Zack De La Rocha injured his leg during a July stop on Rage Against The Machine’s long-awaited reunion tour. A little later, when announcing earlier this month that the band needed to cancel their 2023 North American tour, he revealed it was a torn Achilles heel. De La Rocha is down but not out. The Rage frontman is featured on Algiers’ single “Irreversible Damage,” released on Wednesday.
Algiers described the song as “feral” and the frenetic, genre-melding soundscape backs that up. “Time is over” is chanted throughout the track, but per NME, vocalist Franklin James Fisher described it as ultimately positive: “The end of that song is the sound of joy. That’s what hope sounds like in 2022 when everything’s falling apart.”
The Atlanta-bred political provocateurs mesh seamlessly with De La Rocha, whose verse asserts, “This a relapse / What it be god / No rehab for my jihad / A rapture in a grief storm / Time on my neck and it be gone.” His flow accelerates and intensifies as he spits about being abandoned, murdered and reborn in an alley, ultimately seeking a way to wash away the pain.
“Irreversible Damage” arrives as Algiers revealed Shook, their new album due February 24, 2023, via Matador Records.
“Bite Back” featuring Billy Woods and Backxwash dropped as the lead single last month. Big Rube, Mark Cisneros, Samuel T. Herring, Jae Matthews, LaToya Kent, Nadah El Shazly, DeForrest Brown Jr., Patrick Shiroishi, and Lee Bains III are also featured across the 17-track album.
Watch the “Irreversible Damage” visualizer above.