Single Of The Week: Beyond The Pale by Machine Head

We gave you a single of the week from the rock side of life so we figured we’s give you one from the metal side of things as well. One of the most underrated bands in all of metal has always been California Groove Metal titans Machine Head. The band has released some stellar albums from Burn My Eyes, Through The Ashes Of Empires, The Blackening, Unto The Locust, and the last album we’ve heard from them in 2014’s Bloodstone & Diamonds. Now the band has unveiled their next effort in Catharsis which is due out on January 26, 2018 via Nuclear Blast. The band also unveiled a brand new track for everyone to hear in the epic twin guitar assault in Beyond The Pale. Robb Flynn talked about the new album saying, “I feel like metal could really infiltrate the mainstream with this album. And it needs to… now more than ever. A lot of consideration went into making these songs more identifiable to a wider audience. Simplifying ideas, simplifying hooks, really concentrating on story-telling as opposed to ‘brutal poetry’ or whatever. And while I’d love to say it was all some grand plan, there was no ‘plan.’” You never know where you’re going to end up whenever you start writing a record… you just write… but I tell ya what… we ended up with a landmark here. Whenever you finish an album, you always feel proud, but this time… we’ve got something really special. We can feel it. We know it. Catharsis could really elevate our genre.” You can pre-order the new album now via Nuclear Blast, but for now check out the track below:

Acoustic Track Of The Week: Darkness Within By Machine Head

It can be quite a challenge to take a heavy metal track that is already pretty heavy to begin with and turn the electricity off and perform it acoustically. Machine Head just released Bloodstones & Diamonds today (November 11) and to help celebrate the release of the new record, I decided to take a bonus track from the band’s last release Unto The Locust for this week’s Acoustic Track Of The Week. The track is called Darkness Within and it starts off on the clean side before the band turns up the distortion on the original version so the beginning two minutes of the track essentially sets up the easy conversion to acoustic. It’s the rest of the song that the band had to really convert, but they do a masterful job and I love Robb Flynn’s scat singing and his overall vocal performance on the acoustic version. The song is amazing and it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of acoustic renditions of songs that were recorded electrically.