MOG

Tom Morello has built a bunker deep beneath the earth and he'd like us all to join him for cocktails before the apocalypse. He's been reading the Bible and watching Fox News and he's now totally convinced that not only is the government out to get him, but they're probably listening to him right now through the chip they implanted in his teeth. It's all going to hell and he's gonna lead the revolution with his acoustic guitar and Nick Cave impersonation.

Under the creepy guise "The Nightwatchman", Morello's solo effort following the shelving of Audioslave and the confusing return of Rage Against the Machine is a folky, dark record about the glimmers of hope amongst the bad, bad things in a very unfair and mean world. It's also a total piece of crap. This album isn't just bad, it's dangerous. If you dare to listen to it you'll either aspirate on your own vomit, go into cardiac arrest from laughing or take the paranoid, militant lyrics to heart and climb a clock tower with a rifle and let the SWAT team tag you out. Either way, stay as far away from this turd as you can. Cross to the other side of the street, play it off like you're going to get ice cream or something, don't even look directly at it because you might get a rash or some kind of facial tick.

I don't know what the hell Morello was thinking when he put this record out but I used to have a lot of respect for him. He's active in all kinds of viable charities, he's a genius with guitar effects and he's a sharp dresser who single handedly brought back the Communist Red Star as a suburban pseudo-activist fashion accessory. But this album sees him stepping away from the exciting realm of electric guitar mad-science and instead sitting on an old bar stool in some dark bar with Confederate flags and dead animal heads growling outdated Americana-infused battle hymns for the disposed and disillusioned, and if you think that sounds cool like some war-weary protest singer fighting the establishment with the power of rock and roll you couldn't be more wrong. The lyrics may deal directly with social injustice and corrupt government and general fear and terror but Tom Morello is not Woody Guthrie, he's not Joan Baez, he's not even John Fogerty. The half-spoken, dry grumble he forces over these songs attempts to instill a sense of dread and lethal severity but would actually be better off voicing heart-stirring anthems to America and Freedom and Pure, Clear Rocky Mountain Water in a Super Bowl beer commercial.

Not once during the 13 songs that relentlessly bombarded me with platitudes of discord and disobedience and fighting and scrapping against the Man did I ever feel the slightest swelling of pride or defiance about injustice, and I HATE injustice! I'm the guy who's always bitching about how the government is treating people badly and how we're teaching our children to be fat and lazy and afraid of failure and how corporations cater to the rich and build their fortunes off the backs of the poor. I'm THAT guy! The guy who is so worked up about injustice that he's probably talking a little too loudly about it over a beer and nachos at Chili's to a group of people who are just trying to watch the game on the muted TV in the bar. I'd typically be the first one to care about and album calling all decent people to take up arms against our oppressors and draw that line in the sand, but I just end up groaning at every single line Morello wheezes over these trite and unoriginal guitar tunes.

Furthermore, even if the singing and the lyrics weren't a huge problem with this album, which they certainly are, there's the fact that despite the amount of animosity the 18-30 population feels toward the president or the war or the lack of hope for retirement, etc., Morello really seems like he's trying to stir up some sort of paper tiger conflict. His lyrics and his cheesy passion seem to be either too sincere or generally misguided to rally the fans he's trying to enlist with this album. Each track takes itself so seriously that it borders on psychotic, as though there's already a resistance movement going and people are seriously living in rebel camps in abandoned warehouses and fighting skirmishes against the national guard in America. If this were the Great Depression or Vietnam or even the LA Riots in 1992 then this album would almost be relevant, but it seems like the protesters of 2007 have a different idea of what they'd like their soundtrack to be as they're decrying the brutality of the "police state" while annoyed local cops drag them one by one out of the middle of the freeway where they sat down to protest.

I was told that this review would most likely anger a lot of Rage Against the Machine fans, but before a troop of rabid, militant, dreadlocked suburban teenagers with army jackets and DIY Che Guevara t-shirts show up at my house to start a revolution on my ass, just listen to the album, even a few songs, and you'll probably be so disenchanted that you'll drop your stack of pamphlets, shave your mohawk and go work at Old Navy.

Puffmagic gives "One Man Revolution" by The Nightwatchman 1 Evil Rob Gordon from the Evil Parallel Universe. (That's -1 for you non-Star Trek fans.)

No Indie Equation for him either, there's no math I could use to describe it. We haven't the technology.