Do you recall how, as a child, you’d take two good things, mix them together, and create a disaster? You know what I mean. Like Mac and Cheese and Oreos, scissors and hair (actually, scissors and anything), and the ever-catastrophic mixture of gasoline and fire. Well, One Day As A Lion’s debut EP is kind of like that, sans the messy ending. The duo is a union of Rage Against The Machine front man Zack De La Rocha and The Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore. I know. It’s an epic stew. Like Picasso and Van Gogh. Stewart and Colbert. Jolie and Pitt. You get the idea.
The highly anticipated five-track EP dropped on July 22 after months of speculation that the Mayan calendar would run out before De La Rocha’s new project emerged. But what about that name, you ask? When questioned about the roots of their experimental title, the band attributed it to the caption of a well-known photograph taken by George Rodriguez, which states, “It’s better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb.” Clever, eh? And while Theodore maintains the prog rock drum stylings that The Mars Volta is known for, De La Rocha invokes some magic of his own with his keyboard and politically angst-ridden lyrics. But what else would you expect from him?
Not surprisingly, he kicks the album off in customary De La Rocha style, belting out “They say that in war, truth be the first casualty,” on the EP’s opening track, “Wild International.” Fueled by his usual aggression, De La Rocha conjures up heavy guitar and bass lines that come on strong, like an Olsen twin being crushed by a 400-pound man. “Ocean View,” begins with one of Theodore’s signature hard-hitting drum solos, eventually developing into a pounding background for De La Rocha’s fuming rap vocals. While what he spits often sounds more like an exercise in the art of slam poetry than a song, De La Rocha is always charismatically fiery in his approach to sensitive issues. Infused with heavy feedback, the album seems to target social issues as a whole rather than singular instances that Rage Against The Machine’s albums are infamous for. Yet although De La Rocha and Theodore are both indisputably musical geniuses in their own right, inevitably, there is always room for improvement. Like the EP’s fourth track, “If You Fear Dying,” which unfortunately, starts off sounding almost exactly like the first track, “Wild International.”
When I first heard “If You Fear Dying,” I was confused, thinking to myself, “Didn’t I just hear this song?” Clearly what they need is someone to take over the keyboard reigns, allowing De La Rocha to do what he does best; spit the truth. However, he’s already three steps ahead of listeners, geniuses always are, mentioning in an interview that the band is currently looking for additional members.
By and large, for being a mere five tracks, the EP does a remarkable job of making listener’s salivate at the prospect of the future album, which is rumored to be released sometime this autumn. One Day As A Lion proves to be an innovative mixture of two musical giants itching to rile up their audience in hopes of social and political discovery. Like peanut butter and jelly.