Californian groove metal veterans Machine Head return to the fore with their sixth studio album, a head-crunching, heart-pounding collection of colossal songs that sees the band do away with their ill-fated experiments in Nu-Metal of years previous and cement their name as truly great metal band.

There’s much here that begs us to compare Machine Head’s latest effort to Metallica’s celebrated ‘Master of Puppets’ LP. For one, there are only eight tracks here, albeit eight lengthy tracks, some of which clock in over the ten-minute mark. Secondly, there’s that clean, acoustic intro a la Metallica’s ‘Battery’ and then there’s the music itself; whiplash solos and crunching riffs, pounding rhythms and impassioned vocals all arranged into a beautiful chaos.

Kicking off with the mammoth ‘Clenching The Fists of Dissent’, a metal tour-de-force that at times reminds us of the aforementioned Metallica, at others of power-metal outfit Dragonforce and then again at others of every great heavy metal band we’ve ever heard.

Then there’s the times tracks such as our personal favourite ‘Now I Lay Thee Down’ do actually remind us a bit of the new generation of metal bands such as their Roadrunner label mates Trivium, all swirling streams of guitar-laden madness and triumphant battle cries.

Yet ‘The Blackening’ is not just the sound of what good heavy metal in 2007 sounds like. It’s the sound of what good heavy metal has sounded like, in all its various forms and incarnations, over the past twenty or so years.

Imagine every possible metal sub-genre, from death to thrash and more or less everything in between, and you’re bound to find at least a hint of it hidden somewhere amongst the thunderous riffs, rallying cries and slick solos of this truly brutal album.

We were ever so slightly worried when Machine Head frontman Rob Flynn started rapping during the crazy days of Nu-Metal’s prime, but thank God he’s given that up and gone back to doing what he, and the rest of the band, do best, creating damn good heavy metal.

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