Evil Empire by Rage Against the Machine

Evil Empire, Rage Against the Machine's second album, came out on Epic on April 16, 1996, and it borrowed its title from the phrase Ronald Reagan and plenty of American conservatives used for the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, which tells you exactly where the band was pointing its guns. They produced it themselves.

The sound is rap metal with a funk-metal backbone: riffs clenched tight as a fist, grooves that bounce as hard as they bludgeon, and vocals that are shouted far more than sung. "Bulls on Parade" is a stomping, siren-wailing manifesto, "People of the Sun" charges in at full tilt, and "Down Rodeo" rolls along like a slow-burning fuse.

It debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200, with 249,000 copies sold in its first week. "Tire Me" won a 1996 Grammy for Best Metal Performance, "Bulls on Parade" and "People of the Sun" were both nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance, and by May 24, 2000, the RIAA had it at triple platinum.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.