craveonline

By Johnny Firecloud

For nearly a decade, we've all been wondering when the hell we'll see another Rage Against the Machine record, or when on-again frontman Zach De La Rocha will release his forever-rumored, "recently completed" solo album.

The best we've gotten to date have been a couple tracks ("March of Death" and " We Want it All," both a couple years old by now), rumors and one-off quotes from the likes of Zach collaborators Trent Reznor and DJ Shadow, leading us down blind alleys and... pretty much nowhere.

Then, out of the blue, a new MySpace account appears from a music project called One Day As A Lion. The name, according to the profile, was "taken from the infamous 1970 black-and-white, captured by legendary Chicano photographer George Rodriguez, featuring a center framed tag on a white wall in an unspecified section of Boyle Heights. It reads: 'It's better to live one day as a lion than a thousand years as a lamb.'" The musicians featured in the project? Zach De La Rocha and former Mars Volta drummer and percussive god Jon Theodore.

The duo have inked a deal with Anti records, and plan to release an eponymous debut EP on July 22. In a press release introducing the band this week, One Day As A Lion's sound is described as "a defiant affirmation of the possibilities that exist in the space between kick and snare. It's a sonic reflection of the visceral tension between a picturesque fabricated cultural landscape, and the brutal socioeconomic realities it attempts to mask." That's right - in less than three weeks, we'll have five new Zach tracks, and with the addition of Jon Theodore, the excitement is justified.

That's all exciting and good, but hey Rage - good timing on the split you guys. All that venom and vitriol you spouted during the Clinton era, and you bail just as Dubya steps into office? I know it's been a while and all, but seriously? You dissolved just as the most fertile environment in our nation's history for your brand of activistic aggression was born. That's the equivalent of Dylan deciding to quit songwriting just as the Vietnam war kicked off. The past eight years have been so chock full of corruption and bleating horror on the grandest of scales that the songs would've written themselves. But instead of Rage leading the revolutionary charge, we got shit like Projekt Revolution and Audioslave. Thanks to you guys, Che Guevara is a fashion icon - nothing more. None of those kids know who the fuck Che was or what he stood for - ask any hipster kid with a Che stencil print backpack, T-shirt or signature Che iPod, and you'll get a variation on the same answer: it's about standing up to the man or something. The new anarchy symbol. Rebellion. Fuck yeah.

The One Day As A Lion EP tracklisting is as follows:

01. Wild International
02. Ocean View
03. Last Letter
04. If You Fear Dying
05. One Day As A Lion

For more information, visit www.myspace.com/onedayasalion.