“You don’t have to wait around to change the world.”
That’s Tom Morello talking about the heroes that inspired his song “Date Night,” featured on his new solo album, “Everyone Gets Everything They Want.” “Date Night” is the story of the Oversteegen sisters, Truus and Freddie, and their friend Hannie Schaft, three young Dutch women whose act of patriotism and rebellion during WWII involved utilizing their feminine wiles to (among other things) seduce Nazis and lure them to their deaths. Unless you’re into feminist history, this is probably the first time you’re hearing those names; it’s definitely not well-known lore. So how did Morello end up writing a song about the Oversteegen sisters?
“It’s an unknown story,” Morello agreed, speaking with Salon last month. “It’s a story that deserves to be told. For years, I kept waiting for someone to make a movie about it. Nobody did. So I actually shopped a movie about it, called ‘Date Night,’ and no one was interested.”
This record is, somehow, Tom Morello’s first official rock ‘n’ roll solo outing, despite everything that’s preceded it. It’s because Morello is a musical polymath who has utilized his fame to allow himself to make whatever kind of music he wants to be making.
He continued, “And I thought, ‘Well, here’s the difference between my line of work and that line of work. In that line of work, you’ve got to get some stuffy studio executives to write a check for $50,000,000 in order to bring a story to life that someone might ruin with a poor director.” He pauses. “I’m going to write the fu*king zonk, you know what I mean? And it’s going to arrive tomorrow. And it’s going to be exactly like I want to tell it.” And zonk it is, indeed; “Date Night” is an exhilarating, high-velocity, uplifting song with a surprisingly singable chorus. It would have sounded fantastic over a movie’s closing credits.
“It’s a story that’s just been in me for a while and deserves — especially at this particular historical juncture — a telling of how people can stand [up],” Morello said. “You know, not all heroes wear capes, and sometimes it’s an attorney who stands up for the right thing. Sometimes it’s a student who stands up in class for the right thing. And sometimes it’s three teenage girls who have had enough of the Nazis occupying their country, and they stand up for the right thing. Now, that’s a fantastic story and all, but now you need some badass riffs and a guitar solo to go with it.”
The badass riffs in this particular case are courtesy of Roman Morello, the 15-year-old son of our interviewee, who joined his dad’s band when he was 13. Morello the Younger is all over the record, but this isn’t a party trick — he’s also sharing co-writes on five songs. Morello Senior explains that Roman began playing guitar during the pandemic “and kind of got his 10,000 hours in early.”
But when your dad is famous, he’s still your dad. How do you negotiate professional boundaries with a 15-year-old? Morello laughs. “So the first crazy thing is, when you’re playing with this little kid, he’s your son in your band, and then the weirder and crazier thing is when it just becomes normal. Like, he’s just a dude in my band now, you know what I mean? I just count on him. He’s super professional. He blows the roof off the place when you give him the nod, and he’s cute as a button.”
Spoken like a dad! But this actually brings us back to “Date Night.” “Another thing about emphasizing the efficacy of youthful endeavor in changing the world is the riff of the song was written by Roman,” Morello explained. “And I sit and listen outside his door and poach his best riffs as they come out. But this was one where I was like, I’ve been looking for a home for this riff, and then that riff merged in a song that we’re both very proud of.”
Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last. Sign up here
Another element of “Date Night” is that the lyrics tell the story from the point of view of the women. It’s not necessarily a perspective one expects to be accompanied by the kind of scorching guitar riffs adorning “Date Night.” Morello explained his approach: “I was trying to find my way in and how, in three short verses, do you get the picture of the art and craft of killing Nazis when you’re an occupied teenage girl in the Netherlands. I’m very familiar with the history of all three of them in the particular cases, and in the particular case we’re talking about, they needed that guy’s uniform, they needed his papers and they laid the trap.”
He continued: “But their story is more expansive than just killing some Nazi officers in the woods. It was a lot of collaborators they went after as well. And at this historical juncture, that is something to think about. They rescued Jewish children from persecution and hid them from the Nazis. They destroyed Nazi infrastructure. And Hannie [Schaft, who was caught by the Nazis] was 14 when she started this.”
When you have your own distinctive sound, you should absolutely make prodigious use of that particular talent.
