The Battle of Los Angeles, one of the strongest statements ever from the punky hardcore hip hop trap group Rage Against the Machine is now available on MP3 format from Amazon this month for only $2.99, as part of their $2.99 MP3 Albums promotion.

By The Battle of Los Angeles, the Rage’s third album, there was such a high confidence and tight musicality evident from the band, live and on record, it was nothing short of mindboggling. From the one-two rabbit punch bullet from a gun strains of the opening notes of “Testify,” Rage Against the Machine propels their musical manifesto of politics and personal transgressions to a pitch so hard and fast and groovy it is impossible to be ignored.

Every track on this album is A grade, there isn’t a clunker in the oeuvre, even the Gil Scott-Heron meets Public Enemy’s Chuck D influences that ran so in your face on the prior two Rage albums take a backseat to the intelligence and whip smart lyrics and vocalizing of frontman Zach De La Rocha. Tom Morello’s guitar, which sounds like his own personal Midi machine, slices through genres like Jack the Ripper with punk sounds, electronica, ambient, and transient Black Sabbath-y styles that are sifted through a Led Zeppelin blender. The rhythm section remains tight, loose, funky, scary; this band really could have continued to have every subsequent release become also mini-masterpieces that the lighting in an amplifier Battle of Los Angeles is if they hadn’t disbanded soon after its release. With songs like “Mic Check,” “War Within A Breath,” “Voice of the Voiceless,” “Maria,” and on and on and all the rest, the gold with gold on top of that standard doesn’t let up. Are there any other records that one can come up off the top of their head with that are considered so amazing, beginning to end? Only the all-time classics. And that’s the point; that’s exactly where this album falls on the musical timeline. An unbelievable slice of musical life and rants from one of the great rock bands ever to grace our planet in the last 20 years. Supremely recommended.

The 20th anniversary edition of the band’s self-titled debut album, sold under the title Rage Against The Machine – XX is also on sale for only $2.99 (you can read our coverage on it here). Browse all 100 albums on sale this month for only $5 each in MP3 format, as well as those available for only $2.99 each.

Track Listing

1. Testify
2. Guerrilla Radio
3. Calm Like A Bomb
4. Mic Check
5. Sleep Now In The Fire
6. Born Of A Broken Man
7. Born As Ghosts
8. Maria
9. Voice Of The Voiceless
10. New Millennium Homes
11. Ashes In The Fall
12. War Within A Breath

Note – when you purchase MP3s through Amazon, it stores your purchases to Amazon’s Cloud Drive; from there you can stream the music right from their online player. Also, if you have a Kindle Fire, your MP3 purchases will automatically be available for you to stream on your device. All your purchases are backed up and available for you to download at any time. You can download the files to your computer to load to an MP3 device and to your iTunes account if you have one. If you’d like to gift these MP3 purchases, you can – just click the “Give album or song as gift” button on the right on the product page. From there you enter the recipient’s email address and then select either specific songs to gift or the entire album.