The Battle of Los Angeles (1999)

But singer Zack de la Rocha still puts the rage in Rage. Maybe it's the current atmosphere of rock idiocy and IPO-fueled greed, but his diatribes feel more compelling, more indicting than ever. If rap is — per Public Enemy CEO Chuck D — the black community's CNN, Rage are what the MacNeil-Lehrer Report could've been with a megawatt sound system and Noam Chomsky at the copy desk. ''Testify'' observes how the people's opiates produce consensus (''Mr. Anchor assure me/That Baghdad is burning/Your voice it is so soothing''); ''Guerrilla Radio'' stares down the vacuum of the election year (''More for Gore or tha son of a drug lord/None of tha above, f — - it, cut tha cord''); and ''Voice of the Voiceless'' again argues for the freedom of journalist and death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.

For all their hard-rocking fury, there is a poignancy to de la Rocha's tirades. They are the sound of an Everyman betrayed by a nation, a religion, a community, a culture — and tellingly, a father (''Born of a Broken Man''). Some may fault The Battle of Los Angeles for its relentlessness, and indeed, save the fuse-lighting moments when de la Rocha softly incants his calls to arms, the record is a 45-minute roar. But ballads or beauty are beside the point here. This is music made to agitate, not seduce, and at that it succeeds triumphantly.

The phenomenon of rap-metal is largely rock's answer to rap's vivid machismo. But where most acts just crib the materialism and misogynistic swagger of the gangstas, the mixed-race Rage find meaning in the righteous warrior stance of Public Enemy and newcomers like Black Star. At a time when movies like Fight Clubgesticulate toward the emptiness men feel in our present-day culture, Rage Against the Machine make a case that there are still some things worth fighting for. A