By Billy Florio

In most states, conviction of murder is punishable by death. This usually is just for murder of human beings, but after listening to ‘Axis of Justice’, the world would definitely benefit for death being the penalty for the murder of songs, too. With that, everyone involved with this album should be killed.

‘Axis of Justice’ is a concert series started by Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello and System of a Down front-man Serj Tankian to raise awareness of injustice. They gathered together a variety of musicians from different genres to compile this collection (mostly live tracks from the Axis of Justice concert), including Flea, Chris Cornell, Maynard James Keenan (of Tool and A Perfect Circle) and Wayne Kramer (of the MC5), and handed them classic protest anthems for them to cover…and ruin.

The album opens with a group sing-a-long cover of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name,” that’s so bad that it could make a person hate U2 (even though they have nothing to do with this album!). A person must be God-like to get through this song without puking from the fact that talented artists like Pete Yorn and Flea have something to do with this. Covers of Elvis Costello and Nick Drake’s “Peace Love And Understanding” and Funkadelic’s “Alice In My Fantasies” come next. They are followed by piano-based Tankian originals. These four “songs” come at you like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, leaving you hoping that you’re dead so you don’t have to listen to the ten songs still to follow.

More mockeries to music include covers of Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up” and Bob Dylan’s “Chimes Of Freedom”; plus originals “Speak On it” and “Jeffrey Are You Listening?” which are speaking rants on what’s wrong with America put to music-bad music. Between all the horrors there are a few (very few) decent songs. The only one that’s not an original is Pete Yorn’s version of Junior Kimbrough’s “I Feel Good Again,” which sounds just as bluesy and fiery as the original. Jurassic 5 don’t fail to provide quality with two of their originals, and a folk artist known as The Nightwatchman (who really is just Morello in his alter-ego) does two Johnny Cash sound-a-likes that are clearly the best of the album.

This album is a disaster. There’s no denying that. Among the horror though are a few songs that aren’t anywhere near the disaster that everything else is, but they aren’t enough to save this album. It’s all right for a musician to speak his mind politically-just don’t ruin great songs in the process. ?

The Chronicle gives ´Axis Of Justice´, by Various Artists one 1/2 out of five stars.