This five-song EP completely missed my radar until I began compiling what you’re currently reading. Coming out right before the election, I think it got swallowed up by the news. It kicks off with a scorching take on Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” where he does all of his tricks of the trade while still honouring the original song and the absolute legend who made it. He then teams with Slash on “Interstate 80” which has the two of them going back and forth ripping solo after solo to see who could outdo who. It’s impossible not to smile as you hear the two of them pushing one another to go for broke. Morello then gives us a tribute to another guitar legend who has just passed with “Secretariat (For EVH)” and even throws some of Van Halen’s “Cathedral” in for good measure. He closes out the EP with “Suburban Guerilla” and “Cato Stedman & Neptune Frost” which again have him showing off his licks that let you know exactly who is playing the instrument. Morello is a singular voice on the instrument and I hope we are all able to enjoy the Rage Against the Machine reunion that was supposed to happen this year as soon as possible.
Tom Morello battles Slash in the guitar duel of the century in the new song “Interstate 80”, from Tom’s new EP “Comandante” out everywhere now
“Everybody who grew up with Gang of Four in their lives can remember how mind-blowing and forward-thinking and filled with creative energy it was at the time and guess what? It still is now. It’s art. Art that’s reaching out of this world yet somehow still down to earth. It’s so great be involved with this release and to see and hear a new generation of musicians paying tribute to Andy Gill’s incredible music. My artwork ‘Dog with Bone’, which Andy picked for the cover from a few ideas I had, is from a new series of giant pipe cleaner animals based on little ones made in my studio by kids. I think he wanted this work for the cover because it’s new and unexpected and in your face and hard not to like, they make adults feel like children and Andy always wanted to celebrate that.” – Damien Hirst A new Gang of Four tribute album has been announced. The double album, titled The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, will arrive in May 2021 and feature covers of Gang of Four and Andy Gill songs by a number of artists. The first single will be released on Friday, January 1st, 2021, which would have been Gill’s 65th birthday. It’s a cover of “Natural’s Not in It,” performed by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and System of a Down’s Serj Tankian. Andy Gill was one of a handful of artists in history who changed the way guitars are played,” Tom Morello said in a statement. “His band Gang of Four were just incendiary and completely groundbreaking with Andy’s confrontational, unnerving and sublime playing at the forefront. His jagged plague-disco raptor-attack industrial-funk deconstructed guitar anti-hero sonics and fierce poetic radical intellect were hugely influential to me.”
“This new version of Natural’s Not In It is the first single from the album The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, set for release in May 2021. It’s a double album of tracks written by Andy Gill and Gang of Four, all newly reinterpreted and recorded by artists whose own unique contributions to music were enriched by listening to Gang of Four. Says Tom Morello: “Andy Gill was one of a handful of artists in history who changed the way guitars are played. His band Gang of Four were just incendiary and completely ground breaking with Andy’s confrontational, unnerving and sublime playing at the forefront. His jagged plague-disco raptor-attack industrial-funk deconstructed guitar anti-hero sonics and fierce poetic radical intellect were hugely influential to me.” Serj Tankian says: “It was a real pleasure to work on this track with Tom and honour the legacy of Andy and Gang of Four at the same time.”
It is with pride, joy, excitement and a measure of sadness that we announce The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, a project Andy worked on right up to his death in February. This double album features tracks written by Andy and Gang of Four, newly reinterpreted and recorded by artists whose own unique contributions to music were enriched by listening to Gang of Four.
The first single has seen Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) collaborate with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down) to create an incredible cover of Natural’s Not In It. It will be released on Andy’s birthday, January 1st 2021. All the brilliant artists and bands participating in the album chose which track they wished to cover from across Gang of Four’s 40-plus year history. Details of the contributors and the full track listing will be revealed in January.
We can already tell you this: The Problem of Leisure is the dog’s bollocks. And so is the album artwork, created specially by artist Damien Hirst, a long-term Gang of Four aficionado. The album is available to pre-order now in a variety of different formats exclusively from our merchandise store. It will be released on 14th May 2021.
Andy Gill died in February of this year. According to press materials, he’d been planning the release of The Problem of Leisure to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of Entertainment! in 2019. “Andy was massively excited about this project,” Catherine Mayer said. “It wasn’t, of course, conceived as a tribute album, but it’s comforting to me that he lived to see artists he hugely admired enthusiastically agreeing to participate, signalling that the admiration was mutual.”
Damien Hirst made the artwork for The Problem of Leisure
“Stand Up” Brand new sonic firepower from The Atlas Underground universe out now, I grew up in the tiny lily white, archly conservative town of Libertyville, Illinois. When I was a kid, someone hung a noose in my family’s garage, there was occasional N-word calling, etc, etc. On June 6 of this year, there was a Black Lives Matter rally and march in that same town that drew over 1,000 people.
