“Wild International“
from the EP One Day as a Lion
2008
iTunes
Listening to One Day as a Lion’s self-titled debut EP, it’s easy to forget that Zack de la Rocha has been absent from the national spotlight for, oh, I don’t know, eight years.
Yes, it’s been a long time since Rage Against the Machine faded away with the covers album Renegades, but that doesn’t mean its outspoken frontman has forgotten why fans all over the world listened to him in the first place.
Without skipping a beat, One Day as a Lion storms out of the gates with “Wild International,“ quite possibly the most Rage-like song that doesn’t feature Tom Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk. While those guys are missed — despite all of us suffering through Audioslave — de la Rocha’s new partner in crime, former Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore, helps cook up enough ferocious “bombtracks” (complete with the fervent political activism we’ve all come to expect) to ease the pain.
From front to back it’s a solid release, but “If You Fear Dying” leaves the biggest impression: “Time is coming / Rising like the dawn of a red sun / If you fear dying, then you’re already dead.”
In this day and age of color-coded fear levels, de la Rocha’s words are hard to argue with.