Album: Corporate Avenger

Freedom is a State of Mind, Suburban Noize/KOCH

The California rap-metal outfit Corporate Avenger combine the political anger of Rage Against the Machine, the analytical lucidity of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, and the raging disgust of Henry Rollins on this first blistering manifesto, spraying censure and indignation in a 360-degree field of fire around their (presumably saintly) foxhole. Claiming ancestral connection to Celtic, Viking and Cherokee tribes, among others, they advocate a sort of tribal renaissance as resistance to imposed religious structures, particularly Christianity in "Christians Murdered Indians", though they're equal-opportunity atheists judging by "The Bible is Bullshit", whose chorus contends: "The Bible is bullshit/ The Koran is a lie/ The Bhagavad Gita did not fall from the sky/ These are the books that are written by men." Native American disenfranchisement is high on their list of complaints, with references to imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier in "FBI Files" and to the Trail of Tears in "$20 Bill" ("They say the truth will set us free/ But they don't know their history"). But their broader anarchist attitudes, as espoused in tracks such as "Voting Doesn't Work" and "Taxes are Stealing", are of that peculiarly US cast in which libertarianism can tip over into right-wing fundamentalism. For all that, there's much to admire in their uncompromising attacks, not least their assertion in "Fault the Police (I Don't)" that "I don't cry when a gangsta dies/ 'Cos he probably deserved it". At last, a hip hop group which isn't prepared to pay lip-service to criminality.