Tom Morello’s guitarwork across Rage Against the Machine’s four immortal albums landed a perfect bullseye in the rarefied nexus of radical creativity and rock’n’roll classicism. The elastic wah-wahs in “Bulls on Parade,” the valiant chords in “Know Your Enemy,” the laser beam solo in “Sleep Now in the Fire”—these are generational soundtracks for battering steering wheels and pumping fists. None of the subpar projects Morello did after his Wall Street-crashing rap-rock band initially disbanded—Audioslave, Prophets of Rage, the virtuous yet unmemorable protest folk he released as the Nightwatchman—came close to eclipsing Rage Against the Machine’s incendiary music and incisive political messaging, which was the culmination of four distinct artistic personalities joining forces, not just one or two visionaries directing their hired hands.

Nothing Morello does now can diminish his essential contributions to RATM, and in recent years, he’s taken full advantage of that leeway. In 2018, the guitar god released his debut album under his own name, The Atlas Underground, an atrocious scramble of collaborations with dubstep producers (Knife Party, Bassnectar), radio-rock dweebs (Marcus Mumford, Portugal. The Man), and the rapper K. Flay that elicited visceral reactions like “Why?” and “Who is this for?” and “What did I do to deserve this suffering?” Two more Atlas Undergrounds with equally inscrutable casts of characters—and possibly the tackiest pre-AI cover art of the decade—followed in 2021, proving that without dedicated bandmates to guide him, Morello could consistently write a terrible song with just about anyone.

It doesn’t feel good to rag on Morello. Inherant hypocrisies of being a self-proclaimed activist who lives in an L.A. mansion aside, his politics have been admirably consistent for all of his public life; he’s a fiercely vocal champion of socialist, anti-racist, anti-war, and pro-Palestinian causes. He’s a likeable presence in a celebrity caste rife with ghoulish sellouts, which is why it’s so disappointing that his new album, Everyone Gets Everything They Want, fails to provide anything that anyone who loves Morello’s classic work would actually want. The tracklist is a confused grab-bag of sanitized blues-rawk, tedious folk poetry, and degraded versions of whatever his featured guest’s own band happens to sound like, whether that’s cockeyed nu-metal (System of Down’s Serj Tankian) or conscious rap-punk (Kneecap).

Everyone Gets Everything They Want is billed as Morello’s “first solo rock album,” which is sort of accurate if you ignore several songs that sound exactly like unreleased Nightwatchman ballads. And five tracks co-written with Morello’s 15-year-old son, Roman. And a lead single, “Everything Burns,” a synthy nu-metal calamity fronted by Beartooth singer Caleb Shomo, that could slot into any of the Atlas Underground atrocities. Otherwise, yes, Morello does sing and play guitar on many of these tunes, including the title track that sounds like Johnny Cash via Shinedown, and also “Soldier in the Army of Love,” a soul-inflected hard-rock pastiche with a cheese-melting blues riff that sounds like it was written to roll out a new Arby’s menu item.

All throughout the record, Morello sounds more like someone covering Rage songs on a Guitar Center amplifier than the actual axman behind those blistering classics. His playing is totally bereft of the almost vocal character of his RATM-era work (bow-wow chika bow-wow), and his phoned-in power chords are exaggerated by the horrifically mechanical drum and bass tones that could easily pass for stock beats on a Casio keyboard. Sadly, Morello’s singing isn’t any better. He delivers nearly every verse in a smokey, outlaw mutter, which makes each rudimentary folk ditty (“The Last Rung on the Ladder,” “I Am Not Yours to Command”) feel like a coffee shop open-mic night that never ends. The only song on the album that genuinely rocks is, ironically, the one non-rock song, “Unconquered,” a Prodigy-esque jungle-rap rager with Irish Rage protégés Kneecap, whose rugged percussion samples and lively vocals jolt the tracklist to life. It’s almost like Morello is better suited for situations where a capable and charismatic rap-rock vocalist is on the mic and he’s solely responsible for shredding, which he does with now-uncommon virtuosity during “Unconquered”’s tasty solo.

With Everyone Gets Everything They Want’s nobly righteous lyrics, Morello tries to make the case that he’s more than just a six-string savior. “I make anti-racist songs for anti-racists. I make anti-fascist songs for anti-fascists. And I make anti-Nazi songs for anti-Nazis,” Morello said in a press release. He was referring to “Date Night,” where he retells the true story of a trio of Dutch spies who seduced and assassinated Nazis during WWII. It’s worthy of cinematic adaptation, but instead of playing up the visuals or framing the story within the context of current events, Morello wastes the hook naming off places where the assassins claimed their Nazi bodies (ditches, streets, forests, beaches). The power of RATM rested in the gut-socking specificity of Zack de la Rocha’s lyrics, which walked an artful line between poetic allegory and punk bluntness. Morello’s own attempts result in juvenile metaphors like, “Trained to fetch, beg, stay, and sit/Research suggests you’re full of shit,” a line in “Solider in the Army of Love” that I’ll charitably attribute to teenage Roman, who is credited as co-lyricist.

Again, Everyone Gets Everything They Want will have a negligible impact on the way Morello’s work is remembered within the rock pantheon. The 62-year-old punk seems perfectly content coasting on his legacy and casually jamming with his son, which would be easy to overlook if his schlocky musical sensibilities weren’t so incongruent with his salient political stances, which he still conveys with the same burning urgency that once ignited “Bombtrack.” Morello’s still got that blood-pumping fervor deep within him, but his new music couldn’t sound more limp and lifeless.