Machine Head - Of Kingdom and Crown (2022)

Machine Head was really only something to write home about during that 2007-2011 phase where they cranked out two albums in a row that showed infinitely more songwriting strength and potential than their whole prior career of Ozzfest nu metal stardom, and while every fiber of my being screams to ignore them forevermore, the mere fact that they HAVE that level of capability hidden somewhere within keeps me curious to hear what they can come up with next. That's not to say that The Blackening or Unto the Locust were even borderline masterpieces, but they did the trick and seemed like the sort of efforts that could establish the framework for some future magnum opus. That did not happen, sadly, and the band's most recent album, 2018's Catharsis was one of the worst they have ever shat forth.

And thus, when Of Kingdom and Crown released last year, I admit that I missed it. Or can you miss something if you are not actively looking for it? I was even more discouraged when I saw that this one was like 60-70 minutes, opening with a 10+ minute track in "Slaughter the Martyr", which opens with an embarrassing whole THREE MINUTES of emo crooning over acoustic guitars before finally crunching you over the head with a couple decent groove/thrash metal riffs and the mandatory beatdown rhythm. The vocals and lyrics here are just as dumb as ever, but at the very least the music attempts to gain your attention, just not in a very interesting way. I was thus quite surprised when the second track, "Choke on the Ashes of Your Hate" sounding like a tribute to Robb's old band Vio-Lence, pure angry trashing which lopes into a pretty bouncy, weak nu-metal chorus, but the very fact that they are still offering such a thrashing was at least something resembling an olive branch.

Really, Of Kingdom and Crown is all over the place, flip-flopping between its super-chug rhythms, Korn-like dissonant nu-metal wailing on the higher strings, rolling breakdowns that used to be cool when metalcore bands did them in 1997, leads and harmonies that often feel like they're being pulled straight from some classic melodeath albums, and useless intermission/segue tracks. If you were to compress all the quality moments of this record down to about 3-4 songs, we'd be okay, but the fact is that not all the ideas really stick, and I'm just rarely a fan of the guy's more emotional vocals. That said, there is plenty to explore here, and Machine Head mixes it up quite a lot, the production is about what you would expect from such 'modern' metal, and it's at least far superior to the album before it. I still can't shake the vibe that these guys are trapped in a nexus between styles and just never seem to stick to one that benefits them fully, but I'm not a big nu/groove metal fanatic in the first place so I'm hardly qualified to praise them as one of the bigger acts of that niche. This didn't suck. It also wasn't good.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Bloodstone & Diamonds (2014)

Bloodstone & Diamonds is not an album that abandons all the common sense, critical praise and good will that Machine Head had suddenly developed with The Blackening and Unto the Locust, but it's a solid step backwards in terms of quality, somewhat of a 'dumbing down' that shows the band for whatever reason missed what they were doing beforehand. You've still got a few outbreaks of the more agile, thrash-inspired riffing and some exciting lead sequences, but this one goes for grooves and accessibility a little more than the albums leading to it, and some of the aforementioned faster breaks aren't really interesting. I think if I were to condense it all down to about 3-4 tracks you'd have a worthwhile followup to Unto the Locust, but it's padded out with some songs that don't exactly leave any impression on me.

The catchier tracks like "Now We Do" and "Killers & Kings" are wisely staggered on the frontside of the album, the former a groover reminiscent of Through the Ashes of Empires era but with the add-on of some symphonic strings, and the latter a a thrashing 90s-style pounder with a couple frilly little riffs in there to keep it feeling busy. I also dug the melody at the beginning of "Ghosts Will Haunt My Bones", but that one kind lapses into the nu metal with rock chorus stuff that I was never a fan of in this band's hands, even if Robb's voice sounds half-decent on the more atmospheric, emo moments where he's festooned with little melodies. After that I find it hard to remember much of anything... "Sail Into the Black" is a pretty atmospheric track with some creepy little piano sounds and an epic length to it that eventually surges into giant rolling double bass grooves, but I feel like the harder hitting parts don't live up to the beginning; and "Beneath the Silt" is another track with some potential even though it's got a dirty chuggy nu groove beneath it, I kind of like the psychedelic filtering on the vocals, and again he's got some good singing parts on that and deserves a little credit.

The instrumentation is fine, with another of the band's stronger drum showings when they hit those grooves, and a lot of subtle percussive builds during a lot of the atmospheric parts of which there are probably more here than any other Machine Head record. Bass sounds good, production on the guitars is just the perfect contrast of heaviness and melody, and while Flynn is still doing a lot of the Phil Anselmo style tough guy grunts and growls, he's clearly improved all around. I also think that lyrically this might be the peak for the group, the lines seem fairly well thought out compared to some of the garbage on the disc to follow. The last third of the album is partly a waste of time, with the soft ballad "Damage Inside", the throwaway sample track "Imaginal Cells", and the other songs back there doing a mix of the Korn-like nu metal vocals with a few thrash parts to try and smooth them out, but all told Bloodstone & Diamonds isn't a complete dropping of the ball, it's still much better than anything the band had put out prior to 2007, and if you were a fan of the two previous albums then you might have breathed a collective sigh of relief. Maybe for the last time...

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Unto the Locust (2011)

Unto the Locust takes the thrashing energy and ambition that the Machine Head crew resurrected from their earlier years as musicians onto The Blackening, and then ramps up it a notch by armoring it with a more modern sensibility and an obvious increase in overall heaviness. I wouldn't stay that there is as great a stylistic disparity here as between the two albums before it, or between Through the Ashes of Empires and Supercharger, but this is far from a repeat of their 2007 surprise. Tempos, dynamics, and riff patterns are explored more interestingly, and I'd say that the thrash riffs in particular, on tunes like "I Am Hell (Sonata in C#)" and "Be Still and Know", are more nuanced and memorable than those from the previous album, even if it set a sort of standard to follow.