“And I’m constantly reminded — I did my senior thesis at Harvard on student movements in South Africa. And the people that changed the country were 14, 15, 16 years old. These girls [in ‘Date Night’] were 14 to 19 when they began their guerrilla warfare campaign against the fascists,” Morello said. “And I think it’s just a reminder that you don’t have to wait around to change the world. It’s been done within the immediate past by people who are no different than high school students down the block.”
Beyond this one song, there’s a lot more to think about on the rest of “Everyone Gets Everything They Want.” It is packed full of the kind of loud, vibrating guitar noise you’d expect to hear in a Tom Morello joint, and that’s not a criticism: when you have your own distinctive sound, you should absolutely make prodigious use of that particular talent. “Beth from Electronics” is a hard rock overture, an introduction that makes it clear to the listener that in case you think this is another folk-based protest album it informs you in short order (literally — it’s just 43 seconds long) that it absolutely is not.
“Adjourn It” is a duet (more like a duel, actually) with System of A Down’s Serj Tankian, with Tankian taking the exhortative choruses while Morello’s droll baritone narrates the verses, playing the villain. The two trade off against a background of quieter rhythmic burbles (bass courtesy Roman Morello) and louder, more martial riffs, a neat slicing guitar solo and a bridge with a racing drum-and-guitar interlude that wouldn’t be out of place in a thrash metal song.
There are quieter songs — “quieter” being relative here — like one of two ballads on the record, “I Am Not Yours To Command.” It’s Morello half-speaking, half-singing against a gentle piano melody that emotionally underscores the song’s message of quiet defiance: “Maybe you can save me/Maybe you can’t/Maybe you can liberate me/Nah, I’ll take care of that.” The title track balances ringing classic rock chords mixed with Morello’s trademark Bomb Squad-esque riffs against a half-spoken, half-chanted narration and a white-hot guitar solo. It sticks in your head long after you finish the album.
This record is, somehow, Tom Morello’s first official rock ‘n’ roll solo outing, despite everything that’s preceded it. It’s because Morello is a musical polymath who has utilized his fame to allow himself to make whatever kind of music he wants to be making: from Rage Against the Machine to Audioslave, from the Nightwatchman to Prophets of Rage, to his now-ongoing role as third guitarist in the E Street Band to the Street Sweeper Social Club (his project with Boots Riley), to the EDM-influenced improbable collaborations released under the moniker The Atlas Underground — there’s more, but it’s enough to give you the basic gist.
“Everyone Gets Everything They Want” isn’t a concept record; even if all of the songs are essentially sharing the same themes, none of which are new to Morello: change and justice, injustice and fighting back, righting wrongs, the simple act of standing up and saying something isn’t right.
Morello can do whatever he wants, and he does, up to and including the curation of his upcoming Power To The People Festival in October (“A Day of Peace, Love, Justice and Music”), along with launching a charity in honor of his late mother: The Mary Morello Memorial Project. Fans of RATM may recall Mary Morello’s now-legendary introductions of the band in its heyday (usually “The best fu*king band in the universe”), but they also just as likely know about her work as a social justice activist who also founded the anti-censorship organization Parents For Rock And Rap at the height of Tipper Gore’s PMRC hysteria.
To continue on the subject of family, what did teenage rebellion look like in the Morello household when he was growing up? Morello chuckled. “As far as teenage rebellion, Mary Morello is the most rebellious person I’ve ever met in my life. You can’t outflank her, in any way, shape, or form. Really, the only conflict we ever really had [of] that sort of a stereotypical teenage rebellion is when I got my driver’s license. I didn’t have a curfew before my driver’s license. I did have a curfew after my driver’s license. And this, to me, felt like an injustice greater than apartheid. How have we taken rights away from this angsty teenager? But my mom and I were always very much politically aligned, and it was a real blessing to have been raised by somebody like that.”
“Everyone Gets Everything They Want” isn’t a concept record; even if all of the songs are essentially sharing the same themes, none of which are new to Morello: change and justice, injustice and fighting back, righting wrongs, the simple act of standing up and saying something isn’t right. That’s not nothing, even, and especially in 2026, when many artists prefer to remain silent.
And sometimes defiance is a small gesture, like who you invite to sing on your record, which in peacetime is an artistic action, for fun or a simple desire to collaborate, but nowadays could also have larger meaning and impact. In addition to the collab with Serj Tankian — another musician making loud noises who is also an advocate for social justice — there’s also a collab with Belfast’s Kneecap, who rap in Gaelic and English on the blistering track “Unconquered.” It’s probably the strongest song on the record.
