OAKLAND, Calif. — For all their political fury, Rage Against

the Machine let their music do the talking as they opened their U.S. tour

Friday night at the Oakland Coliseum.

The foursome played on a barren stage (the only props were a banner and

two red flags with black stars that flanked the stage) and didn't clutter

up the show with between-song banter. Blasting through songs such as the

crushing single "Guerrilla Radio" (RealAudio

excerpt), from the new The Battle of Los Angeles, guitarist

Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk created a sonic

firestorm while singer Zack de la Rocha bounded across the stage.

While Commerford stood like a monolith, providing the solid but sinewy

bottom for the band's staccato sound, de la Rocha and Morello flailed

away, pushing the music — and the crowd — as high as they could.

Morello wore a beige, uniform-like shirt, black pants and a baseball hat

with the word "Guerrilla" on it.

"They don't seem rusty at all, like you might expect on an opening night,"

Dan Harkness, 16, of San Francisco, said.

The crowd chanted along with some of the band's more incendiary lyrics.

Rage themselves, whose high-profile support of a new trial for convicted

cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has raised the ire of police groups, waited

until the end of the night to simply shout out, "Free Mumia!"

Shortly after the opening act — veteran hip-hop duo Gang Starr —

left the bare coliseum stage, the general-admission floor, which had been

about half filled for Gang Starr's hour-long set, began to fill. Within

minutes, it was packed front to back, roiling from continuous crowd domino

effects. Small mosh pits broke out. A few women atop friends' shoulders

lifted their shirts to the wild cheers of the male-heavy crowd.

The stage crew dismantled the few props onstage, and, for a backdrop,

slowly hoisted a mammoth banner emblazoned with the art for the new Rage

Against the Machine album. But there was one difference: Instead of reading

"The Battle of Los Angeles" it read, "The Battle of Oakland." The crowd

screamed its approval.

After the lights dimmed, de la Rocha announced, "Hello, we're Rage Against

the Machine, from Los Angeles, California," and the band burst into

"Testify."

"I love this band!" 13-year-old Tiffany Shores from nearby Richmond, Calif.,

screamed above the din. "They're the best in the world right now!" Shores'

parents, seated behind her, could only nod.

The six songs Rage played from The Battle of Los Angeles, including

"Mic Check (Once Hunting, Now Hunted)," "Calm Like a Bomb" and "Born of

a Broken Man" (RealAudio

excerpt), meshed easily with the more familiar tracks from Evil

Empire (1996) — including "People of the Sun" — and from

their eponymous 1992 debut, including "Bombtrack" (RealAudio

excerpt).

About two-thirds of the way through the hour-and-40-minute show, de la

Rocha offered his only between-song commentary, a warning to men in the

audience: "Real quickly, if you don't mind me saying, I see some ladies

are trying to get their way up front and dance and have a good time. If

I catch any of you guys reaching your hands in places where they don't

belong, I'm gonna throw you out of the f---ing building!"

After tearing through a blistering version of "No Shelter," led by a

now-shirtless Morello, the band left the stage, then returned for a

three-song encore: "Bulls on Parade," "Freedom" and "Killing in the Name."

During the last song, the house lights came up during the "Fuck you, I

won't do what you tell me!" refrain, and the coliseum became a swirling

cauldron of anger and rebellion, with Rage as ringmasters. When the sonic

drubbing ended, a triumphant de la Rocha threw both arms in the air and

shouted, "Free Mumia! Free Leonard Peltier! Free all political prisoners!"

With that, the band was gone, and 18,000 battle-weary Rage fans trudged

back into the rain.

The tour is scheduled to continue through Dec. 19 in Los Angeles.