Throughout the 1990s, Rage Against the Machine served as an unshakeable point of reference, both for the demonic notes they produced and for their deliberate alignment of their art with political messages. This electrifying blend of "rap-metal-communism," as characterized by the entranced American media, had four top musicians as its natural perpetrators: Zack de la Rocha, Tom Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk, whose organic ideological and artistic influences extend from the Mexican Revolution, anti-imperialist struggles, and the Black Panthers to Public Enemy, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, and the pure, unyielding American hardcore.

Refined in the peak of Reaganism and the destitution of large popular strata, neoliberal omnipotence, and the "end of history," RATM leaned over the politically significant that bubbled up from the cracks of the empire, wrapped them in red cloth, and infused them into every musical length and breadth of the earth, making committed art sharp and alive in public discourse.

Up until October 2000, when the painful break occurred, they had ensured to leave behind a rare legacy. Three primary albums, countless historical live performances, targeted political interventions, and above all, the realization of art as a tool of dialectic between political events and the masses, while simultaneously contesting the Western cultural hegemony.

This book traces the three-decade journey of the band that defined the concept of committed music, while also tracking the lives and backgrounds of the "four guilty members" as well as the socio-political environment within which they emerged, were influenced, and acted as carriers of a revolutionary artistic vanguard.