It’s not necessarily surprising that artists with a reputation for being politically outspoken would join forces, but it’s not like there’s a newsletter they all belong to, and while Kneecap have an international reputation, they’re not as well-known by a general public. When asked how they first came on his radar, Morello explained, “I actually became aware of them a couple summers ago. I was getting a tour of West Belfast by some veterans of the Troubles. And we ended up late night at this tiny bar . . . and there was just this huge graffitied “Kneecap” next to the bar. I didn’t even know what that word meant. Over the course of the next week or so, I learned there’s these youngsters from West Belfast who really like drugs; you know, that was the first thing I learned about them. And they were kind of a popular band.”
“All of a sudden they were able to find in their lived experience, and history of occupation and oppression, the courage as these young rappers who — the first things on their minds might have been more cocaine oriented than, you know, Middle Eastern politics-oriented. But they just absolutely stood up fearlessly in a way that reminded me of the best of Rage Against the Machine, of speaking truth to power regardless of the consequences, and unequivocally standing up for what they believe in and putting their, their music, and their lives on the line. That’s the dangerous kind of rock ‘n’ roll that I want to be involved with.”
He continued, “We made an absolute banger, an absolute banger . . . they [asked], ‘Any direction?’ And I said, I think there were three directions. One is it’s got to be called ‘Unconquered.’ Two, it’s got to be a song that either one of us could open a show, open or close our shows with. And three, it’s got to have a hook that people, regardless of their political persuasion, are gonna have to go, that’s a fu*king banger.”
The riffs on “Unconquered” are incredibly satisfying and will probably result in the kind of response Morello’s hoping for, where he’s going to reel in folks who will then turn around and complain about what they mean, the way every one of Morello’s even slightly political social media posts has at least one response from an allegedly now-former RATM fan, somehow newly surprised at the guitarist’s mindset. Morello laughs. “I’ve been doing that for 3 decades. That’s my wheelhouse: disappointing fans when they find out what the songs are really about.”
Morello summed up this project by talking about everything that preceded it: “This is the 22nd album of my career, right? And is the first Tom Morello solo rock album. It really is. I’ve done collaborative rock albums. I’ve done band albums, I’ve done folk and Americana records, but this is the first one that is intentional — over the course of the last five or six years, I’ve been playing with my spectacular backup band, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra. Whereas in the past, my touring has been compartmentalized. This is the folk tour. This is the EDM-influenced art house tour. This is the Prophets of Rage Tour.”
He continued, “And of course, the last five, six, seven years, I’ve been embracing the totality of my career. Like, those Rage Against the Machine riffs, I love those, and I’m going to play them, and the world needs them. They’re in the DNA of rebels of all ages. Chris Cornell, I miss him every day, and I want to pay tribute to him and hear the crowd sing those beautiful melodies that he wrote, you know? I embraced the Nightwatchman stuff — that was such an incredibly richly satisfying second act for me, to be able to, in my mid-30s, become a singer-songwriter. And so I want all of those elements, but first and foremost, it’s got to be a devastatingly kick-ass, rip-oriented, guitar-solo, tearing-your-head-off, rock and roll album. That’s what we’ve made.”
Kathy Griffin apologizes in advance for all the noise. On the day we connected by phone, she expected a lot of activity in her Malibu home, including air-conditioning repairers and the usual four or five yapping dogs. “It’s mayhem,” she said.
We’ve all been there. Regular viewers of her YouTube series, “Talk Your Head Off with Kathy Griffin,” can actually picture it, since every episode is shot in her home, on her couch, with Griffin and that week’s guest snuggled up to a pooch pile.
“It’s the cutest thing: they see the lights being put up and then they just take the seat on the couch,” she said.
Team Griffin, she says, is a very bare-bones operation. When Griffin decided to jump into the video talk show arena, she initially thought she’d need a whole shiny studio before shooting the first episode in her living room. People like it, she says, because they feel like they’ve been invited over to her house. And it’s catching on.
“The only way I know that is it doesn’t get like a gazillion views, but I’m in the Daily Mail and Page Six pretty much every two weeks,” she noted. “It’s funny, they finally figured out that if they want to get me in trouble and keep bringing me up about how, you know, anti-Trump I am … all they have to do is watch the half-hour YouTube show, and they can get all the sound bites.”
