Archive Review: Corporate Avenger’s Freedom Is A State of Mind (2001)

With the departure of Zach de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine, the other members of the band are left merely whimpering at the machine while other outfits steal the thundering sound they made their bones with. Although the musical landscape is littered with the corpses of a thousand and one metal-tinged hip-hop Rage wannabes (Fred Durst, your 15 minutes are up buddy…), the band’s social consciousness and politikal rage lives on in Corporate Avenger. With the explosive Freedom Is A State of Mind, Corporate Avenger lyrically tackle the gamut of social issues, matching their incendiary lyrics with muscular riffs, ringing chords and blistering rhythms.

Corporate Avenger’s Freedom Is A State of Mind

Fueled by the powerful twin lead vocals of the Corporate Avenger (Spike Xavier) and Adawee the Wind, Corporate Avenger is a conceptual band, mixing radikal politics with extreme performance art and musical chops that include elements of heavy metal, hard rock, rap, and punk. I hear strains of Black Flag, Govt. Issue, and Public Enemy in these grooves, the music created by Mike Kumagai and producer Daddy X from the Kottonmouth Kings. Like no band since Public Enemy, Corporate Avenger blazes new trails, creating a sound that is both familiar and totally unlike any band that you’ve heard before. Raucous and obnoxious, Corporate Avenger throws caution to the wind with wailing guitars, lightning-quick turntable scratching courtesy of DJ Hall of Records, anarchistic samples, big beats, and monster rhythms.

It’s the band’s lyrics that capture the imagination, though; perhaps the most controversial anti-capitalist screeds ever committed to a musical treatment. Although a major label deal allowed Rage Against the Machine to bring the band’s radikal worldview to a mainstream audience, there was always an uneasy vibe around their act, a feeling that they might have watered down the message to slip it past their corporate masters. There’s no such feeling with Corporate Avenger – this is the real shit, as hardcore as a Molotov cocktail and as dangerous as a rabid Doberman. Freedom Is A State of Mind leaves no sacred cow unslaughtered, bludgeoning the listener with sound and imagery that preaches an undeniable message of tribal brotherhood even while it damns the system that keeps people poor, confused, and uneducated.

An Alternative History Lesson

The songs on Freedom Is A State of Mind are intelligent, well researched, and articulate. The band doesn’t merely mouth leftist platitudes, but explain the reason for their perspective with their lyrics. Whether singing about the oppression of the Native American (“Christians Murdered Indians” “$20 Bill”), the corrupt nature of organized religion (“The Bible Is Bullshit”) or the social injustice and racial implications of the “war on drugs” (“FBI File”), their lyrics are consistently challenging and though-provoking. Sometimes they seem to purposely piss people off, like with “Jesus Christ Homosexual” which asks if the so-called savior might have been a homosexual. By mixing two mythological Christian icons (Jesus and the degenerate homo) in one song, Corporate Avenger manages to bait the fundamentalist Christian right while providing food for thought for the rest of us.  

Every track here is like an alternative history lesson as given by Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn, Corporate Avenger cramming more academic information into a four-minute rock song than many young listeners walk away with after four years of college. As the band states in the liner notes to Freedom Is A State Of Mind, “the songs are written in the language that we speak every day, it is not intended to be offensive. While this message is for everyone, this record may not be.” The controversy surrounding the band has led hypocritical Christian groups like the Promise Keepers and the American Family Organization to work towards pressuring retailers to keep the CD out of their stores. The band currently receives 10 to 20 death threats each week, no doubt from these “good Christians,” and several cable networks, including MTV and Comedy Central have refused to air advertising for the album.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Although Corporate Avenger is making the right enemies, their message deserves to be heard. Critics usually dismiss politikal rock bands out-of-hand, stating that music and politics don’t mix and lyrics don’t influence anybody, anyway. I strongly disagree with this perspective. Freedom Is A State of Mind is a turning point for rock music, a revival of social consciousness after too many years of mindless pop bullshit and corporate-crafted “modern rock.” With Freedom Is A State of Mind, Corporate Avenger is providing a soundtrack for the new millennium, one that is aggressively pro-human being and anti-government and anti-corporation. This is music to riot by and this is one critic who is ready to throw the first stone. (Koch Records, released 2001)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine