Rage Against The Machine "will not be touring or playing live again", says drummer

Rage Against The Machine drummer Brad Wilk has said that the rap metal band will not play any further shows.

The musician posted on Instagram today (January 3): “I know a lot of people are waiting for us to announce new tour dates for all the canceled RATM shows. I don’t want to string people or myself along any further.

“So while there has been some communication that this may be happening in the future… I want to let you know that RATM (Tim [Commerford, bass], Zack [De La Rocha, vocals], Tom [Morello, guitars] and I) will not be touring or playing live again.

“I’m sorry for those of you who have been waiting for this to happen. I really wish it was…”

No official statement from the band has been released at time of publication.

Wilk, Commerford, De La Rocha and Morello co-founded Rage Against The Machine in 1991 and released their lauded debut album the following year. Its lead single, Killing In The Name, was a global chart hit.

Rage Against The Machine disbanded in 2000, following two further studio albums and a cover album. They reunited in 2007 and again in 2019, when they announced a reunion tour for the following year. It was postponed due to the pandemic, and while the band were finally able to complete 19 US dates in 2022, European dates were cancelled when frontman Zach de la Rocha ruptured his achilles tendon during a show in Chicago, IL.

“It's been almost three months since [I tore my achilles tendon in] Chicago, and I still look down at my leg in disbelief,” De La Rocha wrote that October, when Rage Against The Machine’s planned 2023 US tour was cancelled.

“Two years of waiting through the pandemic, hoping we would have an opening to be a band again and continue the work we started 30 some odd years ago. Rehearsing, training, reconciling, working our way back to form. Then one and a half shows into it and my tendon tears. Felt like a sick joke the universe played on me. As I write this I remind myself it's just bad circumstance. Just a fucked up moment.”

Prior to the reunion tour dates, RATM's last show had been at the L.A. Rising festival show at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, CA, in July 2011.

Three year's later, Wilk was the first to claim it had been the band's last show, telling The Pulse Of Radio, "As far as I know, we played our last show in 2011 at the Coliseum, and if that was our last show, that's a good way to go out. I sort of had to put it in my head that that band is over in order for me to just move on with my life, to be honest with you, so that's kind of where that lies."