Most improved for me on this album would be the vocals, which are more often given multi tracks or harmonies that strengthen them far more than just listening to Robb's delivery before. This is most felt in the chorus parts to tunes like "Be Still and Know" which are genuinely catchy, but you'll often hear this being done on various verses, so the distribution keeps an added intensity throughout the lion's share of the 49 minutes of material. Though you're still hearing a couple of grooves here or there, Unto the Locus really strives to maintain an air of respectability, and I could honestly say this one might impress fans into groups like Nevermore or Savage Messiah, even if they've had no interest in anything Machine Head had gotten up to before. It's not terribly technical, but it's hard hitting, half-intelligent and interesting. Other little nuances I heard hear were similar to bands like the French groove juggernaut Gojira, at least in some of the vocal delivery and picking patterns, or even Strapping Young Lad in how the vocals carry or the post-modern thrash atmosphere. You can also clearly hear a huge melodic Swedish death metal influence on tunes like "This is the End", and it's honestly not unwelcome because it's performed with the surging testosterone that fuels a lot of the better efforts from a Soilwork or Dark Tranquillity.

This was the best drumming Dave McClain (ex-Sacred Reich) had done on any of the Machine Head albums during his tenure, thundering and muscular and definitely making as much a statement as almost anything else on the record. The bass is solid and gives the heaviness much of its weight, and the lead guitar supply on this is simply inexhaustible, it's the most melodic album they've put out, but without losing the ballast it desperately needs to keep its groove-oriented audience in their seats, or out of their seats, kicking each other on the rump and flailing their inebriated limbs about. There are a few weirder progressive experiments like "Darkness Within", and you can get the impression that they were expanding themselves to see what would stick, not succeeding 100% of the time, but as an album emerging upon the popular metal landscape of 2011 I think this is probably the one most suited to its times, with the most weaponry to help the band compete with their often far younger peers in the groove, thrash and metalcore niches.

The lyrics are still a sore point, especially on tracks like "Who We Are" or "This is the End" which have all the artistry and cliche parades of angry teens, but let's face it, the overwhelming of majority is like this and those who accepted and enjoyed Machine Head's earlier material are not going to care one way or the other. Hardly embarrassing, just showing little to no thought as the lyricist just pulls the most obvious and basic images from the mind to the page. Otherwise, this is the best album in the Machine Head catalog, or the most 'worthy', still hovering below greatness, but a galaxy beyond some of the turds they've committed to tape before it. Not that this is in any way some mandatory band to experience, but if we reduced their career down to The Blackening, Unto the Locust and Machine F**king Head Live, it wouldn't belong in a dumpster. Of course, that's not the whole story, that's not reality, but 2007-2012 was clearly their peak and I can't formulate too much negative to say about it.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - The Blackening (2007)

For all the ire I've cast upon Machine Head's recording history, there's no question that the band has been a successful venture, with plenty of profitable touring, media attention, and record sales, even well before Robb Flynn started letting a lot of sparks fly across his social media and interviews. Despite all the returns on investment, I'd like to pretend that, in the four years after Through the Ashes of Empires, when the band was throwing this album together, they came to realization that 'this was how it should always have been'. If The Blackening were the lead-in for the band's career, then it all might have made a lot more sense. I'm not saying this is a 'great' record, but it's certainly a decent one, brilliant by comparison to the long stretch of earsores the band had previously manifest. It's the first studio album that actually deserves even the hype wave they ever surfed in on.

It's evident immediately in "Clenching the Fists of Dissent" that a part of this turnaround is that Robb finally remembered he was a thrasher. In fact, he and Phil Demmel, who also plays here, were part of one of the greatest West Coast thrash albums ever crafted in Vio-lence's Eternal Nightmare, and you can clearly hear that sort of riffing influence being integrated up against the band's nu/groove stylings. Funny enough, when you throw in some neck-jerking, mid-to-fast paced thrash riffs before that moshpit focus group breakdown, it all feels more effective due to the powerful contrasts. I'm not saying that the band's lowbrow riffing fare suddenly becomes more interesting on its own, because there are plenty of effortless, lamentable grooves here, but The Blackening assaults you right up front with the competent upbeat thrash, walls of wailing leads and lots of other guitar atmospheres that dress up even its most mundane moments. That bridge riff feels a lot like something Metallica would have used on Master of Puppets if they were more into gang shouts, and there's just no questioning that this presentation is a more musically ambitious and rich experience regardless of what flaws it carries forward from their garbage daze.

Don't get me wrong here, this isn't a conscious fuck-you turnabout album which ignores the past; you're still getting a big chunk of Pantera worship, but I heard all manner of influences going into this one, from the Mike Muir-like 'emo' vocals of "Beautiful Morning", to the Tool-like structure of groove built into the verses of "Now I Lay Thee Down". You've still got a healthy heaping of those masculine radio rock chorus parts dominating the 'hard rock' channels since the mid-to-late 90s, but even there Flynn manages to string together some slightly more memorable lines and melodies than what you might expect from earlier records. His aggressive barks and roars are still heavily rooted in that whole Phil Anselmo/Skinlab/Pissing Razors style with a dash of generic metalcore angst, and they're for me one of the weaker parts of the album, outshined in almost every instance by the music itself, but I'd happily have this invade my earspace above nonsense like Supercharger or The Burning Red. The musicianship is by far the strongest they'd managed up to this point, and even though there are still a good percentage of pretty dull riffs that hold it back, you'll be surprised by some of the things that pop up.

