Political rockers Rage Against the Machine may have electrified record buyers with their third album, The Battle of Los Angeles, which will debut Thursday (Nov. 11) at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, but guitarist Tom Morello says he's more interested in tapping into the "live wire" of the band's cathartic concerts than in big sales.

"The main difference [between recording the album and playing it] is our audience is there," Morello, whose band kicks off a monthlong tour Nov. 19, said shortly before the album came out.

"I've never seen a more rabid, feverish audience than [ours] — everywhere from Mexico City to Manhattan," he said. "It's like grabbing a live wire when you step onstage with Rage Against the Machine" (RealAudio excerpt of interview).

Of the album, a 12-song political manifesto that sold 430,000 copies in the week ending Sunday, Morello said, "We've fulfilled our responsibilities in that we made the record of our careers. That's our job. If it sells 10 or 10 million copies, that's not really in our hands."

The Battle of Los Angeles easily beat out Mariah Carey's Rainbow for the top spot on the chart, becoming the second straight Rage album to debut at #1. It nearly doubled the first week sales of Rage's other #1, Evil Empire (1996).

"This is Rage's time," Sky Daniels, general manager of the radio trade magazine Radio & Records, said Tuesday.

Others expressed surprise, though.

Even with what he called the mountain of hype for the record —

including heavy radio play and recent appearances by Rage on MTV and the

"Late Show With David Letterman" — Tower Records San Francisco buyer

Tony Rivera said he wasn't prepared for the disc's strong sales. (SonicNet

is a division of MTV Interactive.)

"I figured they had a handful of avid fans that would pick it up early,

but we had sold 29 by noon Tuesday (Nov. 2), which is really good," Rivera

said. In the first week, the record sold 129 copies at Rivera's store.

"The first day, people were coming in here, and even before it was released they kept coming in and asking about it," Carla Martinez, a manager at a Wherehouse Records outlet in Los Angeles, Rage's hometown, said. The store sold 77 copies of the disc in a week, she said.

Rage's third album balances hard-rock dynamics with singer Zack de la Rocha's politicized rapped/sung lyrics. Kicking off with the first single, the anthemic "Guerrilla Radio" (RealAudio excerpt), the CD is an uncompromising look at consumer culture, sweatshop labor and social injustice. Morello said the group constantly strives to re-create the energy of its albums onstage.

Since releasing their self-titled debut in 1992 — featuring such songs as "Bombtrack" and "Bullet in the Head" (RealAudio excerpt) — Rage Against the Machine have developed a reputation for explosive shows onstage and left-wing activism offstage. Evil Empire included the live favorite "Bulls on Parade" (RealAudio excerpt) and the anti-poverty track "Down Rodeo."

Morello said he's been able to match the intensity of Rage's live shows

only one other time in his musical life, when his previous band, the Los

Angeles hard-rock group Lock-Up, opened for popular art-rockers Jane's

Addiction in 1989. "It was a New Year's Eve show and [Jane's leader]

Perry [Farrell] asked us to impersonate Jane's Addiction," Morello said.

With the lights low, Morello said, he took to the stage wearing a dreadlock

wig, mimicking the hair of Jane's guitarist Dave Navarro, and the band

played a note-perfect cover of Jane's Addiction's "Pigs in Zen"

(RealAudio

excerpt).

"I've never felt anything like the rush and the electricity," Morello

said of the gag. "It really was like grabbing a live wire standing on that

stage from the incredible intensity. We did our joke, they came on and

finished off the set and I walked offstage thinking, 'Man, that is

unbelievable.'

"In Rage Against the Machine we get that onstage every night, and sometimes it's times two, times three of what it was like that night" (RealAudio excerpt of interview).

Earlier this week, the nation's largest police organization threatened to boycott NBC and its sponsors if the network airs a performance by Rage on Thursday's episode of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

The Fraternal Order of Police's threat was inspired by the political rockers' ardent support of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose name is mentioned in "Guerrilla Radio." An Epic Records spokesperson for Rage Against the Machine offered no comment on the FOP's actions.

Abu-Jamal, a former journalist, has been on Pennsylvania's death row since he was convicted of the Dec. 9, 1981, murder of a Philadelphia police officer. Abu-Jamal has proclaimed his innocence, and his supporters claim he was set up because of his work as a political commentator and his involvement with the Black Panther Party, a black-activist organization.

Rappers Gang Starr will open the Rage Against the Machine tour, which begins Nov. 19 at the Oakland (Calif.) Coliseum.