One Day as a Lion
Anti (2008)

by Matt Espinoza Watson

“They say that, in war, the truth be the first casualty, so I dig in selector, I, the resurrector..” So begins
One Day as a Lion, a 5 song EP just released on Anti, with Zack de la Rocha on vocals and keyboards and Jon Theodore (formerly of The Mars Volta) on drums. The band and album take their name from “the infamous 1970 black & white photo captured by legendary Chicano photographer George Rodriguez” of East L.A. graffiti reading “It’s better to live one day as a lion than a thousand years as a lamb.” The band says this album is a “stripped down attempt to realize this sentiment in sound.” As the members of the band suggest, the sound is simplified down to the basic elements: the drums, Zack’s lyrics, and some accompanying keys that alternate between sounding like distorted guitar or thick basslines.

It’s difficult to write a review (& try to pretend to be objective) of an artist who had such an impact on my political consciousness, or whose lyrics really helped me begin to think critically about what I was taught in school and the world around me…. So the point is, before I even heard the EP, there were bound to be lots of expectations built up, especially when that artist hasn’t really produced any new music in 8 years (except a pair of somewhat obscure tracks with DJ Shadow & Trent Reznor, respectively, both of which were rumored to be preludes to full-length albums with said producers, neither of which came to fruition). In many ways, One Day as a Lion fulfills those expectations, if only because I’ve got some new music from ZDLR to bump.

And bump it does. The obvious comparisons must be made with Rage Against the Machine…It’s still Zack, so the music feels similar, and his lyrics are as poetic, incendiary, and political as ever, but he definitely treads into new water here. Think the raw energy of RATM, but with fewer band members and fewer songs.

And there’s more singing here (as opposed to rapping or yelling) than on all the Rage albums combined.. “Ocean View” and “Last Letter” showcase this new sort of sound. At the same time, “Wild International,” “If You Fear Dying,” (sick bassline & clean simple drums) and “One Day as a Lion” showcase Zack at his best: dropping ridiculous rhymes over beats that make you nod your head and scratch your head simultaneously.

Religion seems to creep up a bunch on this album, as Zack takes aim at fundamentalism in “Wild International”: “both Mohammed and Christ word life would lay your body down, / to a tune so wild international.” And in “Last Letter”: “Your god is a homeless assassin, who roams the world to save. / He’s digging for buried treasures, leaving nothing but fields of graves.” But it’s the title track that is the most explosive song on the album: “Close your eyes, but don’t sleep. / We comin’ like people’s army / for the people who can’t eat. / who work with no sleep, / for the child with no shoes on their feet, / a generation who flash heat….” The song is like LA at night. Maybe it’s just the history of urban uprisings in LA, but more than once, while out in LA at night, I’ve had the feeling that anything could happen, like there’s potential energy bubbling up from the streets, or stored there somehow, like a match struck could ignite an all-consuming blaze. And Zack rhymes, “After dark, my city’s a fuse. / One day I say today we live as a lion, / and when our cubs grow, we’ll show you what war is good for.”