HIS microphone explodes as he screeches ferociously and shatters the mould. His head is thrown back in anguish and defiance, the dreadlocks hang - suspended in mid-air, and the crowd roars its undying devotion. For antagonists, protagonists and the underdog alike vocalist Zack de la Rocha is God. With his burnished skin, his exotic, wild-eyed maniacal stare and his belly full of revolution, Rage Against The Machine are much more than a stomping ground for raw aggression and frustration. Instead they offer something much more precious - a voice that fights against the powers that be.

Activists on the front line, caustic wordsmiths, exposers of hypocrisy, defenders of culture, realists who spawn and spit at the concept of the American Dream and who shed light on the darkness of greed through their artillery of sonic guerilla warfare, they spark controversy wherever their jackboots tread, whether in the confines of the studio that links Saturday Night Live with the world or in the live pulpits of the world's largest arenas and stages.

One moment de la Roche, the ferocious son of a Spanish muralist and Los Angelean political activist facetiously opines: "I wanna be Jackie Onassis, I wanna wear a pair of dark sunglasses ..." and the next "I'm swimmin' in half truths and it makes me wanna spit. Ya weigh me on a scale, I'm smellin' burnt skin. It's dark now in Dachau and I'm screaming from within ..."

When well-respected American journalist and Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White applauded what he viewed as "these beautifully articulated torrents of hardcore bedlam and humming murals of din", he perfectly described the sensation of staring into the wild and uncompromising eyes of frontman and vocalist Zack de la Rocha and being on the receiving end of the tension, rejection and intensity of rage unleashed.

For highly philosophical, politically charged, sensory and instinctual drummer Brad Wilks, White's observations no doubt further strengthened and reinforced his commitment to Rage Against The Machine's motives as "further raising consciousness of people.

"To me, when Rage Against The Machine were first formed, it was a celebration and a release of anger and frustration which is something that people don't always want to look at too much. It's something that they'd rather not think about. But there's definitely a beauty in both anger and frustration. It's human nature, and it's been there, inherent in human beings, since we first roamed the earth. They are two emotions that have always been there," he muses.

On the eve of the release of their highly toxic, gutteral and angry Evil Empire, Wilks sits amid the chaos of the City Of Angels. His spirits are high and his conspiratory tones revolve around everything from their second album, to the consequences of two and a half years of gruelling touring, the lethargy and anticipation that precludes the release of a long-awaited album and the constant irritation of having to remove misconceptions that envelope the band.

"We've always been deemed highly controversial," he sniffs, "and it's really not something that we ever think about. It's just the way the band turned out to be. It wasn't something that was forced. It was just a very natural thing and seemed very natural at the time.

"Especially in the US, there needs to be a band like this. If you look at how many bands are singing about getting drunk and having a good time - and I'm not saying that I never get drunk and have a good time. But the ratio of those bands compared to bands that are actually saying something - with full credit to Zack and what he's doing - it's kinda astronomical.

"When you're talking about the things we're talking about, you're gonna piss people off, and you are gonna get people who wanna slander you in the press. And that's fine, because when you have opinions like ours it's gonna happen."

Through the dank and hoary strains of their latest opus magnus Evil Empire (the title was taken from a Reagan speech) they navigate and provoke reaction with their thoughts and commentary on the treatment of the Chiapas Natives in Mexico on People Of The Sun, domestic violence on Revolver, condemn racial discrimination and the lack of freedom of speech on Down Rodeo, spew venom towards the U.S. military on Bullets On Parade and generally tear up the tarmac with their riotous and menacing swampy jungles of metallic punk/rap, funk and politics.

During the early part of the year, Rage Against The Machine toured Australia for the first time, performing at the National Big Day Out Concerts. In a musical annihilation and blitzkreig, the moshpits exploded in a sea of bodies and raised fists at the band's arrival on stage. The multi-racial outfit then tore through their set sending punters into a frenzy; Evil Empire recreates that feeling.

Ask Wilks if this is RATM's finest moment to date and his eyebrows knot quizzically. "That's an interesting question," he responds. "All of the musical tracks and almost all of the lyrics were finished a short time ago. And between then and now I've gone through hating the record to loving the record. This period is really hard to be objective with the music. I know when it was done I was really excited and I'm kinda going with that now.

"This kinda happened on the last record as well," he continues. "You kinda start questioning yourself and it's not really a good thing; it's a kind of neurotic thing that we all have, that we can do. But I think this record has more to offer than the last record. For the time right now we are capturing an essence of what is going on right now in four people's lives. Four human beings lives ...."

RATM's guitarist Tom Morello butts in on the topic of why they chose Brendan O'Brien (Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Matthew Sweet) to produce, "We settled on Brendan because he had the right attitude about recording Rage: do it fast, do it furiously and don't worry too much about crossing the Ts and dotting the Is. I guess the whole idea was to capture the spirit of the live show. It was a real comfortable way to record, and we want this new album to be a provocation. If it's not we haven't done our job well enough," he concludes.

With many accolades and criticism being hurled their way, Evil Empire is stirring up opinion and controversy once again, just the way RATM and their legions of inspirations would like it. Through their shards of ballistic missiles it's easy to understand why people such as Bad Brains, Malcolm X, Led Zeppelin, Che Gueverra, Minor Threat, Public Enemy and the Clash are cited as inspirations. Radical works such as Guevarra's Guerilla Warfare, Mumia Abu Jamal's Live From Death Row, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Norman Mailer's Naked & The Dead and Dave Marsh's 50 Ways To Fight Censorship offers further insight into the band.

When Rage's first gutteral cries were heard back in 1992, they not only made the world sit up and take notice with their self-titled debut album - an explosion of punk-inspired hard rock and politically charged rap, but added their own pyromaniacy as support acts to Ice-T's rabid Bodycount, Public Enemy and Pearl Jam. They also supported the incandescent folky thrash of Perry Farrell's Porno For Pyros before touring Europe with Suicidal Tendencies. In September of the same year they appeared at Lollapalooza II on the Los Angeles dates.

After a gruelling two and a half years touring, Wilks admits that "we had to get away from each other before we could do our second album. Y'know, when you've lived with the same people for that length of time on a bus, or whatever, it can sometimes become a bit stale and hinder, and make relationships not so great. So, yeah, we took some time off and now here were are - ready to go again."

As the hot-blooded Che Guevarra has proved through his revolutionary rebellion and zeal of Guerilla Warfare, the only state that the true rebel can co-exist in is within the throes of a constant state of flux and volatility.

Rage Against The Machine call that very place home and continue to fight for the right of the individual and an end to the power whores who rule the Evil Empire ....