“Testify” by Rage Against the Machine

"Testify" kicks the door in on The Battle of Los Angeles, Rage Against the Machine's third album, from 1999, and it wastes no time: Tom Morello's guitar squeals and skids like a patrol car taking a corner, Tim Commerford's bass and Brad Wilk's drums slam into a rap-metal lockstep, and Zack de la Rocha comes in already shouting.

All four members share the composing credit, with de la Rocha writing the words. Brendan O'Brien produced and mixed it, with the band as co-producers, and Nick DiDia recorded it. O'Brien keeps the sound lean and brutally loud, every stop and start landing like a fist on a table.

The politics are right there in the bridge, where de la Rocha borrows the ruling party's slogan from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the one about how control of the present lets you rewrite the past, and turns it into a battle cry against manufactured history. The single's sleeve made the point just as bluntly, using an image of the Black Power salute from the 1968 Olympics.

It was the third single pulled from the album, following "Sleep Now in the Fire" and coming ahead of "Calm Like a Bomb", and it still opens the record like a starting gun.

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