Rage Against the Machine: Renegades [EPIC]

Why you'll love it

This 180g pressing comes with a printed inner sleeve and a download voucher. Renegades went platinum a little over a month after it came out, and The Independent and NME have both ranked it among the best cover albums.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Printed inner sleeve
• Download card included
• Pressed in the EU
• Lyrics included

About the album

Every great band has a record collection; Rage Against the Machine turned theirs into an album. Renegades is a tour through the songs that shaped them, from Detroit proto-punk and DC hardcore to New York hip hop, played with the same coiled fury as their own material. Rick Rubin produced most of it, and the cover riffs on Robert Indiana's LOVE artworks.

"Microphone Fiend" flips Eric B. & Rakim into a riff monster, "Pistol Grip Pump" comes from Volume 10, and "I'm Housin'" from EPMD. "Renegades Of Funk" turns Afrika Bambaataa's electro anthem into a stomp, "How I Could Just Kill A Man" is Cypress Hill with Tom Morello's guitar doing the scratching, and "Kick Out The Jams" and "Down On The Street" tip the hat to the MC5 and the Stooges. Devo's "Beautiful World," Minor Threat's "In My Eyes," Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" and the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man" round it out.

It turned out to be their last studio album, and three of the four soon formed Audioslave with Chris Cornell. Kitty Empire of NME called it a brilliant archaeology, which is the nicest thing anyone has said about a pile of other people's records, and we would know.

Also at Kops: more Rage Against the Machine on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Epic / Legacy (cat# 19075844081), a reissue of the 2000 album.