Since we’re talking to and about Kathy Griffin, we can’t rightly quote the old saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Nine years ago, the bad press about a photo of Griffin holding a mask made to look like the bloodied head of Donald Trump nearly ended her.
Overnight, the “My Life on the D-List” and “Fashion Police” star transformed into a national traitor.
While it would be terrific to liken her fate to that of Deborah Vance on “Hacks,” at least Jean Smart’s diva got a Vegas rebirth. Griffin, the woman who played Carnegie Hall five times, couldn’t book a show anywhere. That meant going for eight years without income, dropping from the D-list to a comedy blacklist and, as she confessed in her 2024 comeback show “My Life on the PTSD List,” a suicide attempt.
What I’m saying is, do not whine to Kathy Griffin about cancel culture. She’s lived through it, not the version stand-up bros claim to have suffered during their latest Netflix specials.
(Rick Kern/Getty Images) Comedian Kathy Griffin performs on stage during Moontower Comedy Festival at The Paramount Theatre on April 16, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
That makes her unique among all those commenting on the Macklemore and Ed Sheeran situation. When we spoke, the news had recently broken that billionaire stadium owner Robert Kraft pressured Sheeran to cut Macklemore from his tour following a performance of his protest anthem “Hind’s Hall,” punctuated with a “Free Palestine” declaration.
And Griffin didn’t mince words. “I am just a D-lister . . . but I have been under more pressure than Ed Sheeran,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be pressured by authorities to change something you’re doing in your art or what you do for a living.
“If I can stand up to the president of the United States and the Department of Justice and the Attorney General of the United States, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Secret Service, and say ‘No, I’m doing what I want,’” Griffin offered, then so can everyone else.
“It’s time that all public people with a platform grow some balls, because I had to in 2017,” she added. “And let me tell you, the cheese stood alone.”
That crucible reforged Griffin into a political phoenix. She’s hitting 50 cities on her “New Face, New Tour” circuit and has a Palm Springs residency set for early 2027.
Griffin still has plenty of stories about her run-ins with Hollywood names. But her foray into topical talk has lit a fire in her spirit. Of course, while that territory is relatively new to her, Griffin’s male peers have been welding their routines to politics for years now without being ruined by the resulting blowback. Dave Chappelle’s anti-trans punchlines, for example, played a role in emboldening politicians to enact discriminatory policies against that community. Griffin called Chappelle’s case a tricky one because while she doesn’t love his views, she still considers him to be a friend. Besides, “He got like ‘fake canceled,’ but he didn’t get Kathy Griffin-ed, which is the ultimate.”
No question that on every level, stand-up comedy has gotten meaner over the last decade. Perhaps that’s changing, I suggested to Griffin. She agreed, to a point. The appeal of slinging around epithets for shock value is waning, but the country is still very divided.
“I feel like a lot of these Joe Rogan-type bros are really fighting actual evolution and progress,” she said. “Comedy is a fluid art, and I really believe strongly you have to change along with it; you’ve got to go with it. And in my case, I try to drive it in my little storytelling way. … I don’t tell hacky one-liners that their buddies wrote for them backstage. I write all my own material. It all comes out of my life. I tell stories that are all true.
Griffin continued, “So I think these comics that are complaining about use of language or where to try to sneak in this naughty word – that’s just childlike behavior or, like, trying to get away with something to see if you can. And there’s a place for that where you don’t have to use words that were used during the murder of people that came before you to have the privilege of even standing onstage.”
Then she pauses. “Listen to me, all angry today!” Griffin joked.
But she didn’t sound angry, simply real.
Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last. Sign up here
Honesty has always been Griffin’s superpower, and in this new chapter it lends her the air of a happy warrior. When Griffin speaks with “Talk Your Head Off” guests about, for instance, the effects of media consolidation or what a political candidate stands for, she takes pains to pause and make sure her audience knows the who, what and why of it all.
Griffin can’t assume the average “Talk Your Head Off” viewer thinks the old guys running it all have the same level of celebrity as, say, her friend Cher. And yet she has a gift for making politics relatable without enraging rhetoric since, as she points out, political figures are celebrities too.
As for the residual costs of exercising her right to offend back in 2017, Griffin confirmed that some of her shows still draw protesters. But these days they’re less of a threat than just material.
“They’re so pitiful because they’re usually just, like, 20 people,” she said, “and they’ve detailed their car where there’s a picture of Trump, but he looks like Rambo. They’ve painted it on their actual vehicle.
