It felt like the world stopped the minute that Rage Against the Machine announced they’d be getting back together.
After years and years of being dormant and Zack de la Rocha practically being a ghost behind the scenes, seeing them come back with open arms and giving it their all on this past arena tour was just what we personally needed.
Now that the touring has winded down (largely due to de la Rocha’s recent injury), bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford has officially unveiled a new project. Fair warning, if you’re expecting RATM Part 2, this ain’t that.
His latest project 7D7D is definitely a softer affair. While Timmy C is still the driving force behind the bass, and the lyrical content is still as political as ever with the title ‘Capitalism,’ the song itself is actually a lot closer to what we were hearing out of pop punk, almost like a hard-edged version of what a band like Rise Against might be doing.
This is still at the very least hard rock at the end of the day though, and you can even hear Tim expanding his horizons a little more on this song, putting a bit more growl into his basslines and going off into a bit more jazzy territory, far removed from the ‘all crunch all the time’ mentality that Rage tended to go for back in the heyday.
Then again, seeing the guys in Rage have more varied influences isn’t really all that shocking looking back on it.
For as long as the band has been apart, each member has been able to flex their musical chops outside of the main band, from the non-Zack members going full stadium rock with Audioslave and Tom Morello going down the more folksy road by himself with projects like the Highwayman.
Considering what Tim has done in the past though with his own solo outfits like Wakrat and FutureUser, this is probably only a small taste of the thousands of different styles that we’re going to hear when the full album does eventually drop. Listen below.