A couple of the tracks are pretty long by their standards, such as "Clenching the Fists of Dissent" or "Wolves", but I'd say they actually offer enough dynamic range within these to pad them out without lapsing into boring repetition, and perhaps more importantly, that good old thrashing spirit just keeps rearing its head enough, as if its an anchor that's holding the entire process together, and at this point in their game they couldn't have chosen a better focus point. A lot of the lyrics are pretty weak, but at least they don't come off overly goofy in conjunction with terrible music. I also liked the cover art aesthetics, the stark simplicity of the logo font with some classic religious imagery, preferable to all of the choices they made prior to Through the Ashes of Empires at least. Now The Blackening is not an album I'd pick out of a lineup of other material in my thrash (or limited groove metal) library, but if someone were cranking this in the car I wouldn't cover my ears or make a stinky face, I can give some credit where it is due and if this was the sort of passion for the craft they had been meting out since 1994 then I'd never have had cause for complaint. But can they keep it up?

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Catharsis (2018)

While on some level Catharsis pretended to continue the increased level of musical proficiency and effectiveness Machine Head had begun to achieve with a few of the albums before it, on almost every other level it's a dumpster fire. When I first put this record in, I got the impression that it was some group of 14 year old metalcore kids who had picked up a copy of The Blackening and decided to pay it tribute along with with a little Killswitch Engage and maybe a handful of their favorite melodeath bands. The cover art looks exactly like something they would think of. The lyrics are beyond dumb, puerile translations of whatever Robb could look up on the news to become outraged that morning, and the music, while fast and often fairly adept in technicality alone, rings hollow on almost all fronts and is immediately forgettable. Whatever steps towards maturity and memorability the Californians had taken with their material starting the previous decade seemed to have now been sidelined for what is worth little more than soulless dreck. I bet Nuclear Blast was pretty thrilled when their lucrative new contract shat this one on their second outing.

For whatever reason, Machine Head seemed to bring back a little too much of the pure nu metal nonsense on cuts like the titular "Catharsis"? No matter how much you try to dress it up with that emotional soft pop side, once that groove comes out I feel like I'm stuck in a room full of dead air and ideas that were never that interesting the first time this band failed at them. The Pantera influence is also here in full force once again, and it's even funnier when they mix in their rap metal stuff as with the track "California Bleeding", one of the dumbest fucking songs I've heard while writing this blog, which no dirty rock & roll chorus is going to save. Other songs like "Triple Beam" are just dumb pandering grooves with bad hip hoppy verses and then tasteless early 00s alt rock chorus parts which the band must think is going to help them sell records. And maybe that's what happened, and I'm a grumpy old dude who is out of the loop, but personally I've never met anyone with a single positive thing to say about Catharsis. One other irritant here is that the band clearly had a hard on for the pop-infused hardcore & metalcore we were hearing out of both the US & UK 5-10 years ago, and you can tell by the light synth touches they throw into cuts like "Catharsis" and "Kaleidoscope". Say what you will about those bands, they pulled it off better than this one can.

Of course, Robb had to spread his bleeding & beaten wings a little further here with "Behind a Mask" or "Bastards", which sound like some dopey acoustic track Aaron Lewis of Staind would right...but what the latter grows into, some weird anthemic fusion of The Dropkick Murphys and the Beatles, in which Robb tries to embrace minorities into the Machine Head fanbase while dropping sarcastic slurs at them, is the sappiest 'what the fuck' moment I've probably heard from any of these high profile nu metal bands. 'NO NO NO, NO NO FUCK NO, NO NO NO!' Do you want a Machine F**king Head High Five for your pedestrian protest anthem? 'GET YOUR MIDDLE FINGERS IN THE AIR AND SING, THEY CAN'T IGNORE US ANYMORE.' Reading these lyrics makes me feel like I'm in the midst of the rave scene in that Matrix sequel, only with worse music and surrounded by a bunch of edgy caricatures of cartoon PSAs with their capes flapping around in Robb's posterior wind. I'm all for people expressing social and political opinions that they feel strongly about, don't get me wrong, but try to do it with a little tact and nuance rather than overt cliches, condescension and reductionist stereotypes that do nobody any good.

To be fair there are other themes here being tackled with more personal, less obnoxious lyrics, but even then you're guaranteed to have some extremely weak musical idea fouling up whatever rare catchy bit they might have accidentally stumbled upon. There is approximately one song here, "Heavy Lies the Crown", which would actually be a half-decent mid-paced Swedish melodeath tune if it didn't have Robb's vocals or lyrics anywhere near it. The production is fine, the boys can still play, but ultimately, Catharsis is just one goofy, convoluted mess that feels half Midlife Crisis and half I Wrote These Songs in My Garage While Inhaling Carbon Monoxide Because I'm Too High to Realize That I Left the Engine Running. It is, for my wallet, the worst Machine Head studio album, and I'd rather have all my body hair peeled off with masking tape while being forced to endure The Burning Red and Supercharger before ever listening to it again.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Machine F**king Head live (2012)

Nearly a decade after Hellalive, and a not unreasonable amount of time to wait for a band thrust so far into the spotlight, Robb Flynn and his Machine Head released a slightly more elaborate follow-up live effort over 2 CDs. While its predecessor was no slouch at 80 minutes of content, this is over 100 and allows the band to draw upon a bigger pool of material, including some from the two albums before this, critical darlings in many circles, which had seriously increased the band's stock even among the disbelievers who justifiably loathed almost everything they had released up to that point. In fact this is quite up to date for the year it came out, devoting fully five of its 15 selections to tunes from 2011's Unto the Locust, an album that only had seven songs to begin with...

