Know Your Enemy | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
||: F# Minor Pentatonic with the maj7 riff :|| 84 BPM
Huh! Yeah! We’re coming back then with another bombtrack.
Think ya know what it’s all about. Huh!
Hey yo, so check this out. Yeah!
||: (E) F#5 A5 F#5 (E) F#5 | (E) F#5 C5 B5 A5 |
| (E) F#5 A5 F#5 (E) F#5 | (E) F#5 C#5 B5 A5 E5 :|| x3 (114 BPM)
Know your enemy! Come on!
Verse 1
||: F# Conspirian riff :||
Born with insight and a raised fist.
A witness to the slit wrist, that’s with.
We move into ’92, still in a room without a view.
Ya got to know, ya got to know.
That when I say go, go, go.
Amp up and amplify, defy.
I’m a brother with a furious mind.
Action must be taken.
We don’t need the key, we’ll break in.
Something must be done.
About vengeance, a badge, and a gun.
‘Cause I’ll rip the mike, rip the stage, rip the system,
I was born to rage against ’em.
Fist in ya face, in the place.
And I’ll drop the style clearly.
Chorus 1
||: (E) F#5 A5 F#5 (E) F#5 | (E) F#5 C5 B5 A5 |
| (E) F#5 A5 F#5 (E) F#5 | (E) F#5 C#5 B5 A5 E5 :|| x4
Know your enemy, know your enemy! Yeah! Hey yo, and dick with this. Uggh!
Verse 2
||: F# Conspirian riff :||
Word is born, fight the war, fuck the norm.
Now I got no patience, so sick of complacence.
With the D the E the F the I the A the N the C the E.
Mind of a revolutionary, so clear the lane.
The finger to the land of the chains.
What? The land of the free?
Whoever told you that is your enemy?
Now, something must be done.
About vengeance, a badge, and a gun.
‘Cause I’ll rip the mike, rip the stage, rip the system,
I was born to rage against ’em.
Now action must be taken.
| N.C |
We don’t need the key, we’ll break in.
M8
||: M8 riff :||
I’ve got no patience now.
So sick of complacence now.
I’ve got no patience now.
So sick of complacence now.
Sick of sick of sick of sick of you.
Time has come to pay,
Solo
||: (E) F#5 A5 F#5 (E) F#5 | (E) F#5 C5 B5 A5 |
| (E) F#5 A5 F#5 (E) F#5 | (E) F#5 C#5 B5 A5 E5 :||
know your enemy! (solo)
Chorus 2
||: F# Conspirian riff :||
Come on! Yes, I know my enemies, they’re the teachers who taught me to fight me.
Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission. Ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite.
||: All of which are American dreams :|| x4
Outro
||: N.C :||
||: All of which are American dreams :|| x4
Know Your Enemy Chords: Learn the progressions
Intro
Using a kill switch, the intro is an F# Minor Pentatonic with the maj7 as a chromatic approach note once.
Chorus
The chorus riff can actually be described as chords, 5 chords that is, moving very quickly like this: (E) F#5 – A5 – F#5 (E) F#5. That’s all F# mInor Pentatonic notes, expanded into 5 chords.
Next, we move like this: (E) – F#5 – C5 – B5 – A5, The C being the b5, or minor blues scale, rather than just Minor Pentatonic.
The first riff is then repeated before we move: (E) F#5 – C#5 – B5 – A5 – E5.
Verse
The verse is an F# Conspirian scale! This is a Minor Pentatonic with a b5 and maj7.
M8
Maximum tension in the M8 is achieved by going outside the F# Minor Pentatonic. First, the 3rd and b7 are added as a fragment of a chord.
Then the chords C5 – B5 – F5, again hinting at the Conspirian scale, but as 5 chords.
The kill switch technique on a Gibson Les Paul
Know Your Enemy is a song from Rage Against The Machine’s first album. It was never released as a single but has still become one of the band’s best-known songs.
The lyrical theme criticizes the American government using the line/saying “American Dream” to describe how the government has twisted the message and become the real enemy.
The intro uses a technique called Kill-Switch, one pickup’s volume is down, the other up, and flick between the two to get the effect.
The video lesson above demonstrates the riffs from the original recording. Memorize the riffs and use the lyrics to guide you through the arrangement.
Know Your Enemy Chords | Related Pages
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When the singer left ten years later, the rest of the band formed Audioslave with Chris Cornell and did it all over again.
Rage Against The Machine on the web
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Riff-based Indie & Heavy Rock tunes must be studied in depth in order to understand why a tune in these styles work.
Learn songs by Foo Fighters, Rage Against The Machine, Green Day, Kings Of Leon, Jack White, Blink-182, and many more.
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about Know Your Enemy chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.
