Video: Rebel Rampage, ‘Red Star’ (feat. Angelo Moore)

Kevin Bronson on November 6th, 2018

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Jan. 21, 2017 was a special day for Rebel Rampage’s lead singer and bassist Graham Czach. Moved by what he saw at the women’s march, a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Czach vowed to put together a band that harkened back to a time when social justice and music were closely aligned. With Dylan McGee Jones on guitar and Punky Balfour on drums, Rebel Rampage found their raison d’etre, a message of active resistance in the same vein as Rage Against the Machine. Their debut album “Divided We Fall” came out in October.

Melding metal, punk and funk together, the power trio’s latest video “Red Star” features the legendary Angelo Moore of Fishbone on sax and general funkiness. The single, a follow-up to their cover of the Graham Nash/David Crosby classic “Immigration Man,” sees the band atop a downtown Los Angeles rooftop surrounded by the Stars and Stripes in the “Union Down” position interspersed with Soviet-era Russian flags.

The lyrics “Feel the hammer come down, hit our heart, blood on the ground, swing the sickle round and round, reap our rights, hand ’em to a clown” make a pretty clear point about the band’s feelings towards Trump’s association with Vladimir Putin. Their debut album “Divided We Fall” is about justice, reform, human rights and socioeconomic struggle.

||| Watch: The video for “Red Star”