Send "One Day As A Lion " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Allmusic |
![One Day As A Lion - One Day As A Lion [EP] review](http://www.sweetslyrics.com/poze/picture.jpg) Here it is...finally. One Day as a Lion are Zack de la Rocha, lead vocalist (and current as of July 2008) for Rage Against the Machine, and Jon Theodore, former drummer with the Mars Volta. De la Rocha and Theodore have been reportedly working on this project since 2006. The end result is a volatile mix of rhythm, noise, and radical poetry. De la Rocha is no stranger to the great political poets; his brand of rapping and freestyling has always been saturated with their influence as well as his own constantly evolving political thought. Many of these writers are cited in the set's acknowledgements — Jimmy Santiago Baca, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Junot Diaz, to name just four. The name of the band comes from a near mythic photograph by the great George Rodriguez published in 1970: "It's better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb." The slogan is a tag centered in a frame on a white wall in Boyle Heights. Knowing this, you might believe you have an idea of what these songs are about, but you'd be wrong; you only think you do. Yes, these five songs, clocking in at just over 20 minutes, are an intense racket of sociopolitical noise. Theodore's drums add the taut, tightly wound pulse of the lion, the phrase, the breath, the heart of the sound, while de la Rocha's keyboards blurt, pulse, and skronk a post-9/11 warning siren throughout. Some nonsense has been made of this entire project being influenced by Led Zeppelin — that seems to be the thing to write in 2008. Truth is, one track, "Ocean View," touches on Zep's mighty tune "The Ocean" in the melody of its refrain, but its lyrical content is in stark, even violent contrast to the former hard rock heroes as de la Rocha spits atop some mighty organic beats and squalling synths: "...Oceans of tears now rise aflame to tear them down/Oceans of past crimes now fill our hearts to tear them down...." It's poetry, it's political, it's mysterious — until you sit down and let this killer track knock you flat on your back with its rage, power, and knowledge of reckoning. The rest you are going to have to check out, save to say that all five of these cuts are essential, pure kinetic anger motivated by love for people (to paraphrase Che Guevara). This is a five-cut call to arms. No matter what ultimately happened with One Day as a Lion, we now have this document, perfect in its short sparking length and raucous in its truth. Twenty minutes? How long was the first Sex Pistols album, 30 with some filler? How long was Grandmaster Flash's "The Message"? Eight? There isn't any filler here; it's all the aural ignition of a gasoline bomb going off in your ears....full text |
| Billboard |
| 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.—Mikael Wood...full text |
| Rapreviews |
| Quick question - who is most political lyricist on the mic of all-time? Some newbies might lean toward Dead Prez or Immortal Technique, though particularly the latter can lean a little more towards conspiracist. Those that expand their horizons would be wise in choosing spoken word phenom Saul Williams. Old school cats would probably go with Chuck D (of Public Enemy) who really introduced this element into hip-hop music. But, those that are not particularly play rap favoritism might look at Zach De La Rocha of the rock group Rage Against the Machine and say it's that dude. True to its name, the rock group really found a core group of equally angry fans who found truth in the scathing lyrics of "Bulls on Parade" some twelve years ago. People flocked to some of the most energetic live shows of all-time. Now Zach is back with the same philosophies he had when he was rhyming over Tom Morello's (of Audioslave) crafty guitar work. "One Day as a Lion" sounds like a missing limb of RATM's catalogue, for better or worse, depending on your tastes. De La Rocha has always evoked the feeling that he is a rapping over rock beats and has showed interest in more straightforward hip-hop music by teaming up with KRS-One and Last Emperor on the "Lyricist Lounge Vol. 1" for the track "C.I.A.," a true gem. Yet, he still maintains his rock/rap hybrid feel on "One Day as a Lion." I'm not sure if 20 minutes of music will really please his avid fanbase who have had a painstaking wait for several years, but "Wild International" and the title track are well worth the price of admission (it retails for about 6 bucks). On both of these tracks there is kind of a clever use of distortion that makes a sound so similar to Rage that it seems Zach might be looking to reunite with Morello plenty soon enough. "Wild International" is just an example of the angriness Zach De La Rocha conveys in his rhymes and his anti-establishment attitude with lines like, "With the M1 millimeter let the chamber of the hit em/Let the rich play catch with em/Better yet, let em eat em and shit em/Till they're so full of holes that that they drown in their own." It's not music for the faint of heart or those that are easily offended, but it can be construed as truthful from certain antagonized perspectives. The effectiveness of the track relies heavily on the chorus as well, which goes as such: "Both Mohammed and Christ word life would lay your body down To a tune so wild international In the desert full of bullets let your body rot With my chrome, with my verse, with my body rock" Anytime a casual rap listener hears the phrase "body rot" they likely think of some horror core shock rap, or hard metal, but Zach's style cannot be accurately placed in either of these musical genres. More hard rock than anything, what makes the front man so special as an entertainer is his ability to transcend simple categorization....full text |
One Day As A Lion lyrics
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