Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Machine Head - The Blackening (2007)

I recall a time when I had been away from the metal scene for a couple of years, away in fact from music altogether.  Upon venturing back into metal one of the first albums I downloaded was Machine Head's The Blackening, the band's sixth offering.  I had based my decision to buy this cold entirely based on their debut from some fifteen years earlier, an album that was very important in my metal development as well as being a widely recognised key release generally.  The band had strayed off into nu-metal tinged releases more or less immediately afterwards and I had long lost touch with their output by the time I made this impulse purchase.

For an impules purchase, it wasn't too shabby.  Coming back to the genre, at the time I though it was heavy as fuck, certainly closer to the original sound of the band that peaked my interest back in 1994.  It made excellent gym music for my (then) regular early morning workouts and as such became an important part of my daily routine for a good number of months.  Without reinventing any wheels, the album was just what I needed at that point in my life.  It was a straight up, no frills , balls to the wall metal album that immediately reignited my taste for the genre. 

From the opening throes of Clenching The Fists Of Dissent the album instantly began constructing a solid structure that was (largely) consistent throughout the whole album.  The impact of the album went beyond just a couple of tracks, maintaining pace well for what at first glance of the tracklisting looks to be a short album, clocking in at just eight tracks but actually has a run time of just over an hour.  Even when the album hits lulls or dips in quality it quickly re-establishes itself finding firm footing more or less immediately.  After the lacklustre Slanderous for example, the album picks up straight away with the fan favourite Halo which then sets up a fine run of a trio of tracks that close out the album brilliantly.

Arguably Machine Heads last good album with the line-up of Flynn, Demmel, McClain and Duce the focus on more groove and thrashy elements makes The Blackening stand out from what came before.  It fills in the gaps that were present on Through the Ashes of Empires and gave fans of the debut one last hope that the band were going to hark back to the intensity of what they delivered in the early nineties.