Add in the trifecta of "Beautiful Morning", "Aesthetics of Hate" and "Halo" from The Blackening and you have more than half of an experience which might skew well above the suck line. Burn My Eyes, the debut and least shitty of their first five albums, has a pair of tracks in "Old" and "Davidian" which grants a little more stabilization. I think Overkill kind of saturated the market on the ol' F-bomb emphasis with Fuck You and Then Some, but I'm sure some fraction of the Machine Head market does appreciate the stripped honesty of Machine F**king Head Live! Like if I'm getting off the late shift at the meatpacking plant the night before, sleeping in late and then starting my boozing early, you're damn right when Robb Flynn and friends enter the stage with pyrotechnical wizardry and lots of chugging I'm a holler "MACHINE FUCKING HEAD!" at the top of my lung capacity. To boot, this album was a slight surprise in how honestly it captured the group's sound, in a more raw form than I expected...without too much polish anywhere, lots of crowd noise that can occasionally even compete with the instruments, and a solid and substantial performance.

If you were at this performance and felt its energy and sincerity, you'd probably be aboard the train, at least for a couple hours, because they knock it out of the park. At least the UK fans at Manchester Central seemed to think so. The more metallic, musical material from the albums leading straight up to this glows in venue, with great dual harmonies, melodic chorus parts, thundering, precise drums, surging thrash breaks and a nice bass tone giving everything that much more punch. The leads as in "Be Still and Know" are a lot of fun here and the band sounds so much more on point than anything I've forced myself to endure through the 90s or earlier half of the 00s. Some form of professional and passionate equilibrium had been achieved through all its trials and tribulations and that reflects right back out through the product to the fans. As much as I don't like their bouncier nu metal material, just being in the presence of better tunes here almost makes it more tolerable, so I could listen through a jam like "The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears" or "Old" without needing to turn it off. Ultimately I think this is one of the top three Machine Head releases, and even though it's not one I'd ever personally break out with all of the gajillion options available to me by bands I tend to enjoy, I could fully understand why any would sing its praise. It crushes Hellalive both in the stronger selection of songs and the aural impact it leaves. They showed up, they gave a shit, they performed well, you got what you paid for, and for at least the couple years leading to this, they mattered.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - The Black Procession EP (2011)

The Black Procession is a special issue 10" vinyl with three live tracks taken from the two studio albums before it, recording during their 2010 tour of the same name. One could probably forgive the scantness of its content, since like many Record Day releases, Machine Head probably just wanted to have something packaged up fresh for fans; a lot of these things are directly meant for the collectors' market, and here they chose to just sift through a couple tapes of their recent performances and make it easy. I do like how the cover artwork is consistent with The Blackening's classic, minimalist style, and two of the tracks are taken from the first of their albums I'd actually consider decent, but that's really all that I can say positive about the EP.

Though they don't sound terrible, the live mix here is a bit raw and suppressed, I felt like I was hearing it muffled through a tent at a festival...maybe if I was standing BEHIND the tent and they were on the other sides moshing it up with the crowd. You can still make out most of the instruments, but a lot of them just don't sound good. The vocals are not the best, but the backing vocals sound absolutely horrible. The leads are also kind of cheesy sounding and don't have the same impact that they do on the studio releases. Of the three tracks, "Bite the Bullet" probably comes off the most even, but since I don't like that song it's hardly some saving grace. And to be honest, the others don't do much justice to their own studio incarnations, so this is literally just some EP you'd want to file away in your record bin if you solely value its existence as a product that you can throw money at and add to another pile of similar products just to say you did.

And then when you end up having to switch houses, apartments, dorm rooms this all becomes a big fat burden to load up onto grandma's truck with all your rare wax and DJ equipment. That may or may not be true for you and your situation, but what is definitely true is this is a complete waste of time, even if it's just 17 minutes and change.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Through the Ashes of Empires (2003)

Before you've even heard a note of Through the Ashes of Empire you can already tell that some important change has been made. The title of the album is probably the best they've had, and the cover art leaves a more lasting impression with its haunting photographic effect. Perhaps some maturity has settled into this band, which had clearly not been struggling financially, but had been creatively bankrupt from the offset. After sitting through the actual content of the album, I'd concede that it's more thorough and ambitious than anything the band had released prior, with more of an ear for detail and at least some effort expended in assembling the songs together, tabulating a few more complex ideas than we'd heard from Robb Flynn across this project's backlog. All of this might seem like I'm setting up Machine Head for some glowing praise, but I assure you, I do not actually like Through the Ashes of Empire. It's not a good album, it's not even acceptable, but it's surely less shitty than the three leading up to it between 1997-2001.

Machine Head drops some of the nu metal influence (I said 'some', not all) and comes to the decision that it really misses sounding like the band it was originally created to sound like. Yes, Through the Ashes of Empires is a Pantera wannabe about 60-70% of the time. The guitar tone, and the way a lot of the riffs are structured sound like Dimebag left them on the cutting room floor during the Vulgar Display of Power sessions, with a few spare lines of other members' cocaine. Flynn's harsher vocals sound a hell of a lot like Anselmo, excepting for a different regional accent that lends a difference in natural intonation. This isn't to say that the Californians had suddenly dumped their other influences; you still get some of those childish, angry Jonathan Davis buildups, you get a lot of those ditzy little organic hip hop/Korn influences like the weird guitars in "Left Unfinished". There are some lead sequences which sound a lot like they're trying to pull a Kirk Hammett from the Black Album era, and there are still a WHOLE lot of shitty bro chorus parts which are still trying to tap into that good old All-American contemporary hard rock zeitgeist that bands like Godsmack, Creed, Silverchair, Fighters and Nickelback appeal to, or nowadays Five Finger Death Punch...

