Machine Head: The Blackening

Artist: Machine Head
Album: The Blackening
Year: 2007
Line Up:
             Robb Flynn: Guitars, Vocals
             Dave McClain: Drums
             Adam Duce: Bass
             Phil Demmel: Guitars
Sub-Genre: Groove Metal, Metalcore

The Blackening, the sixth record by American post-thrash/groove metal outfit Machine Head, is an overlong exercise in attempting to stay awake for its duration. The music on this record is a jumbled up amalgamation of third rate thrash metal, groove metal, hardcore and traces of nu-metal where none of the traces of the above sub-genres are well written enough to stand out on their own. The composed music is structurally very simple and comprises of mediocre riffs and leads which are repeated at least a dozen of times in a track just to extend its duration. The music being extremely simple, technical performances are simply not worth mentioning. The vocals when aggressive are lame Phil Anselmo ripped off shouts that sound more like the vocalist being raped rather than being angry. Though nothing special, the lead work is decent and works as the highlight of many of the tracks. In making the music sound angry, the band looses focus in making the music catchy and listenable. The choruses are lame, many a times featuring a very hideous melodic breakdown which is compounded by the fact that Rob Flynn cannot hold a note steady. Pantera Walk, this is not. The tracks are long just for the sake of being long. Progressions attempted in the tracks are very horrible and lack a general sense of cohesion in them.

The tracks that stand out include Clenching The Fists Of Dissent and Aesthetics of Hate. Both of the above tracks, though overlong, contain at least some parts where the music is fast and thrashy. The former does contain some very horrible pace changes and it sounds hideous when the music gets mid-paced. Now I Lay Thee Down, Halo, Slanderous and A Farewell To Arms are all boring, mid-paced and overlong tracks with none of the musical elements presented in the tracks working properly. Now I Lay Thee Down especially contains a very horribly written chorus and is an abomination at best. Wolves contains some decent sections in its overlong nine minute duration but are sandwiched between moments of insane mediocrity and thus as a whole turns out to be nothing more than a failure.

The fact that the album was highly praised by main-stream media at its release, being hailed as a modern masterpiece of thrash metal when the said sub-genre was actually quite niggard in the messed up jumble of ideas that were present in the compositions, is one of the biggest jokes of the decade. The shitty song-writing and composition coupled with even worse execution makes this album unfit to hear even once. Bottom-line; The Blackening is not recommended to any fan of thrash metal or even groove metal whose fans might be able to sympathize with the album with a warning to stay away from it.

Final Rating: 30/100