Rage Against the Machine - Know Your Enemy - Guitar Tab

Rage Against The Machine - XX (20th Anniversary Special Edition)

1992 4:55

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About Know Your Enemy

Few tracks from 1992 put a single riff to work as relentlessly as "Know Your Enemy." The whole song is built on a tight, percussive E-minor figure that Tom Morello drives with heavy palm muting and an almost locked-in rhythmic aggression. Getting that grinding, locked feel right is the real challenge: every note has to land with the same force, and the right-hand muting pressure needs to stay consistent across the whole riff or the groove falls apart. Rage Against the Machine built their sound on the idea that a guitar could do things that felt like turntables and beats, and this song is one of the clearest examples of that approach. If the picking rhythm feels slippery, use the Practice Toolbar to loop the opening riff slowed down and focus on keeping the palm mute tight and the attack even. Once the mechanics are solid at a lower tempo, bringing it back up to speed feels natural.

• The main riff is built almost entirely on heavy palm-muted downstrokes in E minor, so right-hand stamina and consistency are the primary technique to develop.
• Tom Morello often used a DigiTech Whammy pedal and a kill switch for his solo sections, so a standard clean setup will cover the rhythm parts but not every effect.
• Because the riff repeats at high intensity for most of the song, practising it in short looped segments at reduced speed is more productive than running it full-length every time.