Your Anger is a Gift

A few albums I consider groundbreaking that I wish I had been old enough to appreciate when they first appeared:

Nine Inch Nails - "Pretty Hate Machine" (I was 6)
Rage Against the Machine - "Self-Titled" (I was 9)
Nine Inch Nails - "The Downward Spiral" (I was 11)

God, I was such a lame-ass first grader to not even be AWARE of Nine Inch Nails.  I was listening to my mom's Simon & Garfunkel records when I could have been contemplating the finer points of industrial metal and all of the inherent commentary on the dehumanization of modern society that goes along with it.  I spent my early childhood feelin' groovy and bowing down before the one I served (Big Bird).  Eventually, i got what I deserved. 

I guess there's not a lot that I could have done to change when I was born, or the things I happened to be interested in so early in life, but when I ponder the above albums I can't help but wish I'd been old enough to be interested in popular music at the time they came out, and I like to think I would have been hip enough to realize it was both brand new and vitally important.

Eventually, my time for these albums came.  I was 15 when I first heard all three of them, and I was mad, frustrated, and oily (even more so than I am now).  Trent Reznor's throbbing and buzzing meditations on religion, love (well, sex) and self-loathing struck a chord, but Rage Against the Machine's somewhat cheerier brand of fury - one that said, "YOU are fine.  YOU are awesome.  YOU are not the problem.  The problem is THEM" was far more immediately accessible to me.

Now that the debut album is 20 years old, I find myself revisiting it more and more and it hasn't lost an ounce of its energy or freshness in all that time.  The primal roar of "Killing in the Name" still rocks my socks as much as it did when I was 15 and played it on a seemingly endless loop for about 6 months.  The latter part of the album, particularly the tracks "Fistful of Steel" and "Township Rebellion" come dangerously close to feeling like the sound of wheels spinning, but they never quite tip definitively into filler territory.  And any doubts that linger by those tracks are immediately erased by the thunder of closer "Freedom."

I read critics lament that RATM is hindered by the fact that its targets are diffuse and vague.  But I think that is where the group draws its strength, and why its music still sounds fresh and vital today.  How many folk-songs of the past crested on a definite moment in time only to be rendered hopelessly obscure when their timely topics fell out of the public eye?  RATM encourages anger at any and all real or perceived threats to our personal freedom, or even lame elements of our lives that cramp our style.  Feeling bitter because the lunch lady didn't give you enough green beans?  There's a Rage for that.  Feeling angry because you just caught your wife in the arms of another man?  There's a Rage for that. 

In the ensuing 14 years that the debut RATM album has been part of my life, it has been my go-to musical catharsis of choice whenever I've felt scorned, humiliated, betrayed, angry, or simply when I need a quick edge before facing another day.  Sometimes, we all need to be reminded that our anger is a gift.  And sometimes, music can keep us from expressing that gift in dangerous, destructive ways.  There have been other, more complex, darker albums that loom large in my musical consciousness, but none that affected me quite as potently as the debut of RATM.  Perhaps it hit me at just the right time in my life, but unlike other albums from that time that I have "grown out of," RATM's debut still moves me as much as it ever did.  And it makes facing an uncertain future a little easier knowing it will always be there to wrap me in its violent embrace.