Tom Morello Reveals Atlas Underground's 'We Don't Need You' Clip

It was March of 2016 when guitar great Tom Morello teamed up with EDM favorites Knife Party at the Ultra Music Festival, revealing his plans for a new project known as Atlas Underground with a performance of "Battle Sirens." Since that time, Morello has been working quietly with a number of musical friends to create what he feels is a new genre of music. Now Morello is ready to reveal some of his Atlas Underground work, unleashing the first "communique" from the project featuring guest rapper Vic Mensa on a song called "We Don't Need You."

In the clip above, Morello delivers some of the funky Rage-esque guitar work he's been known for, while finishing out the track with some of his scratchy guitar sounds. The song has a definite anti-establishment message, with Mensa repeating, "We don't believe you / We don't believe you / Bite the hand that feeds you" at multiple points in the song, while also pointing out, "Fuck you, separate could never be equal."

Speaking just last month with Lars Ulrich on the Beats 1 It's Electric show, Morello described Atlas Underground like this: "I wanted to make a record that was the [Jimi] Hendrix of now, was the idea, which has three components to it in my head - one, it has to have guitar playing that is outside of the norm and is extraordinary. Two, one of the defining things about Hendrix was [that] he had radio songs. He didn't just look cool and play exotic guitar. The reason why we know his name is he had blasted jams that connected with a mass audience. Then three is the 'of now' part. Hendrix's milieu was blues rock and now it is a world of hip-hop and EDM so I wanted to do was to aim to create a new genre of music, to combine my analog Marshall stack guitar playing with the sounds of now and some of my favorite singers and rappers."

Morello's labor of love, The Atlas Underground, will be released on Oct. 12. The album features guest turns from a wide-ranging group of musicians, with the aforementioned Knife Party and such EDM stars as Steve Aoki and Bassnectar turning up as well as Portugal. the Man, Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, K. Flay, Gary Clark Jr., Rise Against's Tim McIlrath and rappers GZA, RZA, Big Boi and Killer Mike among others. Pre-orders for the disc are now available here.

See Tom Morello in the Top 66 Hard Rock + Metal Guitarists of All Time

10 Best Rage Against The Machine Songs