Prophets of Rage October 14, Mandalay Bay Events Center.

If all four members of Rage Against the Machine reunited, they could probably fill the Mandalay Bay Events Center, or at least come close. But for makeshift supergroup Prophets of Rage, featuring three RATM members (guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford, drummer Brad Wilk) along with rappers Chuck D of Public Enemy and B-Real of Cypress Hill, plus Chuck’s Public Enemy bandmate DJ Lord, a 12,000-seat arena was clearly too ambitious of a booking. On Friday night, what looked like half the venue was curtained off, and many of the remaining seats were still empty. The show would have worked much better in a venue like the Joint or the Pearl, but for the people who were there, the band brought the energy and the hits.

It might sound odd to call Prophets of Rage a politically conscious nostalgia act, but that’s essentially what the group is, replacing RATM frontman Zack de la Rocha with a couple of famous but still not quite adequate fill-ins, not much different from Adam Lambert fronting Queen or Chester Bennington singing with Stone Temple Pilots. A little over half of the set was RATM songs, including almost all of the band’s hits, and the rest of the set drew from the most well-known Public Enemy and Cypress Hill songs, with just one original (“The Party’s Over”) from the Prophets themselves.

Even the political content was familiar and safe, with Chuck and B-Real mostly repeating the tour’s name (Make America Rage Again, which was also printed on red Donald Trump-style hats that were selling like crazy at the merch booth) and Morello giving a mid-show speech that amounted to a generic plea for tolerance and justice. Otherwise, the focus was on the music, and that was clearly fine with the crowd, who moshed with intensity on fierce renditions of RATM songs like “Testify” and “Sleep Now in the Fire.” They even responded well to the extended hip-hop medley featuring Chuck and B-Real rapping from within the crowd, as the musicians took a break and DJ Lord provided the beats.

Still, neither Chuck nor B-Real could quite match de la Rocha’s distinct cadences, and the Raged-up versions of Public Enemy and Cypress Hill songs sounded a bit desperate, although Morello’s guitar-playing was as dazzling as ever. It was never quite clear why the band needed two MCs onstage at all times, and both frontmen spent a lot of time standing around awkwardly. If RATM is never going to reunite, then fans may have to settle for this ersatz version, just as fans of dozens of other bands have done over the years. Onetime politically incendiary trailblazers have turned into peddlers of comforting familiarity. It happens to the best of them.

Setlist:

“Prophets of Rage”

“Guerrilla Radio”

“Bombtrack”

“She Watch Channel Zero?!”

“People of the Sun”

“Miuzi Weighs a Ton”

“How I Could Just Kill a Man”

“Take the Power Back”

“(Rock) Superstar”

“Testify”

Hip-hop medley: “Hand on the Pump”/“Can’t Truss It”/“Insane in the Brain”/“Bring the Noise”/“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”/“Welcome to the Terrordome”/“Jump Around”

“Sleep Now in the Fire”

“Bullet in the Head”

“Shut ’Em Down”

“Know Your Enemy”

“The Party’s Over”

“No Sleep Till Brooklyn”/“Fight the Power”

“Bulls on Parade”

“Killing in the Name”