This video freakin rocks it! Are you kidding me? The “North Korean Military Chorus” (with orchestra as well as electric guitars) doing a wicked cover — in English — of Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name?” That’s absurd, right? But… The very likely probability of its not being authentic but the job of a damned brilliant editing genius doesn’t take away from the originality, audacity, stylization, and overall kickass nature of this video. And dammit, to even the trained eye, it looks pretty authentic, at least for awhile. Fortunately, I am NOT a trained video editor, so I enjoyed the hell out of it before then analyzing what I just saw, and I still thought it was genius, and just a bit of very naughty fun. The audience clapping to the song was bizarrely reminiscent of that scene from Queen’s video of “Radio Ga Ga!”

A short clip of the video (full video link in the first few words of this post).

Rage Against The Machine came out with their debut album about the time I was getting out of grad school and while I enjoy many genres, I’d love enjoyed goth, industrial, metal, postpunk, opera, and newer hybrids like funk metal, which I enjoyed in the Red Hot Chili Peppers and now RATM, to whatever degree it’s possible to finitely label such crossover groups.

Additionally, I’ve gone through different periods and phases in life, like most, and I guess I was at a point where not only did the music, but the message, energize me. I played that first album relentlessly.

So anyone who knows RATM and its history knows that Killing In The Name was a huge hit, probably remains their biggest, was very, very controversial for lyrics making up a third of the song (skipped in this faux rendition), but I’ve been listening to it again for the past month, just on a lark, and hence this video appeared in my YouTube channel’s recommendations and the concept of the North Korean military doing THIS antiauthority song — by their military band???– was too hilarious to pass up. And as I said, I thought it’d be a gag, seems to be, but to my untrained eye, and apparently many others, it was deceptively well done. So I’ve been wanting to post it, have been slammed but am finally getting to it now. Hope you enjoy.

Oh yeah! For those somehow unfamiliar with RATM, the album cover of their debut album was a famous historic photo but was both inflammatory and controversial for any number of people. Here it is:

Happy weekending,
Scott