Pitchfork

Photo by Jon Behm

Sorry, Rage Against the Machine fans. Despite their successful reunion shows, the beloved agitators have "no plans" to record a new album, according to a Billboard interview with guitarist Tom Morello.

"We've had a wonderful year and a half of playing shows, and I don't see any reason to not play more shows," said Morello. "The thing is there's only so many hours in the musical day, and mine are very occupied right now."

Specifically, those hours are occupied recording and touring as the Nightwatchman, which Morello called "my principal musical focus, as I see it, for the remainder of my life... This music [is] as important to me as any music I've ever been involved in. It really encapsulates everything I want to do as an artist."

The Nightwatchman told Billboard he is considering using his touring band, Freedom Fighter Orchestra, on the follow-up to this year's The Fabled City. He is also in the planning stages of a collaborative project with the Coup's Boots Riley, with whom he is currently touring.

Of course, no good conversation with Morello could end without talk of politics, and Billboard got the guitarist to say this of Barack Obama's election to the highest office in the U.S.:

"On one hand I'm hopeful a new day has dawned, but on the other hand I really do believe that the system under which we live is fundamentally a one corporate party state with two right wings. We still have two unjust wars, a horrendous financial crisis, a gross disparity between rich and poor, and the environment sliding into the abyss. All those things have yet to be confronted. It's important for us to address those issues and continue the struggle, which the Nightwatchman will certainly do."

Morello also took the interview as an opportunity to expound upon the "eerie similarities" between himself and Obama, such as "both having Kenyan fathers and white Midwestern mothers and having attended Harvard and...being devastatingly handsome." Great. Good talk.

The Nightwatchman (all with Boots Riley):

12-09 Los Angeles, CA - El Rey Theatre
12-11 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
12-12 Anaheim, CA - House of Blues