Biography
Corporate Avenger pushed the aggressive metal sound and outspoken left-wing politics of Rage Against the Machine to greater extremes, drawing the expected backlash from conservative circles for their direct, combative attacks on American society. The group fused rap-metal and industrial metal with the hardcore punk style associated with Crass and Black Flag, emerging from Orange County’s Humble Gods, where Spike Xavier had played bass alongside his brother Brad Daddy X. Following the Humble Gods’ dissolution, Daddy X became the frontman of the rap-metal group Kottonmouth Kings, while Xavier adopted the Corporate Avenger moniker and assembled a band under the same name. He teamed with co-leader the Wind, and the two began performing with faces covered in elaborate symbolic paint. The roster later expanded to include stage dancer and self-styled “visual assassin” Palikela (aka the Taxman), who performed the same role for the Kottonmouth Kings, along with DJ Hall of Records and an unofficial rotating group of supporting players called the ATF. Xavier had already started recording in 1998, prior to the band’s full formation; those sessions yielded the six-song Taxes Are Stealing EP, issued on Suburban Noize in spring 2000. A nine-song follow-up, The New Testament, was quickly recorded for sale during that summer’s tour with the Kottonmouth Kings, after which Corporate Avenger secured a deal with Koch Records. Early reports about the lyrical themes of their debut full-length, Freedom Is a State of Mind, prompted protests from conservative and religious watchdog organizations, who objected to tracks titled “The Bible Is Bullshit,” “Drug Dealing God,” “Jesus Christ Homosexual,” and “Christians Murdered Indians.” Multiple Southern retailers declined to carry the album upon its summer 2001 release, and the band subsequently received hate mail along with death threats.
Albums
