Where's Zack?

For Christmas this year, I received the Rage Against the Machine "Live at the Olympic Grand Auditorium" DVD and CD.

As I listened to the CD in the car the other day, I wondered, "Where's Zack?" We know that the other members of the band have formed Audioslave with former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell, but I hadn't heard about Rage singer Zack de la Rocha in years.

A few years back I heard he was going to release a solo album. A friend of mine who works for Details magazine told me he heard some of the music and liked it, but there's been no word in the public media for quite some time.

Earlier today, I searched around the net, and came upon a Web site dedicated to Zack, zdlr.net. The news on there says Zack's solo album will be out some time this year.

You can also find a couple of tracks of Zack's around the net.

The first, "March of Death," was released shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, and features DJ Shadow. To me, it was just another generic rap song - nothing exciting, and lacking the energy of RATM.

The second track, "We Want it All," was made for the Fahrenheit 9/11 Compilation CD of music "inspired by the movie," etc. The songs better than "March," but the music lacks the intensity of RATM.

I think the problem Zack is going to have, if he releases a CD of any kind of rock music, is that it won't have Tom Morello's guitar work which was signature to the Rage sound. A rap album will stray from that criticism, but can it appease the Rage fans?

I guess we'll just have to wait for the album to be released.