Rage Against the Machine cancels tour, had been rumored for Coachella 2023

Los Angeles rock band Rage Against the Machine has pulled the plug on its reunion tour, which had rescheduled dates throughout North America in 2023.

The outing was originally announced in 2019, but was thwarted by the pandemic. The band was scheduled as one of the headliners of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in 2020, but that was postponed twice. The quartet was set to return to headline the fest in 2022, but was unable to perform and instead relaunched its own tour during the summer.

But vocalist Zack de la Rocha suffered a leg injury during the second show of the tour at a stop in Chicago. They continued to play shows, including five nights at Madison Square Garden in New York, with Rocha sitting on an amp to belt out the songs, but canceled its U.K. and European dates as it was revealed he was recovering from a torn Achilles tendon.

On Tuesday, de la Rocha posted a lengthy message on the band’s official Instagram page that stated the 2023 tour has been canceled.

“It’s been almost three months since Chicago, and I still look down at my leg in disbelief,” he wrote. “Two years of waiting through the pandemic, hoping we would have an opening to be a band again and continue the work we started 30 some odd years ago. Rehearsing, training, reconciling, working our way back to form. Then one and a half shows into it and my tendon tears. Felt like a sick joke the universe played on me.”

He went on to say that only eight percent of his tendon is left intact, making canceling the shows to give it time to heal the only option. He went on to thank his bandmates, supporting act Run the Jewels and all of the tour staff and crew for their support.

“I hope to see you very soon,” he ends the post. It was highly speculated that Rage Against the Machine would return to headline Coachella in 2023, especially since there was a gap in the rescheduled dates, leaving mid-April, when the festival takes place over two weekends in Indio, wide open. However, that doesn’t seem very likely given de la Rocha’s prognosis.