin were to the ’70s, and the Beastie Boys were to the ’80s. Every sound on the album comes from a guitar, a bass or a drum set, yet the music buzzes, careens and crashes with a driving, dissonant crunch that’s as heavy as John Bonham and as noisy as a scratch-happy record spinner. They’re bringing the noise, for sure, and they’re cranking it with a fresh intensity that embodies rock’s vitality and its endless ability to reinvent itself.

As political theorists, though, Rage recognize the disease, but then they pull out an assault rifle instead of a scalpel. The country they want to destroy, with all its injustices and lies, is one of the few places in the world where they could exist. Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the Soviet emblem CCCP, sporting baseball hats touting COMMIE across the crest, and calling for the death of right-wing zealots is ill-conceived revolutionary discourse, even if it is more rebel fashion than a true call to arms. The Soviet regime, as the band should know, wouldn’t have allowed such outspoken criticism from an artist. It wouldn’t have allowed mass distribution of the books pictured on the band’s CD booklet. It wouldn’t have endorsed the freedom-of-speech and anti-censorship rants the band includes in its artwork and songs.

Revolutionary chic has been a part of rock ’n’ roll since the ’60s, but political rhetoric this blatantly extremist has never hit the top of the pops until now. Rage certainly zeroes in on deep-seated social problems with sharp wordplay and colorful imagery. Singer Zach de la Rocha delineates the bleakness of ghetto life by stating: “The clockers born starin’ at an empty plate, momma’s torn hands over her sunken face, we hungry but them belly full, the structure is set, ya neva change it with a ballot pull.” Then he reflects while cruising down Rodeo Drive: “These people ain’t seen a brown-skin man since their grandparents bought one.”

The band’s questions are keen; their answers are disturbingly wrong. Rage is free to think that America is “the evil empire”; right or wrong, they can intelligently argue their position that the country is “the rotten sore on the face of mother earth.” But before calling for armed insurrection, they might want to talk to survivors of the Weathermen Underground, the Black Panthers, or even such ’60s political rock bands as the MC5. With the benefit of hindsight, these people might tell them that violent civil unrest has never been a good response to America’s problems.

Bikini Kill will never scale the commercial heights climbed so quickly by Rage Against the Machine. After all, the quartet from Olympia, Wash., refuses to join a major record company, participate in major-media interviews, or send videos to nationally telecast cable stations. But their social movement—originally billed as Revolution Girl Style Now—has already achieved far more than Rage’s histrionic discourses. For Kathleen Hanna and her bandmates speak directly to teenage girls and young women about their self-image and their roles within society and the family. With only one full-length album, a couple of EPs and a smattering of singles, they’ve already changed the lives and attitudes of thousands of fans. It’s a lot more effective to dump a hateful boyfriend or confront an abusive parent than it is to blow up a bank.

In that sense, the band’s second full-length collection, Reject All American, is a musical manifesto that will do more to change the status quo than anything involving bullets or explosives. And although the band’s unapologetic amateurism is less original and creative than Rage’s slamming virtuosity, it’s at least as entertaining.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Hanna asks in the album’s opening line, then answers with spiteful defiance, “I don’t really care, it’s not important at all.” “Statement of Vindication” slashes the Cinderella myth from both sides, condemning the image of women as handservants and as delicate beauties. The song is typical Bikini Kill: It focuses its rage at a patriarchal society that controls women by pressuring them into feeling scared or crazy. The riot grrl response is to stand up and not take it anymore. When men respond by saying the world is falling apart, Hanna answers by saying they only have themselves to blame; she ends the song seething, “You are your own worst enemy.”