One Day As a Lion

A new Los Angeles-based duo featuring Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha and former Mars Volta member Jon Theodore, One Day As a Lion kicks up a tough-minded rap-rock racket on its debut EP. The music is stripped-down but robust, with de la Rocha on vocals and keyboard and Theodore on drums. There's no guitarist or bassist in One Day As a Lion, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from the sound of these five tracks, which throb with fuzz and groove. On opener "Wild International" de la Rocha describes his tongue as being "dipped in funk arsenic," and that gives you an idea of his outraged lyrical focus here. (Let's just say he hasn't warmed up to the Bush administration since Rage started playing shows again last year.) A bracing introduction.