It’s been a bittersweet couple of weeks for all of us – S4M Towers included. The news that Pete Quaife, the original bassist from The Kinks passed away bummed us out, but if you needed an excuse to dig out your old Kinks Best Of, you’ve now got one. Go do it. And a big congratulations to Stevie Wonder who redeemed himself from a shocking performance moonlighting as a Uruguayan linesman, to bomb it back from South Africa and close Glasto with an absolute stormer of a set.

On other news, I’m heartbroken that the X Factor auditions came to Glasgow without me knowing; my plans for making it big as a Mike Patton tribute act by pissing in my shoes and then hurling them at Simon Cowell’s face will have to wait for another year. I’m consoling myself with the new Sophie Hunger LP, which must be the best thing to come out of Switzerland since chocolate – find out more in Album Reviews. Roland McIntyre braved a Dublin moshpit to bring you a review of Rage Against The Machine, Anna’s been blissed out on the new Foals single, Jeeshan’s fallen in love with Richard James – no, not that one – that would be terrifying – and big boss Ash has come screaming out of the closet marked ‘Progressive Rock’. Never let it be said that perceptions of being cool will cloud Shout4Music’s judgment, although, given that you know what most of us look like, then you probably knew that…hmmmfff….

The rest of the week will mostly be taken up by launching ourselves at the postman, excitedly demanding if our God Speed You! Black Emperor tickets are here yet. It doesn’t matter that the tour isn’t until December – we want them NOW to be able to look at them, stroke them, and look at them again, and then show them to people more proudly than if they were pictures of our children meeting Barack Obama.

Talking of our American friends, they seem to have gone through a controversial period – they’ve elected a President with an IQ of more than 14, they’ve discovered hitherto unknown talents at the game of soccerball…Shout4Music is worried about this….particularly since we’ve put up a big sign saying OIL HERE in the back garden in the hope of being invaded…(there’s a bigger plan at work here; basically when they come to give us democracy and Jim Davidson comes out to do his troop-entertaining bit, we bundle him into a car, drop him into a Nation of Islam meeting and see if the horrible little racist dick gets out alive…we sincerely hope he doesn’t..)

On this note, it’s perhaps best to remember what out American cousins do consistently well through the ages – straight ahead rock music. The Gaslight Anthem have been touring over here recently, and are currently on the Eurofestival circuit, and are well worth catching. There’s bits of Springsteen, bits of Tom Petty, but with the distortion pedals working overtime and more tattoos on their bodies than candidates for compulsory sterilization / euthanasia on Jeremy Kyle….come the revolution….you fuckers just wait….we’re putting a bomb in the T4 studios…finally our vermin of a species will be forced to start evolving…anyway, yes, Gaslight Anthem! Well good. Have a snout at the title track from their new album ‘American Slang’ on this here video.

SHOUT4MUSIC – THE BEST MUSICAL COPY SINCE SNOW PATROL BOUGHT THEIR FIRST U2 ALBUM

On reflection, it’s one of the stranger reunions of recent years. When Rage Against The Machine released their eponymous debut album in 1992, they were immediately adopted as the flag-bearers for politicised rap-rock. Over the years, they demonstrated as much ability to burn flags as to bear them, so when their eventual split was announced, it was almost fitting: that sense of a fire burning out. Their influence, however, reverberated through a million subsequent ‘nu-metal’ bands, and since their sound arguably never lost its relevance, their reunion in 2006 was no surprise. What was surprising, however, was the new face of  ‘The Machine’ they found themselves raging against. No strangers to rattling the cages of the likes of the U.S. Government, Fox TV or the New York Stock Exchange, the band found themselves at the heart of a hugely popular Facebook campaign to ensure Simon Cowell’s latest ‘X-Factor’ winner would not secure their customary Christmas Number One slot. The campaign’s success saw the expletive-laden ‘Killing In The Name’ anthem secure the coveted top spot, catapulting the L.A band alongside such luminaries as Slade and Cliff Richard. It was a strangely appropriate face-off for a band with its roots in underground hardcore punk and hip-hop, but an unpredictable one nonetheless. It was also really rather funny.

Which leads us to Dublin. The atmosphere in the o2 Arena is one of heavy expectancy – reports are in from the free ‘victory’ gig in Finsbury Park, and reports are good. A stark Zapatista backdrop pushes the political agenda front and centre. Air-raid sirens wail by way of an introduction, and as the band emerge to a thunderous ‘Testify’ a hail of (mostly full) plastic cups soars upwards. We’re thirty seconds in and an arena full of people – Irish people at that -  have decided they have better things to do than try to hold on to their beer. It’s at this stage you realise the sheer scale of the energy that’s about to be released here, and it’s mightily impressive. It’s a set that’s drawn heavily from the debut album, and judging by the enthusiastic rap-rock karaoke that permeates the set, few in attendance have a problem with this.

The band throw themselves into the material with obvious zeal, and there’s a sense of everything being in its right place after the somewhat incongruous Audioslave outing which followed the dissolution of the group. Zack de La Rocha’s raps are a perfect complement to the breakdowns and beatdowns, and Tom Morello’s guitar work straddles the line between experimentation and straight-ahead metal as expertly as ever. There’s not much in the way of let-up either – stand-out tracks such as ‘Bullet In The Head’ receive an early airing, and there’s precious little offered to slow the pace. ‘Renegades Of Funk’ and ‘Sleep Now In The Fire’ inject liquid groove into the crowd, ensuring that we dance (suckas) as much as we as jump (suckas). It’s at this point you realise that this is stadium rock, just not as we know it. There’s no acoustic ballad or lighter-in-the-air moment, but there’s a palpable sense of cohesion among the assembled. It might not be big and it might not be clever, but there’s a definite catharsis involved in adding your voice to any of the band’s catchy soundbites and mass swear-alongs.

Note-perfect renditions of ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Freedom’ herald the obvious set-closer, and as the crowd explodes for ‘Killing In The Name’ – de La Rocha’s nod to the financial trouble facing Ireland and Greece in the EU at the hands of home-grown shady corporate and government dealings still ringing in our ears – there’s a very real feeling that being bruised and sore is tomorrow’s problem, and that for now, we too have something to Rage Against. Whether or not this is true grass-roots mobilisation of the masses is, of course, as much a matter for debate now as it was in 1992, but for those gladly risking injury (note to crowd surfers: you need people in front of you for it to work, otherwise you fall face-first on the floor) to express their appreciation for the visit, I doubt that matters much. There’s been little development in sound – critics will find as much to deconstruct as ever, but it’s difficult to feel short-changed by the continued live force delivered by the band.