“This was a record made during the desperation of lockdown. What made now the right time to return to The Atlas Underground, Tom? Spurred on by the isolation and stagnation of lockdown, however, he reached out to friends around the globe for its all-guns-blazing follow-up The Atlas Underground Fire, bringing together artists as disparate as Brit-metal overlords Bring Me The Horizon and New Jersey stadium-rock legend Bruce Springsteen, Palestinian DJ Sama’ Abdulhadi, Jamaican reggae royalty Damian Marley, and Detroit singer-songwriter Mike Posner – who scaled Mount Everest while putting together his contribution… Increasingly collaborative as his career progresses into its fourth decade, Tom already forged into new territory with 2018’s The Atlas Underground LP. With rock music now facing competition from the fresh outsider sounds of EDM, SoundCloud rap and hyperpop, doubling down on what’s worked in the past is a mistake, when we should be looking at what makes those sounds so exciting and learning from it. Thirty years since the Los Angeles rap-rockers first came together, the need to innovate and press against genre boundaries feels more urgent than ever. Rising again with Rage Against The Machine, he deconstructed the instrument to its wood and wires, breaking fresh ground and winning over legions of new fans. Having stomached the failure of original band Lock up, who were signed to and then dropped from the prestigious Geffen Records during a whirlwind three years of existence between 19, the six-string wizard was forced to face up to the fact that being a virtuoso player isn’t nearly as important as doing something new. It’s an indictment that could never be levelled at Tom Morello, though. If it feels, sometimes, like the era of the guitar hero is fading, that’s largely due to said heroes refusing to roll with the punches.