It drives me crazy that RAtM are such odious hard-leftists. If you can manage to ignore the lyrics, they rock like a house on fire. They have a thousand times the musical chops of that Mather does (IMH[and reluctant]O).
There's no doubt about that. In the profile of former RATM and current Audioslave axeman Tom Morello in that infamous Rolling Stone article ranking the 100 Greatest Guitarists, he said that when he read an interview in which a famous guitarist said that you get better if you practice an hour every day, he began practicing eight hours a day.
In that ridiculous list, Jimi Hendrix was ranked #1, Duane Allman #2, B.B. King #3, and Eric Clapton #4; Morello was ranked 26th, inexplicably below Kurt Cobain (#12?????), Jack White (White Stripes, #17), Richard Thompson (#19), and Johnny Ramone (#18????), and above Mark Knopfler (#27), Les Paul (#46), Steve Howe (#69), and Eddie Van Halen (#70?????)