Machine Head Delivers a Masterpiece Illustrating the Chaotic Blackening of Humanity
by Damien Maurer
Despite unforeseeable production problems and what singer/songwriter/guitarist Robert Flynn described as "studio gremlins," the San Francisco Bay Area quartet known as Machine Head have released another masterpiece. The Blackening is poised to be a record that will challenge and redefine the songwriting abilities of Robert Flynn - guitar/vocals, Adam Duce - bass/vocals, Dave McClain - drums and Phil Demmel - guitar. The Blackening is an album that exhibits the musical integrity and temperament expected from a great thrash-metal record destined to become a classic of its generation.
The Blackening is a poetic eight-song musical soliloquy that runs 61 minutes; a few songs are around the 10-minute mark. It speaks bluntly and angrily about controversial world issues along with chaos and the decline of humanity. Flynn remarked, "I needed to make sure that if I'm singing this, that the four of us are going to stand behind it."
A great record does not come without a certain price tag of frustration, failures and successes. "Studio gremlins," Flynn states. "When they come, they come in full force. In some ways it had to be that way. It was such an easy record for us to write, then in the studio we were like, 'These songs are pretty complex.' We double-tracked all the guitars on both sides. Dave McClain tracked his songs in a day and a half, three-part harmony between two guitars, vocals, bass, more harmony on top of that, a tuning peg broke on a main guitar. We had so many obstacles."
This is the second album that Flynn's former Vio-lence bandmate Phil Demmel has been a part of. Demmel came in during the last third of the recording session for the Ashes CD and collaborated on only three songs. After a good album cycle it is always amazing to see how that relationship translates on the next record. As Flynn said, "I did not know how much I missed jamming with Phil until I was jamming with Phil again. Having someone like him in the band, it's like, 'Oh wow, we can do this now!'"
Myspace.com has been another avenue for bands to get fresh songs out to their fans prior to the release of a CD. Flynn says, "This is the longest that we have ever been on tour prior to an album being released." Demmel adds, "Two new songs, 'Aesthetics of Hate' and 'Clenching the Fists of Dissent,' have been in the set for the last five weeks." MH has been on tour with Lamb of God, Trivium and Gojira, giving fans a live preview of the new material.
The Blackening is an album that will force people to pay attention and take another look at what defines good music and what good songwriting should be. There is defiantly a lack of creativity in the metal scene, and Flynn has his thoughts about how he would like to see their current release looked upon 20 years from now. "We pushed ourselves to come up with something extraordinary. We challenged ourselves as musicians to stretch to the limit of our abilities. Our goal for this record was that we wanted to write the Master of Puppets [Metallica] of this generation. We don't want to be the next Metallica, we are not trying to be the next Metallica, no one is going to be the next Metallica, but write a record that has the epic grandeur of influence and timelessness that you can put it on 20 years from now and it sounds as good as, if not better than, 95 percent of the metal records that have been released the last few years."
