Post Reply - The Great Collection Rediscovery

Album: The Blackening

Obtained From: er...may have been in store, don't actually remember on this one.

Previous Last.fm Scrobbles: 13 (would be more, but this came out a couple of years before I joined Last.fm)

Old Rating: 4/5

Verdict: Now here's one that I remember playing a lot when it came out (in my pre-Last.fm days - it's hardly come out since then). Instrumentally it's a pretty fine, though often long-winded, groove/thrash metal record from Machine Head, a band who has never interested me beyond this one album, in big part to their descent into nu-metal periods. I find some aspects of the lyrical delivery a bit immature for my taste though, such as the second song where the first line is Robb Flynn screaming 'fuck you all!!!' which may have been acceptable to the teen ears who bought the album but thirteen years later the same ears realise this kind of almost teen angst was coming out of a 40 year old Flynn and his (mostly) older cohorts and it just doesn't wash. It's an album that's aged fucking badly in that regard with the notable exception of Aesthetics of Hate, which was written about the Dimebag Darrell murder and still feels as poignant in 2020 as it did in 2007. 

This album was also incredibly hyped back in 2007, especially by Metal Hammer magazine in the UK and I admit to being among those swept up in Machine Head (or Machine 'Fucking' Head, as MH and fans tended to religiously call them) fervour. But as is evidenced by how little the bloody thing's graced my speakers since, it's not a record that's stood the test of time. The extra sad thing being that from whatever else I've ever encountered by Machine Head, this is most likely the best the overrated act ever got. 

New Rating: 3/5

Keeper? Barely.