| · Great band, great songs, good concert, OK record.
Zack De La Rocha's hyper-political rants, propelled by driving bass lines and interspersed with Tom Morello's innovative bursts of guitar noise, helped define hip-hop metal in the ’90s. But one of the attributes proudly celebrated by Rage Against the Machine –that this four piece band creates their soundscapes with just guitar, bass and drums – reveals its shortcomings in a live setting.
Whenever Morello abandons the song's main riff for one of his colourful forays into guitar trickery, the bottom drops away and it's apparent how the recording studio helped thicken Rage's sound. Coupled with the fact that De La Rocha is a one-trick MC – more a pissed-off screamer really – sets Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium well behind Rage Against the Machine's three studio albums.
Live concerts often compensate for such issues with a sense of energy not found in studio albums and to be fair, there is some of that here. With a wall of speakers in your face and a bloodstream full of THC, this would have undoubtedly been an intense show. Sadly, much of that intensity dissipates between the stage and the speakers of your stereo.
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