12 O’Clock Track: Inside Out, “Burning Fight”

In honor of the special-edition, super-duper, deluxe-and-remastered reissue of Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut and the upcoming Chicago version of Revelation Records’ 25th anniversary celebration—featuring Gorilla Biscuits, Shelter, Youth of Today, Texas Is the Reason, and others—today’s 12 O’Clock Track is “Burning Fight” from Zack de la Rocha’s pre-Rage hardcore group, Inside Out. The band’s only EP, No Spiritual Surrender, was released by Revelation in 1990 and remains one of the label’s most popular releases.

In existence during the fledgling days of bands like Chain of Strength and Earth Crisis, Inside Out was part of an early 90s hardcore scene that relied on drumming breakdowns and chugging guitars, and a kind of clenched-teeth intensity that equaled insane live shows—ones that made you curious how more limbs weren’t being broken and/or completely torn off in the pit. No Spiritual Surrender isn’t a mind-blowing or well-produced EP—like so many other hardcore releases at the time, it sounds like it was recorded in a cardboard box with Fisher-Price mikes—but “Burning Fight” is the most dynamic of the four songs and is living proof that Zack de la Rocha could damn well scream prior to all the funky radical bomb tracks, or whatever.