But the Pantera similarities definitely distract away from the rest, and so Through the Ashes of Empires feels like another album that was trying to be a composite of heavy music trends, playing it safe with some of the big names' inspiration entwined into the songwriting, and it just feels like they were trying to win over whatever 'metal' audience was left that looks no further than Pantera or Black Label Society when they're browsing through the record store for some new HARD SHIT. It's all dressed up pretty enough...there are lots of pinch harmonics thrown around to give the riffs a sense they have more dimension to them, or a few faster thrash parts that go more for a Cowboys From Hell vibe than Far Beyond Driven. I'd even say a few of the cooler moments on the album were some of the more unexpected, clean guitars that sadly cede to more boring groove metal riffs, or when they step outside a little further with "Elegy", which starts off with a chugging doom/sludge vibe and some more hypnotic, wasted vocals before also ruining itself. There were compulsions behind some of the ideas that end up here which were probably strong to begin with, but Robb and the boys just can't seem to stick the landing on any of them.

The lyrics are about 80% awful cliches about emotional disenfranchisement and other social issues, that like most rock is supposed to sound genuinely angry and connect with the day-to-day struggles of the mainstream rock crowd that expects little more from it, plenty of F-bombs added to create just the right blast radius of pedestrian rage. A lot of the clean chorus parts here are pretty elaborate, he was trying to stretch himself as a singer, so why then are so few of them even remotely catchy? I mean, I'll give Machine Head that this one doesn't sound so phoned-in as The More Things Change... or Supercharger, but why can't I remember a single song 15 minutes later? It's a whole lot of effort dumped into just not enough. There are single riffs on Vulgar Display of Power that are better than this entire album. There are single Vio-lence songs better than Machine Head's entire discography for that matter, but how the mighty have fallen. In the interest of fairness, I think if this had just been the album they put out after Burn My Eyes, a lot of cringe material could have been avoided, and it would seem a sensible evolution there, but that still doesn't make it an album I'd ever listen to again if I weren't committing to giving their catalog another chance.

Could it be a sign of better things to come?

Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Hellalive (2003)

Machine Head's first proper live album came about a decade into their career, more time than some superstars wait for sure, so one can't really hold their feet to the fire for wanting to get a substantial studio backlog behind them before trying to sell such a product. It features a pretty even distribution of material from the four albums they'd put out before it, but that just means almost all of it is going to be really, really bad. You've got your 'crowd pleasers' like "Old", "Ten Ton Hammer", "Take My Scars", and...okay, I'm sorry, I just can't keep a straight face while trying to type this sentence. Let's cut to the chase: Hellalive is a terrible live album, but it's terrible for its content, not AS a live album, if that makes any sense.

Technically, it's passable in most respects. The guitars and vocals are pretty level, and sound at least as good if not better than their studio counterparts on many riffs. They go for a more straightforward sound on stage, you can still make out some of the guitar effects and subtleties of the studio work but it hits much more like a blunt object. Although Robb is trying to represent the range of trite emotions he brings to the studio, he's a little dumbed down on the delivery through this set and that's actually a good thing. Apart from whisking off into some of his clean-cut jock chorus parts, he doesn't sound as laughable as he's done on a few of the albums. Then again, some of the drifty, dreamy melodic mouth breathing he does on tunes like "The Blood, The Sweat, the Tears" sounds a little dopey and it's on a part like that where you can hear more effects on the voices. The bass isn't quite as fat on stage here, so the tunes do lose a little bit of depth, but the drums make up for it with a little more fiery energy beneath them.

It's not a pure proper live set because a few songs are yanked from a second date in Germany and added here or substituted for the UK gig, but a lot of live albums do this and its all for presenting to the fans who want a more seamless listening experience and maybe cutting out a few awkward flaws. As live records go, this one does a fair representation for the band, I cannot imagine a longtime fan of Machine Head in 2003 putting this in the car stereo and feeling let down. They pound on you with a lot of their cheesy groove metal songs and leave enough space to get their emo on too. But I simply cannot reconcile with this shitty music, because I do not enjoy what I'm listening to. Is this a better experience than Supercharger, The Burning Red, or the More Things Change...? Yes. Does it bring hte pain? The siccness? If you're 11, yes. Is it worth checking out when there are literally tens of thousands of better albums and better bands across every niche of the metal spectrum? Hard no.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Supercharger (2001)

There's about a minute in the first proper song here, "Bulldozer", after the pointless and uninteresting "Declaration" intro has ended, where Machine Head breaks into what sounds like it could have been a half-tolerable thrash/hardcore riff section, and I'd love to say that it almost fooled me into thinking I might be in for a sea change from the two miserable full-length albums previous. But I gotta level with ya, I don't fucking trust this band at ALL to write anything of quality, so sure enough, within seconds, that same song unraveled into an unkempt amalgamation of Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and God Hates Us All era Slayer that reassures me that Supercharger is in no danger of breaking the stink-streak that preceded it.

