James Kennedy and The Underdogs are a hard rock band from South Wales UK. Formed in 2023 by James Kennedy, the former singer in the band, Kyshera and author of the best-selling rock biography, Noise Damage, the band includes Jack Davies (Guitar), Elliot Blake (Bass) and Aggy Nowicka (Drums).
In their short time as a band so far, they have toured around the UK sharing stages with the likes of The Meffs, Ginger Wildheart, Marisa and The Moths and playing festivals including Nozfest, Beautiful Days and Just Push Play. Their anarchic and energetic live show has earned them the title of ‘Wales’s most vital live band’ by Uber Rock Magazine. Their debut album, Make Anger Great Again will be followed in 2026 with the release of their eagerly awaited new album, Rebel which is to be released on the newly relaunched Combat Records.
James himself now joins us for a Why I Love on Rage Against The Machine.
pic – Rob Campion
The Awakening
Chunky riffs. Pummelling drums. Bowel-rattling bass. Politics. Hard rock. AND HIP HOP? Yes please, I’ll take a Super Size. My first exposure to Rage Against The Machine came in the form of a home-copied cassette handed to me discreetly by a friend in hushed tones and paranoid looks over the shoulder. Listen to it through headphones, he said, before disappearing into the shadows.
I was thirteen. At that time I lived in a tiny, secluded village in the middle of ‘where the fuck is everything?’ No shops, no post office, no nothing except fields and more fields. As I did my daily hour-long trek through some of those fields in order to meet my mates at the neighbouring village, I popped the tape into my Walkman – yes, I said Walkman. Long story short, I never made it to the next village. After stopping dead in my tracks to stand dumbstruck in a cow field for ten minutes as Killing In The Name played out, I knew this was urgent business that needed my full attention, so I laid down in the grass and listened to the whole album from start to finish – and then did it again.
With cows gently chomping around me and the milky Welsh clouds mutating above, my inner world was in the chaos of a violent revolution. I had never heard anything like it.
Bomb Tracks
Now, it’s heartening to see that RATM are still relevant and much loved by the youth of today, but at the time it came out, this album was a carpet-bombing that reshaped the terrain forever. The unapologetic smashing of hard rock, funk, punk and hip hop, laced with overt political messaging and revolutionary zeal, was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and it gave me goosebumps to the core. And of course, there was the swearing. Zack de la Rocha screaming “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” sixteen times in a row and then following it with a “Motherfuckeeeeeer” was the coolest thing I had ever heard in my thirteen years on Earth.
I felt like I was in the possession of some illicit cargo, and that as soon as parents, teachers or the government found out that I had this subversive weapon in my possession, that’d be my ass. But I did my duty to further the cause and secretly made copies to distribute among my friends. Most guys my age were doing this with grainy VHS tapes of crappy old pornos, but I felt that what I had was far more explosive and punishable.
Shock and Awe
For a young guitar shredder diligently practising my scales, what Tom Morello was doing on his six-string was pure black magic. Brilliantly hip-hopifying his guitar parts with insane sample-isms, whammy pedal madness and distorted deck-scratches was truly pioneering and became the subject of fevered debate among my friends – how the hell is he doing that?! Add a rhythm section that could knock down houses, throw in some rap, funk and rock, a large dose of anger and the use of repetitive, rebel-rousing political chanting, and they achieved what most do not – a sound that was unreplicable. Even if you don’t know the song, you know immediately which band you’re listening to. They made politics cool.
An Undying Flame
They gave a voice to the frustration I was carrying. They came with a sound that was both fresh and irresistible. They informed, they inspired and they mobilised. There was no one who didn’t love them – rockers, metallers, hip-hoppers, punks – and no one could deny their musical authenticity and delicious subversiveness. The band were radical – politically, musically, onstage and off.
There was no one like them and there hasn’t been since. So many of their songs are now considered protest anthems, and they are still inspiring and igniting the rebel spirit in new generations decades later. I don’t know what happened to that original home-made cassette, but the moment of its first hearing in a cow field in Wales is burned forever into my being – it was a life-changing moment. I now own those essential pieces of musical history on vinyl and they still get my blood up every single time.
Thanks to James for sharing his passion for a band that fanned his flames.
Here’s the latest single:
You can read more from our extensive archive of Why I Love pieces from a wide array of artists on an even wider array of subjects, here.
James Kennedy: Website