“I mean, they’re always fun to film,” she added, “so please watch my socials.”
Fans des 90er-Jahre-Kinos und von Arcade-Action mit Retro-Tugenden haben lange darauf gewartet, nun ist Terminator 2D – No Fate auf PC, PS4/5, Switch, Xbox One und Xbox Series X|S erschienen. Das Spiel von Bitmap Bureau lässt euch die Handlung von Termiantor 2: Tag der Abrechnung als Run-and-Gun im Stil von Contra nacherleben – in der Rolle von Sarah Connor und dem T-800 in der Gegenwart und als John Connor in der Zukunft.
Passend dazu veröffentlichen wir die Aufzeichnung eines Interviews, das Jörg Langer auf der Gamescom 2025 mit Mike Tucker führte, seines Zeichens Mitgründer von Bitmap Bureau und Design Director von Terminator 2D – No Fate. Das Gespräch wurde auf Englisch geführt, Jörg fasst die Aussagen von Mike immer wieder kurz zusammen. Mike Tucker verrät unter anderem, wie Bitmap Bureau an die Terminator-Lizenz kam und teast mögliche Portierungen für Retro-Konsolen an, die schon für frühere Titel des Studios wie Xeno Crisis produziert wurden.
Bei unserem Schwestermagazin GamersGlobal.de erschien derweil Kai Schmidts PC-Test von Terminator 2D – No Fate. Kai mag Kino und Arcade-Spaß und hatte entsprechend seine Freude mit der Spielumsetzung des Klassikers, aber ihm fehlt doch etwas in seinem Meinungskasten:
Die Steuerung funktioniert klasse, es gibt genügend Abwechslung, und die Action flutscht wie ein gut geöltes Maschinengewehr. Wäre Terminator 2D – No Fate damals in den 90ern erschienen, hätte es heute wohl einen Platz auf meiner Liste der besten Spiele aller Zeiten inne. Dieser nicht vorhandene Nostalgiefaktor ist es allerdings, der mich am Ende ein wenig zurückhaltend bleiben lässt.
Die Arcade-Action ist ohne Zweifel gut, aber mit nur etwa einer Stunde für einen Story-Durchgang auch ziemlich kurz. Und nach drei Durchgängen mit zwei Entscheidungen hat man alles gesehen. In diesem Zusammenhang möchte ich euch unbedingt ans Herz legen, nicht auf der leichtesten Schwierigkeitsstufe zu spielen. Unbegrenzte Continues klingen zwar verführerisch, doch das Spiel wird durch viel zu leichte Gegner und generell weniger Gefahren auch stark verwässert.
Terminator 2D fehlt es neben Inhalten auch an Motivation. Klar kann ich mich nach der Story mit Boss-Rush und Time Attack beschäftigen oder durch harte Arbeit das Cheat-Menü freischalten, doch das ist nichts, was mich längerfristig an das Spiel fesselt. Klassiker des Genres motivieren mich längerfristig vor allem mit Koop-Modi für zwei Spieler. Ein Contra 3 kann ich beispielsweise jederzeit einlegen und trotz kurzer Spieldauer mit einem Gleichgesinnten auf der Couch zocken. Das macht Spaß wie eh und je. Terminator 2D bietet sich durch seine Struktur natürlich nicht unbedingt dafür an, würde aber deutlich an Wiederspielwert gewinnen und seinen doch recht hohen Preis besser rechtfertigen.
Alles in allem ist Terminator 2D nicht ganz so gut wie das ähnlich gelagerte Neon Inferno, aber keinesfalls schlecht und meilenweit von dem Schund entfernt, der seinerzeit zum Filmstart auf den Konsolen erschien!
PRO
+ Gegner, Gegnerverhalten und Gefahren variieren pro Schwierigkeitsstufe
+ Durchspielen schaltet neue Modi, alternative Enden und ein Cheat-Menü frei
+ Detaillierte Pixel-Art-Hintergründe und liebevoll animierte Figuren
CONTRA
– Nur 45 bis 60 Minuten pro Durchgang und nach dem dritten Durchspielen habt ihr alles gesehen
– Maximal zwei Abschnitte mit dem T-800 (der zudem nicht Arnies Gesicht hat)
– Fahrsequenzen recht dröge
Den ganzen Test mit 4K-Video findet ihr auf GamersGlobal. Und was haltet ihr vom neuen Werk von Bitmap Bureau?
Login