I could say a couple positive things about the production. The way the guitars and vocals here are produced is a little bit more edgy and cutting than the last album, and Robb is settling into his multiple vocal stylings a little more with each album. Unfortunately, all of those stylings are really lame even by 2001 standards. His rapping has gotten a little more dextrous and sounds like an actual attempt at rap, perhaps, but then it's all about laying on the angst and the nu-metal rage, once again a mid-90s Jonathan Davis with far less personality, or a try-hard Mike Patton, and both the lyrical content and delivery feel shallow. What's worse, he's obviously going for those cliche radio rock chorus tones and patterns that feel like he's trying to get Machine Head recruited for an 'Army of One' ad on TV, like they're trying to peddle themselves as my friendly local neighborhood Godsmack, a band that I must apologize for my neck of the woods (Southern NH/Northern MA) ever producing to plague your ears. But, be real, it's not as if Flynn's goofiness is any better.

The annoying vocals would be one thing, but the vast majority of riffs here are just pathetic, yet again bouncing back and forth between a couple chords that require no imagination whatsoever, just to cling to the grooves that the fat bass tone is laying out, which sound good studio-wise, but are really just as awful once you dissect them. I'd say Supercharger is slightly more technical and dynamic than The Burning Red; you will come across a couple riffs that have a genuine energy flowing to them, and they use a lot more guitar effects like wah-wah sounds all over the place to make this sound like much more of an organized mess, but any attempt at validity is ruined by the shitty commercial radio vocals and the obnoxious pandering that this album constantly gets into. This is 'metal' by numbers, the lowest common denominator kind, trying to cash in on the audiences of emotional rock and angry wallet-chain Lollapaloser mosh. Any time any rhythmic maneuver comes close to engaging my brain, it's almost instantly shat upon by a quick morph into the tedium that I've described above.

It's very clear that Machine Head were trying to follow the Korn trajectory around the turn of the century, with a lot more soft atmospheric parts contrasting against bleaker emotional outbursts, and Robb was also trying to get a decisive, pointed delivery to his chorus parts that David of Disturbed always had ("Only the Names" is a textbook example of all this). But that's the problem, we already had those bands, and this one did absolutely nothing as well as any of them. Not that I'm asking you to listen to them instead, I could probably count the number of metal albums I enjoy on a single hand with a missing thumb, but this is just more also-ran rubbish that time will swallow up, even the fans of Machine Head's earlier output don't seem so enamored with this one, and it doesn't take a degree to understand why.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Year of the Dragon EP (2000)

Here's another Machine Head EP which was released in a few territories, presumably to sate the demand for more recorded live material and rare 'demos' that I can't imagine anyone actually ever having asked for in there lives. That said, it's possible that even Robb and the band didn't give a shit about this, that it was some sort of record label promotion to keep them on the shelves at the shops, or in radio rotation, or whatever crappy music industry justification for wasting natural resources on dumb material products. But unlike the Take My Scars EP, which had a mediocre Nirvana cover on it, Year of the Dragon has no curiosities whatsoever, just churning out the most generic short-playing fan cash-in possible, with one demo track that might make it a collector's item for collectors of trash.

"The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears" is the 'single' here, and it's presented in both its lame studio rendition, and one of the three live tracks that were recorded in Connecticut in 1999. It's following up after 3-4 other singles from The Burning Red album and one they put out for the Heavy Metal 2000 movie, which honestly baffles me, that any of the material could be considered good enough for air play... I mean, I don't know how anything by New Kids On the Block was ever considered quality, but they wrote better songs than these. At least I'm assuming...I wouldn't know much about that ::as he hides his copy of Hangin' Tough where you'll never find it:: The live songs are among the worst possible, between "The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears" and the awful "Desire to Fire" which is just possibly the most cringeworthy track Machine Head has ever produced in their mostly miserable catalog. "From This Day" isn't much better, it literally sounds like Limp Bizkit with a slightly heavier groove where he tries to do commercial rock vocals for the emerging Nickelback crowd.

The live tunes aren't recorded quite as well as those from the prior EP, but I suppose they are loud and brash and not as badly mixes as some I've encountered. So I'll give it a point for that, since I can't justify any of the musical value whatsoever except maybe the little 'HEY SLAYER GUYZ' riff that comes up late in "From This Day". "New Resistance" is the demo track closing out the EP, and I have no idea if this was something which was later reworked, but it's a horrible track that sounds like it belonged on The Burning Red or whatever Disturbed was writing at the time, there's a little bit of David Draiman in the vocals on that one but then again this wouldn't be the only case of that, the difference is that Disturbed has had the gall on a number of occasions to create memorably annoying songs, whereas Machine Head throughout the 90s just opted for the latter half of that equation.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - The Burning Red (1999)

I don't know what could possibly possess a band to spend years listening to and touring on an album like The More Things Change and then come to decision that they need to do this again...but that seems to be the motivation behind Machine Head's third full-length The Burning Red. If there's one difference here it's that the guys are clearly trying to sound a lot more like Korn than they already did, so you can bet the chug-laden hip hop influences are being cranked up to the extent that even Diabolus in Musica might be embarrassed to be found in its company. Full disclosure, as I've said before, I don't actually have a problem with the idea itself of mixing rap music with heavy riffing, it's just so rarely that I've heard it done well. If I do, it'll have my respect. Most of the nu metal bands who flirt with the idea take more of a rhythmic influence from that hybrid, with the bouncy beats, lyrical attitude, bass lines and guitar tricks that are attempting to emulate record scratching or other stylistic translations.

