Rage Against the Machine Tickets

Rage Against the Machine will play their first Scottish headline show in 14 years at Connect Festival at Edinburgh’s Royal Highland Centre Showgrounds on Wednesday 24 August 2022.

When Rage Against The Machine crashed into the burgeoning early 90s rap metal scene, they did so with the force of a bulldozer hooked up to jet engines. The quartet took the molten riffs of metal, the verbose mile-a-minute delivery of rap and the deepest, darkest grooves that funk had to offer, stirring it all together with a socio-political fury that set them apart from any of their contemporaries.

Rage was formed in the early 90s by vocalist Zach de la Rocha, guitarist Tom Morello, drummer Brad Wilk and bassist Tim Commerford. Their first release was a 12-track cassette in 1992, featuring their future hit Bullet In The Head. The band then signed with Epic for their self-titled debut, released later that year. With Morello’s inimitable guitar gymnastics and de la Rocha’s firebrand revolutionary lyrics, Rage Against The Machine was an instant success, going triple Platinum and spawning further contemporary classics in Killing In The Name and Bombtrack. 

The band spent the ensuing years delivering incendiary live performances and working on a follow-up to their debut. By all accounts, Evil Empire had a troubled gestation but reports of the band’s demise proved inaccurate. The album finally arrived in 1996 and was another huge success, debuting at No.1 in the US and winning the band a Grammy for the song Tire Me. The video for the single Bulls On Parade notably saw the band shut down the New York Stock Exchange.

A third album The Battle Of Los Angeles followed in 1999, winning Rage another Grammy for the single Guerrilla Radio. The following year, Zach de la Rocha announced his intentions to record a solo album. Later in 2000, he quit Rage Against The Machine. The year ended with his final project with the band, the covers album Renegades.

Over the following years, the band members engaged in various projects alongside other musicians. Morello, Wilk and Commerford formed Audioslave with Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell – releasing three albums between 2002 and 2006 – and the supergroup Prophets Of Rage with Chuck D of Public Enemy and B Real of Cypress Hill. Morello also joined Bruce Springsteen regularly for live performances and released his own solo material as The Nightwatchman.

In 2009, a social media campaign saw the band’s song Killing In The Name shatter The X Factor’s traditional domination of the UK Christmas No.1 slot. As a thank you, the band played a free concert in London’s Finsbury Park in summer 2010.

Various live reunions continued over the next decade, although plans for a 2020 headline slot at Coachella were scuppered by Coronavirus. The band found their music having yet another moment during the BLM protests of summer 2020, particularly Killing In The Name.

In December 2021, the band were announced as one of the headliners for the 2022 Reading and Leeds Festival, set to take place between 26-28 August 2022.

In April 2022, Rage Against the Machine announced a headline slot at Connect Festival, taking to Edinburgh’s Royal Highland Centre Showgrounds on Wednesday 24 August 2022. The UK summer show will see the band joined by Run The Jewels, Nova Twins, and The Last Internationale.