It seems that the times, they are a’changin’. I was so inspired that night, I reached out to Dan from Imagine Dragons. The Bloody Beetroots and I had conjured a slamming track and within 24 hours Dan had sent back a completed vocal. We got Shea Diamond, a Black transgender woman with a long history of activism, on the track and the coalition was complete.
Legendary musician Tom Morello – co-founder of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave and Prophets of Rage releases the most ambitious artistic effort of his storied career yet. Throughout his remarkable career, Morello has collaborated with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Johnny Cash. On The Atlas Underground, he paves a path into new sonic territory with the project’s breadth of talented collaborators – Marcus Mumford, Portugal. The Man, Bassnectar, the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and GZA, Vic Mensa, K.Flay, Big Boi, Gary Clark Jr., Pretty Lights, Killer Mike, Steve Aoki and Whethan among others – transforming his sound into something even he could not have anticipated, blending Marshall stack riff-rock with the digital wizardry of EDM and hip-hop. Morello served as chief curator for the record, hand-picking and personally reaching out to the involved artists to recruit their efforts to the project.
100% of artist proceeds from “Stand Up” will be donated to the following organizations: NAACP, Know Your Rights Camp, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute. KIDinaKORNER/Interscope will additionally donate an amount equal to the artists’ record royalties derived from streams of the track for a 3-year period.
Zack de la Rocha’s abrupt departure from Rage Against the Machine in October of 2000 was a blow to the remaining core of the band who wanted to continue as a unit. Rather than seek out a replacement for the frontman, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk sought to launch an entirely new musical entity, tapping Chris Cornell, who hadn’t been in a band situation since Soundgarden had called it a day in 1997. The result was Audioslave, and the self-titled record from the bona fide super group landed on shelves November. 19th, 2002. Audioslave’s sound was created by blending styles of 1970s hard rock with 1990s alternative rock. Moreover, Morello incorporated his well-known, unconventional guitar solos into the mix. As with Rage Against the Machine, the band prided themselves on the fact that all sounds on their albums were produced using only guitar, bass, drums, and vocals.
It was announced in late September that the release of the debut album from Audioslave. For many who downloaded the internet-leaked demos of the project that May, the album couldn’t come soon enough as they had been waiting breathlessly for the fully-realized version of the LP. The previous month brought the initial single and lead off track, “Cochise.”
“Cochise was the last great American Indian chief to die free and absolutely unconquered,” Morello said in a statement. “When several members of his family were captured, tortured, and hung by the U.S. Cavalry, Cochise declared war on the entire Southwest and went on an unholy rampage, a warpath to end all warpaths … Cochise the Avenger, fearless and resolute, attacked everything in his path with an unbridled fury. This song kinda sounds like that.”
The song was a dream come true for both Rage and Soundgarden fans; showcasing Cornell’s caterwaul and the potency of the instrumental attack was a boon to starving early ’00s hard rock fans. If that was indicative of the rest of the record, the project was going to take off brilliantly. To a degree, it was; the fury of the melding was expected and delivered on many levels, be it the stomp of “Gasoline,” the rumbling of “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” and the thunder of “Set It Off,” very few admirers of either act could complain there.
The second single, “Like a Stone,” was a game-changer, for better or worse, regarding the union. It was one of the most mellow pieces the Rage guys had ever done together, and not only was a massive FM rock radio hit, it showed the deep and uncharted waters to which the outfit was willing to venture into in the name of separating themselves from their former affiliations. Yet the fourth single, “I Am the Highway,” would truly demonstrate how diverse a road Audioslave were willing to venture.
“We had written a bunch of pretty powerful rock songs,” Morello said on a promo interview compact disc sent to radio stations at the time. “It felt so free in rehearsal and I, kind of the night before, was strumming the chord progression from ‘I Am the Highway,’ because it’s very, very different than anything that’s on a Soundgarden or Rage Against the Machine record. So the end of the next rehearsal, I kinda started timidly strumming those chords, sort of pretending I’m putting my stuff away [laughs] and see if anything happens. Chris goes, ‘What’s that?’ and I go, ‘Oh, I don’t know, just a couple of chords …’ and the next day we worked that one up and it ended up being one of my favorite songs.”
The restraint of that track in particular is what led to the criticism of the album by those who wanted more heavy bluster and less surprising gentleness. That harmonious softness was woven into the sonic fabric of Audioslave though, and not only added to the band’s appeal, but made them stronger than the collective sum of their prior parts. It also drew in an entirely new audience who may not have been attracted to Rage or Soundgarden.