Korn had already worn us out on that with their first 2-3 albums and Machine Head doesn't seem to accomplish much more than that several years later. So if you're truly enamored with Life is Peachy or Roots, get on with your bad self, but I think The Burning Red is notably worse than either of them. Robb does try his hand at rapping in the actual lyrical delivery, as in "Desire to Fire", and that comes off just as goofy as you'd imagine, you can just picture in your mind the hand movements he'd be making as he was bouncing along in the studio. I'm not saying he's the worst at it that I've ever heard, but once it surges into that lame chorus groove which sounds as if it's just been replicated off the last album, it just becomes too unintentionally hilarious. Add to that the monotonous crooning he adds to try and keep it all in the radio realm during the age of Creed and Alice in Chains, and we're in for one dumb fuck of an album. But it doesn't stop there, because that's basically the formula for almost the ENTIRE experience...dull churning nu metal guitars, rapped out pissed off lyrics, funkier or dissonant guitar lines and almost no ability whatsoever to turn in an interesting chorus. I mean come on, even Linkin fucking Park can deliver on the chorus, the best Robb Flynn and the bros here can accomplish is to sound like Limp Bizkit's steroid-addled cousin...or like a Jonathan Davis with far less personality and equally dumb lyrics.

When this formula IS abandoned, it's to go even further into post-grunge woozy commercial 90s heavy rock territory with the 'emotional' parts like the verses in "Silver", which just sound like some drunk guys trying to get their Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Silverchair on. The lyrics once again come off like some distraught middle schooler who really wants you to know all the pain and castigation he's been through BUT HE IS STRONG AND DON'T FUCK WITH HIM...as long as it sounds personal, has no capacity to engage anyone with genuine intellectual depth, and rhymes, let's pay ball. They read like the lyrics Fred Durst would have come up with if he was doing an audition for Hatebreed or Madball before they jettisoned him from the rehearsal space moments later. You could literally punch Durst in over Flynn on "Exhale the Vile" and not know the difference. Give me any lyrics about Satan, Vikings, motorcycles or B-movie bloodbaths any day over this nonsense! The cover art sucks. The cover SONG sucks..."Message in a Bottle", how original...Excel did a great version of that a whole decade before this lazy and laughable execution. Maybe when you were in Vio-lence and actually had an ounce of talent, you should have paid more attention to the other thrash bands from your State?

Verdict: Epic Fail [2/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Take My Scars EP (1997)

Why does Japan get all the nice things? Alright, the adjective 'nice' is debatable when discussing any of Machine Head's garbage, but the point stands that in decades of musical obsession I've run across loads of albums and singles that are fattened up for sale over there. Granted, they pay a higher price than we do on a lot of these goods, but even for something as lowly as this EP you're getting a lot more content. Really, Take My Scars is more of a single, featuring the titular track off The More Things Change and then a B-side cover, a couple of demo tracks (oh boy!); but the Japanese edition also includes nearly a half hour of live material. Now, I couldn't tell you for the life of me who this would be for...I know the band was and likely remains within the 'Nu Metal Top 10', but was there really a huge market for copious maxi-singles from bands like Korn, Sepultura or Machine Head?

I've made my opinion on "Take My Scars" clear, it's a crappy nu-metal jam that sounds like it was strung together from the first few notes that popped up during a jam session, boring chords that do nothing other than emulate a primal hip hop groove with a little hardcore anger. That track is here in both a studio and live incarnation, and doesn't sound less awkward in either. I think the big draw on this would be the cover of Nirvana's "Negative Creep", which plays it pretty close to the original only adds a little fatter guitar tone. Robb's vocals are lower pitched than Cobain's, but he throws in a lot of wild screaming that almost make me wish he would just do that more often in his own band. In fact when listening to this it sounded a lot like another of the Seattle grunge bands, Tad, who I enjoy, covering Nirvana, and that alone makes it superior to all of Machine Head's original material here. The two demo tracks sound awful, nothing more than rougher cuts of what you hear on the radio and they don't improve anything except having that bridge to a more live atmosphere.

The five live cuts are from the band's limited two-album run at the time, and in terms of recording they do sound alright, provided you're already a fan of sub-mediocre music. It does sound a little messier, more pissed off and the hardcore parts on cuts like "Blood for Blood" sound even more hardcore and heavy in this context, so there is that to say for it. Of course if you aren't tracking down this very version of the EP then you won't hear those at all. Ultimate, Take My Scars isn't a product I'd recommend to anyone, but then again in general I wouldn't recommend any of their stuff, at least not for a big chunk of their career...let's explore further and hear if there are any diamonds in the rough.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - The More Things Change... (1997)

Where Burn My Eyes sounded like it might have at least been extracted from some fossilized metal DNA of integrity somewhere along the path of its inception, The More Things Change... is little more than a giant, blubbery surrender to the most vapid and idiotic nu metal trends of the 90s, and revisiting this sophomore was admittedly both hilarious and embarrassing as I tried to scrape the dregs of the barrel and find anything, just ONE thing positive I could actually say about it. This is basically a mix of the first two Korn albums, Sepultura's Roots, and a little of the Biohazard and Sick of It All influence returning from the debut, manifest though the least shitty riffs found here, in tunes like "Stuck a Nerve", if only because bland hardcore riffs are far less obnoxious than the alternative Robb Flynn is providing us.

I suppose the production is fine for what it is, Adam Duce's bass tone standing out here against the churning, boring chords and the occasional higher pitched, primitive droning guitars which are used to add at least some other sort of dimension to the material beyond just the grooves. And these are absolute rubbish nu metal riffs, which took next to no time whatsoever to conceive as they merely bounce back and forth between maybe 2-3 chords max. The band does reach out to create a few added dynamics as in "Down to None" with its dissonant guitars over a slower groove, but even there the results are little more than ennui as they can't ever seem to capitalize on a less throwaway riff with anything explosive or interesting. "Take My Scars" is a prime example of how bad this is with its mindless, lazy chords, and how Flynn tries to inject some mid-ranged doped up Alice in Chains style vocal to create a contrast or chorus to the roiling nothing below. The Rage Against the Machine guitar 'scratches' and angry hip hop vocals are also hilariously lame. The lead guitar, as basic as it is, almost seems out of place for trying to be too ambitious to what this album is all about, the cheapest cashing in on the LCD of metal music.

