Machine Head: Better than the rest?

Not quite, but very close.

Machine Head are in a great place right now, riding on one of the year’s fastest, loudest, angriest records to opening slots on two of the year’s best metal tours, where they held their own with Lamb of God and Gojira and are reportedly doing the same with the Dio-led Black Sabbath and Megadeth. Metal fans and publications have doused their latest record, The Blackening, with lavish praise which may be a little extreme, but is certainly is welcome for a band that was unfairly derided for experimenting on albums like The Burning Red and Supercharger. Sure, the Police cover wasn’t a great idea, but I’d rather hear them take artistic risks than make Reburn My Eyes, Burn My Eyes Again, and Son of Burn My Eyes.

Machine Head’s most obvious blueprint on The Blackening is Metallica, as seen the song’s lengths (eight songs over sixty minutes) and the album’s title, which echoes both Metallica’s best-selling album and one of the best known songs off …And Justice For All. If that weren’t enough, some editions of The Blackening come with a cover of ‘Battery,’ and bandleader Robb Flynn has openly acknowledged the album’s Master of Puppets comparisons in interviews. But The Blackening is great because it builds on Metallica’s legacy rather than tread on it. Like Nirvana, Metallica is a difficult band to emulate without sounding like a watered down rip-off, and Machine Head succeed by adding their own twists to some of Metallica’s finest ideas, mainly even longer songs, Zakk Wylde-esque pinch harmonics, screamed vocals with sung interludes, and more employment of the double bass pedal.

The Blackening starts off with a well-used Metallica trick, a discomfortingly quiet intro unlike the music one usually affiliates with Machine Head. Right when it seems safe to turn it up, the band explodes into ‘Clenching the Fists of Dissent,’ a positively fierce epic on the ongoing Iraq war.



Flynn is no lyricist, and his thoughts on the war are neither insightful (saying “Freedom Isn’t Free” was a cliché even before Team America) nor poetic (“Do you hear revolution’s call,” “Lambs misled to a slaughter,” etc.). But it’s hard to care too much when the music rocks this hard, and the lyrics are almost given validity by never seeming overworked; rather, they seem to be coming from someone spewing his most spiteful thoughts, unrestrained by a need to be articulate. Whether he’s screaming about the state of the union (‘Clenching the Fists of Dissent,’ ‘Halo’,) conservative numbskulls (‘Aesthetics of Hate’) or his own inner demons (‘Slanderous,’) Flynn is a compelling voice of rage. He’s not about to give Kerry King or Dave Mustaine a run for their money, but Machine Head’s riffy, belligerent music holds up against the best metal being released today. The Blackening enhances the thrash metal legacy far better than the newest albums by Metallica or the remaining members of Pantera and Sepultura. Of course, it also trumps the mallcore antics of Trivium and Avenged Sevenfold.

In all, The Blackening is a focused, hard-hitting masterpiece from a band that’s clearly on the right track. Ending on a high note with ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ the second best metal song ever to take its name from Hemingway (after ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,' of course), Machine Head pulls of a ten-minute, half-sung half-screamed ant-war rant without sounding boring or pretentious, capping one of their very best albums. It’s one of the most extreme, exciting, genuinely pissed-off records to be released recently, and that alone warrants repeated listening. Plus, it’s got some of the best metal artwork I’ve ever seen.