Unto the Locust (Special Edition) Machine Head

• 1 I Am Hell (Sonata In C#) 08:25
• 2 Be Still and Know 05:43
• 3 Locust 07:36
• 4 This Is the End 06:11
• 5 Darkness Within 06:27
• 6 Pearls Before the Swine 07:19
• 7 Who We Are 07:11
• 8 The Sentinel 05:08
• 9 Witch Hunt 04:46
• 10 Darkness Within (Re-Imagined 2021) 04:47
• Total Runtime 01:03:33

Info for Unto the Locust (Special Edition)

Bay Area titans Machine Head return with a blistering new offering, Unto The Locust. The album is packed with true metal anthems from the metal torchbearers, and it's erected upon the band's signature, crunchy guitar tone, pummeling riffage, a thunderstorm of percussion and Flynn's militaristic barks.

On Burn My Eyes, Machine Head's 1994 debut album, there featured a song with the not entirely user-friendly title of Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies. Essentially a two-and-three-quarter-minute guitar riff, the track was rendered intriguing by the fact that its lyrics comprised soundbites recorded from the darker thoroughfares of America's meanest streets: voices of the poor bemoaning police brutality, police radios alerting squad cars to explosions of gang violence, and gangbangers telling reporters why it was they hated other gangbangers who were, for all intents and purposes, identical to themselves. At the time, the song was startling: metal but not as it was known; urban rather than suburban; street and actually rather cool. Who knew?

Without mellowing one single beat-per-minute, a generation on and Machine Head's once-fringe thrash has moved to the centre ground to such a degree that in December the quartet will headline a show at London's Wembley Arena. And while the years between their first album and Unto the Locust haven't linked together entirely seamlessly - the group endured a particularly unconvincing middle-period - the ferocity and precision displayed throughout this release's seven tracks offers proof that, since their inception, Machine Head and others like them have dragged metal's mainstream to them rather than them having made concessions to it. That fare as mean and ugly and unsparing as this can bask in the sunlight is heartening indeed.

Unto the Locust is a quite terrific release, and one which shows that while its creators can thrash as well as any - the forensic This Is the End offers ample evidence of this - this is set is more than a one-dimensional dog and pony show. Tracks such as the subtle (you read that correctly) Darkness Within, and the climactic and contagious, even life-affirming, Who We Are display a band that have learned much about tonality; that, and the plain fact that power is nothing without control. Even so, Unto the Locust isn't likely to be confused with Metallica - it has no crossover appeal. But for metalheads who like their music sharp and executed without recourse to compromise, then this is a contender for genre album of the year.

Machine Head

Machine Head
is an American thrash/groove metal band that formed in 1992 in Oakland, California. Machine Head was formed by two ex-"Vio-Lence" members Robert Flynn and Adam Duce. The band has been plagued by lineup changes and drug abuse since its inception. Though the band's first album was a success, Machine Head had a series of albums that earned the band criticism for "selling out". With 5 former members, the band nearly disbanded in 2002 after Roadrunner Records dropped them. The band resigned soon after and had a stable line-up from 2003-2013. In february of 2013 it was announced that after 21 years Duce left the band leaving Flynn the only remaining original member. In 2007 Machine Head had a Grammy Award nomination for their album "The Blackening".

This album contains no booklet.