Now I'm not opposed to really basic riffing structures, grooves or breakdowns if they're written well enough, hell I'm a pretty big fan of Helmet records like Meantime and Betty, which are likely also influences that rubbed off on some this mid-90s Machine Head era. But these guys just lack any trace of personality, it's as if you stripped down the already-basic ideas of nu metal, took away any of the goofy costumes or vocal gimmicks of the more visible bands in that scene, and came up with a generic blueprint on which to teach grade schoolers how to jump da fuc up with their wallet chains flailing around. The cover font, lazy, the cover artwork, pretty typical stuff that looks like half the proto metalcore records I used to have in the early 90s, and the lyrics are about of trite garbage like "So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, we gotta wake up!" Are you also down with the sickness? As a general rule, the more atmospheric the album gets, where it doesn't rely 100% on the dumb nu metal bounce parts, the material becomes ever more tolerable, as in "Blood of the Zodiac", which is tucked away at the end of the track list with its eerie intro, primal pensiveness and bluesy, sad solos. It's hard to believe this ISN'T the worst album in the band's catalog. Can it get much worse? Hold Robb's beer.

Verdict: Fail [3.75/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Burn My Eyes (1994)

Machine Head is a bad band which becomes even more tragic for me when I look at what some of its members had accomplished years before its creation. That's not to say that Burn My Eyes is in any way the Californians' career nadir, far from it, but when I compare even this earlier effort to the first two Vio-lence albums that Rob Flynn played on it becomes instantly disappointing how much the guy absolutely sold the fuck out to whatever was trendy during the 90s. To be part of such kinetic, vicious, nearly flawless thrash metal like Eternal Nightmare, fully capable of causing the mullets to frenzy about and moshing to naturally erupt without the need for cheap breakdowns, and then later start up a band for which banal tribal tattoo mosh culture was the entire impetus to exist just comes across as depressing. Perhaps he was burned out with the diminishing success of his alma mater, who themselves were decreasing in quality as the changes in popular culture demoralized the second and lower tier thrash acts to try their hands at a more mall-accessible brand of heaviness, but virtually every effort I've heard from this band has felt like a dull slap in the face with a side of stale, bruised beef.

To be fair, Burn My Eyes is at least someone in touch with its thrashing foundations. Flynn and crew were unquestionably listening to bands like Biohazard and Pantera, probably also closely following the path that Brazilians Sepultura were taking, and this debut feels like someone had packed, beaten and kneaded those flavors into a rough thrash taffy by the pier. The focus is clearly on making big dumb grooves to hold the tougher audience elements' attention span, hip hop with chords and chugs, but then the band lacked the NYHC street cred, or the overbearing personality of Phil Anselmo's vocals, or Dimebag's ability to compose such sticky riffs. Burn My Eyes gets some credit for me though in how Machine Head manages to balance off its dynamics and give the meatheadedness some atmosphere. Part of this is accomplished by having such strongly produced drums, they really thunder around here and make even the more primal and predictable riffs stir the blood more than I'd have otherwise expected. Adam Duce's bass-lines sound pretty good throughout the album, thick as a brick. The shouted vocals are also well mixed to tap into the caveman genes, and they do occasionally manage to alternate some other tempos into the 'jump da fuc up' riffs which are probably the money shots the band and Roadrunner were counting on. There's also a little tendency to incorporate some mechanical higher pitched guitar lines in to flesh out the groove, I'm occasionally reminded of Prong circa 1990-1994, although Tommy Victor was far better at writing good music.

I mean if you just got out the gym back in the mid 90s, grabbed a copy of this over at Tower Records and had a little testosterone left to channel, I can imagine that the gut punching duo of the singles "Davidian" and "Old" would have been the best thing ever! Unless of course that you already had been listening to metal music for any length of time before that and realized that the aggression in the medium doesn't always need to be so tailor fit toward its most shallow instincts. Flynn tries to spin a lot of the tough guy sustain on his vocal lines, but he's just never had the bravado of Anselmo, or perhaps it's that he was lacking the Southern accent that put Phil over the top. He actually sounds like he's half-way between THAT Phil, and another Phil, Rind of Sacred Reich. The rappy vocals on songs like "A Thousand Lies" were mirroring Biohazard, but in that case lack some of the goofier beefcake charm of those topless, chiseled Brooklyn brutes; and a few of the cleaner lines seem like they lack confidence, as in "None But My Own" where they sound sort of drugged and dopey. Guitars grooves here like the breakdown in "None but My Own" sound like they're just doing their best to mimic stuff from A Vulgur Display of Power, although I'll cut some slack in that the very structure, mechanistic patterns seem to live up to their namesake.

The lyrics are far from the worst I've read from a lot of the groove metal bands of the 90s, but still just a combination of pretty obvious cliches about personal suffering and strengthening with some topical remnants of the 80s thrash that the band grew out of. The cover artwork is awful; is this weird blurred out guy copulating with the person in front him, or is that supposed to be the same dude head banging hard and being caught in various positions of the act? Whatever the answer, bro, it definitely makes me want to burn out my own eyes, so I can't blame Machine Head for false advertising there.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/