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Underground > Radio & Music >

Audioslave: Thoughts?

21:01 / 06.11.02

I just heard Audioslave's first single "Cochise", for those of you unfamiliar with the band they are Rage Against the Machine with Soungarden's frontman(his name escapes me for some reason) as opposed to Zack de la Rocha. I am a huge fan of Rage, I've been listening to them since I was fifteen and they hold a special place in my scarred little heart. I haven't heard the entire album yet so I am not willing to pass judgement although the demos of the songs I've heard were less than exciting.Is it just me or are they really wanting to be some sort of modern day Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath? I'm watching their video and getting a really bad feeling about the whole thing. Anyways, comments ?

Matthew Fluxington

22:25 / 06.11.02

All I know is that the prospect of mixing together the very worst elements of Rage Against The Machine (ie, Tom Morello's guitar playing) with the single most obnoxious rock vocalist of the early 90s sounds like a recipe for torture to me... That said, there's some good Soundgarden songs, and a Morello isn't too obnoxious on the better Rage songs ("People of the Sun", "Bulls On Parade", "Down Rodeo"), so maybe there's a chance of a good song or two being on that record. But I'm not going out of my way to check.

Matthew Fluxington

22:27 / 06.11.02

Oh, the singer from Soundgarden (and Audioslave) is Chris Cornell.

12:14 / 07.11.02

Puck- you're totally right about the comparison of "Cochise" to Led Zeppelin - but for the life of me (as I'm not too familiar with the zep oeuvre) I can't figure out which song it is that they're blatantly ripping off in that song. It's a famous one, anyway.

The single, which is all I've heard, is a classic "You got chocolate in my peanut butter" music moment. It doesn't sound like the band and Cornell were ever in the studio together at all. it's like those tracks on the "Judgement Night" soundtrack (reaching wayyyyyy back for that one) where say, Pearl Jam recorded some instrumental stuff and Cypress Hill rapped over it, without the members of the two bands ever meeting. Anyway, "Chochise" starts off sounding like a grinding, drony Soundgarden song, and then after 20 seconds morphs into a rote-Rage riff, like something from their tuneless first album. Then Cornell starts singing in his histrionic style, and it sounds like Soundgarden. Then it sounds like some Limp Bizkit dude's idea of Led Zeppeling. Anyway, it's really, really bad.

Flux - Tom Morrello's guitar playing - does he not play those solos that sound like turntable scratching on songs like "Bulls on Parade"? that sounds pretty cool to me. I have to admit, at one time or another, 3 different RATM songs have taken up space on my MP3 player, for use as gym music. All late period RATM, mind you. "sleep now in the fire" has pride of place though, maybe because when I hear it at the gym I imagine I'm training to be a street-fightin' man.

Matthew Fluxington

12:21 / 07.11.02

Yeah, I think it's neat when Morello does those little gimmicky tricks, and I won't say a bad word about "Bulls On Parade", but it does not excuse all of his godawful riffs on the other songs. God of the faux-Led Zep wank riff, he is!

The only songs I like by Rage Against The Machine are on Evil Empire, and a couple of the covers on Renegades. The rest I pretty much loathe.

19:58 / 07.11.02

You can spot the difference? This band holds a place in the 13-yr-old-idiot bit of my heart, but for the life of me... all their songs are different? For real?

I have no compulsion to hear this new single.

22:01 / 07.11.02

On the other hand I am extremely excited about what I've heard about Zack de la Rocha's solo album. Zack's skill as a MC is what I always enjoyed about the band the most. If any of the producers that he has worked with are at there best this album will kick ass. Have any of you heard the song Zack did with Roni Sizez? that made me want to piss my pants I was so happy. I heard that hes has worked with Dj Shadow, ?uestlove, and Trent Reznor among others.

jUne, a sunshiny month

07:50 / 08.11.02

i liked RATM for the exposure of important causes that not enough bizness people/artists/call'emhowyouwant... they did while their first years of popularity. i liked Zach's rapping on music i'm not into usually, and Morello's tricks were pretty cool for me, as i always thought that guitar players were damned to play always the same old shit always the same old way. quite refreshing at first.
i liked the dylan cover (was it maggy's farm ?) on one of their last albums, too. and yeah, zach coudl be a fine mc, probably. tracks with roni size or krs one were more than correct, i think.

and Cornell's voice ? what's the problem with Cornell's voice ? i dunno, i like it... his texts aren't the best of the world, but it's probably worth loads of shit out there, no ?

as far as it sounds like soundgarden meets ratm, it's quite non interesting, i suppose.
but as far as it sounds like limp bizkit's idea of led zep, and it should be just awful...

19:56 / 09.11.02

I downloaded the demos for this album about a month ago. The demos sound better than the finished product - the mix is different, more cohesive somehow, and Morello's guitar work is less "produced" than on the final album. There are at least a couple songs I really like in demo form, but cringed at when hearing the album.

21:50 / 09.11.02

Is it just me or are they really wanting to be some sort of modern day ... Black Sabbath?

Heh. You've heard Soundgarden before, right? I havn't heard the finished track but I too heard the demos a while back. I dunno, I thought they were ok. I just wish Cornell would hook up with Kim Thayil again.

22:45 / 09.11.02

"Is it just me or are they really wanting to be some sort of modern day Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath?"

Wow. You mean a modern day band that's actually trying to be GOOD? Get out! I'll have to check them out.

Yeah, I'm old. So what? I'm not ashamed of it.

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

02:32 / 10.11.02

They sound like bad Led Zep. Don’t get me wrong I like zeppelin as much as the next man, and I like RATM, but I don’t like what I’ve heard from audioslave. It makes you wonder about who was the driving force of Rage? Some parallels with the break up of the Stone Roses maybe?

The Return Of Rothkoid

01:11 / 20.11.02

Hm. I'm glad I got it cheap(ish). It's a bit... well, some of it's OK, but largely it doesn't work. I can see this getting few plays.

02:26 / 20.11.02

Ehhhhh, I've only heard about half the album (a few times) and it's not as terrible as I anticipated... It beats CC's solo album, but I've never been a RATM fan (be that as it may, the music sounds like watered down Rage). If I didn't download the songs, though, and actually shelled out $18 for the CD... I'd listen to it two or three times and lament my spent money.