Tom Morello isn’t done with raging against the machine.
The Rock Hall-inducted guitarist was the musical guest on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live Tuesday night (Sept. 29), and was given the honors of closing out the show.
Morello wielded the axe and took the mic for a powerful performance of “Soldier in the Army of Love,” lifted from his new solo collection, Everyone Gets Everything They Want (via Mom + Pop Music).
The rocker, wearing a cap and aviator glasses, was joined with a full band and backing vocalists for a protest song that drips in fury and anger. To his right, Morello’s teenage son Roman, who ripped out a solo with his electric guitar behind his back, the instrument daubed with a call to action for homeless rights. He’s clearly a chip off the old block.
Everyone Gets Everything They Want is stacked with anti-fascist songs. On “Soldier,” Morello sings: “Transforming motherf—ers like Saul into Paul / On the road to Damascus at the Westfield Mall / In the maquiladoras and at Carnegie Hall / In the grain elevator making fascists crawl.”
Morello has fought the power with Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, the “supergroup” Prophets of Rage, solo project The Nightwatchman, and, of course, as a founding member of Rage Against the Machine, which was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.
As a member of Rage, the guitarist notched seven entries on the Billboard 200, including two No. 1s: Evil Empire (1996) and The Battle of Los Angeles (1999). And as bandleader of The Nightwatchman, Morello has landed three additional titles on the all-genre national albums chart.
“I make anti-racist songs for anti-racists,” the politically outspoken musician said in a statement announcing Everyone Gets Everything They Want, his first-ever rock full-length as a soloist. “I make anti-fascist songs for anti-fascists. And I make anti-Nazi songs for anti-Nazis.”
Kimmel is currently broadcasting a special week of episodes from the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
Watch the late-night performance below.
