Rage Against The Machine have always faced one apparently insoluble criticism. Railing against capitalist exploitation in all its forms, from the enslavement of the masses by advertising and TV to America's foreign policy, the Los Angeles quartet made a vast sum of money for themselves by signing to a major label, Epic, and touring the world enabled by a network of music-industry corporations – the very targets of their songs.
Noticing this, many an observer remarked on this apparent ideological inconsistency, but the band – Zack de la Rocha (vocals), Tom Morello (guitar), Tim Commerford (bass) and Brad Wilk (drums) – shrugged off the naysayers with the reasonable retort that the use of major communication networks makes for a better dissemination of information. Did people listen? No.
