''Evil Empire'' is the second studio album by American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

band

Rage Against the Machine Rage Against the Machine (often abbreviated as RATM or shortened to simply Rage) is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, the group consists of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commer ...

, released by

Epic Records Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America Sony Corporation of America (SONAM, also known as SCA), is the American arm of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group ...

on April 16, 1996. It debuted at number 1 on the US ''Billboard'' 200 chart with sales of 249,000 copies, and the song "

Tire Me "Tire Me" is a song by American rock band Rage Against the Machine from their album '' Evil Empire''. Although "Tire Me" never had a music video, was never released on any media formats, and had no radio airplay, the song won a Grammy Award in 199 ...

" won a 1996

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pres ...

for

Best Metal Performance The Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance is an award presented at the Grammy Awards to recording artists for works (songs or albums) containing quality performances in the heavy metal music genre. The Grammy Awards is an annual ceremony, where ...

; " Bulls on Parade" and "

People of the Sun "People of the Sun" is the second single by American rock band Rage Against the Machine for their 1996 album '' Evil Empire''. Written in 1992, the song is about the Zapatista revolution. Lead vocalist Zack de la Rocha wrote the song after a vi ...

" were nominated for Grammys for

Best Hard Rock Performance The Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance was an award presented to recording artists at the Grammy Awards until 2011. The academy recognized hard rock music artists for the first time at the 31st Grammy Awards (1989). The category was ori ...

. On May 24, 2000, the album was certified

triple platinum Music recording certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped, sold, or streamed a certain number of units. The threshold quantity varies by type (such as album, single, music video) and by nation or territory (see ...

by the

Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

. The album's title is a reference to a term used in the early 1980s by

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

and many American conservatives to describe the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

.Staff report (May 3, 1996)
Rage Builds "Evil Empire"

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

Background

According to MTV News, "The title 'Evil Empire' is taken from what Rage Against The Machine see as

's slander of the

in the eighties, which the band feels could just as easily apply to the United States." Before the May 27, 1996, performance of "Without a Face" that is featured on the band's 1998 '' Live & Rare'' album,

Zack de la Rocha Zacharias Manuel de la Rocha (born January 12, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, rapper, and political activist. He is best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Rage Against the Machine. Through both Rage Agains ...

said: "It seems as if soon as the... the wall in Germany fell, that the US government was busy building another one on the border between the US and Mexico. Since 1986, as a result of a lot of the hate talk and hysteria that the government of the United States has been speaking, 1,500 bodies have been found on the border. We wrote this song in response to it." "

Year of tha Boomerang "Year of tha Boomerang" is a song by American rock band Rage Against the Machine. It originally appeared in the film and on the soundtrack of ''Higher Learning'' in 1994 and was eventually included on their second album ''Evil Empire'' (1996). ...

" had previously been included in the film ''

Higher Learning ''Higher Learning'' is a 1995 American drama film written and directed by John Singleton and starring an ensemble cast. The film follows the changing lives of three incoming freshmen at the fictional Columbus University: Malik Williams ( Omar Epp ...

'', though its title was written as "Year of the Boomerang" on the packaging of the film's soundtrack, as well as that of the song's promotional single.

Packaging

The cover of the album features an altered version of a painting of the 1940s–1950s comic book hero Crimebuster done by

Mel Ramos Melvin John Ramos (July 24, 1935 – October 14, 2018) was an American figurative painter, specializing most often in paintings of female nudes, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Born in Sacramento, California, to ...

, with the emblem on the boy's costume changed from a "c" to a lowercase "e", the caption "Crime Buster" changed to the album's title, and the color of the star in the background changed. Additional artwork for the album was created by

Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captio ...

, some of which appears in the video for " Bulls on Parade". The album's

CD booklet Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for cassettes. Origin Liner notes are desce ...

includes a picture of a pile of various political and philosophical books, which include: * '' A People's History of the United States'' by

Howard Zinn Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a politica ...

* ''

Capital, Volume I ''Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie Erster Band. Buch I: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals) is the first of three treatises that ma ...

'' by

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

* ''

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A ''Künstlerroman'' written in a modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's fictional al ...

'' by

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

* ''

The Anarchist Cookbook ''The Anarchist Cookbook'', first published in 1971, is a book containing instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and related weapons, as well as instructions for the home manufacture o ...

'' by William Powell * ''

Guerrilla Warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or Irregular military, irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, Raid (military), raids ...

'' by

Che Guevara Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quot ...

* ''

Revolutionary Suicide ''Revolutionary Suicide'' is an autobiography written by Huey P. Newton with assistance from J. Herman Blake originally published in 1973. Newton was a major figure in the American black liberation movement and in the wider 1960s counterculture. ...

'' by

Huey P. Newton Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966. Under Newton's leadershi ...

* '' Soul on Ice'' by

Eldridge Cleaver Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party. In 1968, Cleaver wrote '' Soul on Ice'', a collection of essays that, at the time of i ...

* ''

The Wretched of the Earth ''The Wretched of the Earth'' (french: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and d ...

'' by

Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have b ...

* ''

Darkness at Noon ''Darkness at Noon'' (german: link=no, Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried ...

'' by

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...

* '' Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'' by

Edward S. Herman Edward Samuel Herman (April 7, 1925 – November 11, 2017) was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a fr ...

and

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

* ''

Live from Death Row ''Live from Death Row'', published in May 1995, is a memoir by Mumia Abu-Jamal, an American journalist and activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is known for having been convicted of the murder of a city police officer and sentenced to dea ...

'' by

Mumia Abu-Jamal Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death ...

* ''

Johnny Got His Gun ''Johnny Got His Gun'' is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939 by J. B. Lippincott. The novel won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1939. A 1971 fi ...

'' by

Dalton Trumbo James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including ''Roman Holiday'' (1953), ''Exodus'', ''Spartacus'' (both 1960), and ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) ...

* '' Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism'' by

Alexander Berkman Alexander Berkman (November 21, 1870June 28, 1936) was a Russian-American anarchist and author. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing. Be ...

* ''

The Grapes of Wrath ''The Grapes of Wrath'' is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Priz ...

'' by

John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social ...

* ''

Rules for Radicals ''Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals'' is a 1971 book by community activist and writer Saul D. Alinsky about how to successfully run a movement for change. It was the last book written by Alinsky, and it was published ...

'' by Saul D. Alinsky * ''Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson'' by George Jackson * ''

Walden ''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...

and Resistance to Civil Government'' by

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural su ...

* ''

Invisible Man ''Invisible Man'' is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship b ...

'' by

Ralph Ellison Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel ''Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote ''Shadow and Act'' (1964), a collecti ...

* '' Another Country'' by

James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...

Promotion

In 1995, the band sent a free 7″ record to everyone who signed up for the fan club promoted in the liner notes of their debut. Doubling as an apology to those who had received nothing and a promotion for the upcoming album, it came in a plain cardboard-colored fold-out with a black-and-white American flag on the cover alongside the band's name and "Evil Empire" in capital letters. On the back cover was a UPC with marker scribble on the barcode. The A-side was a reissue of the ''

Evening Session BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, ...

''-version of "Bombtrack" first broadcast on June 7, 1993 (listed as "Bombtrack (Live on the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

Background

Packaging

Promotion

Reception

Track listing

Personnel

Recording locations

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Awards

See also

References

External links