Producer and friend Rick Rubin suggested that they play with Chris Cornell, the ex-frontman of Soundgarden.Rubin was confident that with the right new voice, Rage Against the Machine had the potential to become a better band; he believed “it could turn into a Yardbirds-into-Led Zeppelin scenario.”Commerford later credited Rubin for being the catalyst that brought Audioslave together. He called him “the angel at the crossroads” because “if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here today.
The chemistry between Cornell and the other three was immediately apparent; as Morello described: “He stepped to the microphone and sang the song and I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t just sound good. It didn’t sound great. It sounded transcendent. And…when there is an irreplaceable chemistry from the first moment, you can’t deny it.” The quartet wrote 21 songs during 19 days of rehearsal, and began working in the studio in late May 2001 with Rubin as producer,
In its six years of existence, Audioslave released three albums, sold more than 8 million records worldwide and became the first American rock band to perform an open-air concert in Cuba. Audioslave disbanded in February 2007 when Cornell issued a statement announcing that he was permanently leaving the band “due to irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences.”
The five-year, three-effort output was way too short in retrospect, and it would’ve been interesting to see where the reconstituted Audioslave might have gone had an oft-speculated reunion gone down before Cornell’s untimely passing.
‘Audioslave’ (2002)
Despite receiving a mixed bag of reviews upon its release, the eponymous Audioslave debut, for the most part, delivered precisely what was expected; the wail of Soundgarden’s lead singer backed by the foundation of RageAgainst the Machine. “Light My Way,” “Set It Off” and “Cochise” could’ve been Rage songs in another life. But Chris Cornell brought out a more mellowed side to tracks like “I Am the Highway” and “Getaway Car,” and showed that Tom Morello, Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford weren’t one-dimensional when it came to their musical abilities. Overall though, the album skewed toward the heavy end – led by Morello’s from-outer-space guitar histrionics – a boon to fans who were desperate to hear Cornell rock again after his tempered 1999 solo output, ‘Euphoria Morning.’
The music video for “Like a Stone” was written and directed by Meiert Avis. It was shot in the Los Angeles house where Jimi Hendrix wrote “Purple Haze”. The video uses negative space to invoke the memory of musicians past.
‘The Civilian Project’ (2002)
Guitarist Tom Morello said that these demos have as much in common with the first Audioslave album as “a hunk of coal has with a diamond.” Still, for music fans salivating at the prospect of a musical collaboration between members of two of the ‘90s most revered hard rock acts, it would do just fine. Recorded in late 2001 and leaked online by an Italian website the following May, it was dubbed “Civilian” after the rumored name of the union. In spite of the sketch arrangements, the power of the music was discernible. Eleven of the tracks were polished up and appeared on the band’s debut. “We Got the Whip” ended up as a B-side on the “Cochise” single while “Turn to Gold” remains to date the sole unreleased song.
Audioslave made their live debut on November 25, 2002, performing a brief concert on the roof of the Ed SullivanTheater on Broadway in New York City for the Late Show with David Letterman. This was the first time any band had appeared on Letterman’s marquee
‘Out of Exile’ (2005)
If the first Audioslave endeavor packed the punch of Rage Against the Machine, its follow-up veered more to the speed where Chris Cornell was most comfortable. There’s still the issue of trying to find a common ground, with the pendulum swinging in the direction of Cornell. “Be Yourself,” “Doesn’t Remind Me” and “The Curse” are prime examples where it sounds like he has backing musicians as opposed to being a part of a band. The boundaries get pushed only when Tom Morello cuts loose on guitar, especially when he goes a bit too far, often furiously inserting a bunch of unnecessary notes. ‘Out of Exile’ is a looser outing at its core, relaxed in all the places the debut might have wrapped itself too tight.
‘Revelations’ (2006)
Though Chris Cornell was ready to leave Audioslave at this point, as evidenced by his refusal to tour in support of the record and exit from the group five months after its release, he was hardly phoning it in. ‘Revelations’ feels the most like a fully functioning band is at work, less dependent on the member’s respective musical histories and more coming together cohesively as a unit.
The punishing riffs were accounted for — see “Shape of Things to Come” — and dips into introspective balladry like “Until We Fall.” But there was also a sense of adventurous expansion. Lead single “Original Fire” and “One and the Same” are steeped in funk, while “Jewel of the Summertime” sounds like nothing else in the Audioslave catalog, leaning heavily on Tim Commerford’s thick bass groove. Cornell even lyrically invests himself politically for the first time on “Wide Awake,” a scathing commentary on the slow response by the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina.
![Audioslave [Explicit]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51dA0T9P%2BqL._SS500.jpg)
![Revelations [Clean]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61D0stdJI2L._SS500.jpg)
The Fat Angel Sings 