One Day As A Lion is a duo, made up of former Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha and former Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore. Zack sings/raps and plays keyboards and Jon drums and they produce a fuzzy rock sound with Zack’s traditional bare-knuckled poetry. It is a perfect setup for the street poet, Zack, to spit his open mic poetry jam overtop a dirty little beat that won’t let you go.
The band says they take their name from a 1970 photograph taken of a graffiti message: “It’s better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb.” Although this is only the band's first release and not a full-length CD, it does have the feel of a duo that is bearing their big, strong, air-filled chest of a lion and pouncing on the music. These songs feel a bit like they were rushed, hasty, and sloppy, but they also feel intimate and intense and like they are begging to get to your brain.
What strikes the ear first are the thick sounds of the ep. It is a 5-song effort – released on Anti Records - that feels very meaty. These songs don’t feel as sparse as they really are, with just the 2 instruments. The homemade noise aspect of One Day As A Lion fills the room, throbbing and scratching the chalkboard, and Zack’s lyrics are apparently personal but also readily expand to open up some interesting thoughts.
The ep opens up with “Wild International” a short fuzzy keyboard hook ontop of some jazzy high-hat rhythms and Zack lays out a tale of homogeneous radio and a god who doesn’t care. “Ocean View” is the second track and Zack says “You can have the mic or the heater, but you can’t have both” in the world of rap and violence, and an ocean of tears. The third track, “Last Letter,” is the strongest on the EP. Zack again hits on themes of god and pain and negligence and disregard spouting the lines “Your god is a homeless assassin/ who roams the world to save/ he’s digging for buried treasure/ leaving nothing but fields of graves.” The track is the most dynamic on the EP, with Jon’s rolling, powerful drumming and Zack’s hard-hitting lyrics and vocal style are both displayed beautifully.
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