Heavy metal cliché #39, Machine Head’s sixth album is their ‘black’ album. Thankfully it’s closer to Metallica than Spinal Tap, as the band show their brief flirtation with nu-metal is well and truly behind them. All eight tracks here are solo-laden and half clock in over nine minutes, not unlike Metallica of old (even down to a cover of ‘Battery’ for those who get the special edition version of the album) – and pissing all over St Anger.

One disappointment is that there’s been little lyrical improvement over the band’s fifteen year career (and it’s still f-word heavy), but it’s clear that war is high on the agenda, from the Trivium-like opening ‘Clenching The Fists Of Dissent’ (“They say that freedom isn’t free/ It’s paid with the lives/ Of sons and families/ Cause blood is their new currency/ And oil pumps the heart of money”) to the relatively sedate closing ‘Farewell To Arms’. It’s not all politics, however, as ‘Aesthetics Of Hate’ is about the murder of ex-Pantera/Damageplan guitarist ‘Dimebag’ Darrell Abbott. At the end of the day, it matters little what it’s about – Robb Flynn is clearly as pissed off as ever.

Musically, however, this is an album that will appeal to the old school metalheads who welcomed Through The Ashes Of Empires as a return to form. (Personally, I thought it a little one dimensional – but then I didn’t think even Supercharger was that bad anyway). While the songs may be rather similar, each is an epic in its own right, moving from quiet to loud and fast to slow and back again, with Flynn and Demmel trading solos like something from the heyday of thrash metal.

While I’m not surprised that The Blackening has been widely welcomed as their best since their debut (Burn My Eyes) amongst long-term fans, and I think it may prove a grower even on the newer ones, I don’t think it quite matches the best of their previous output. Nonetheless, it’s still a fierce statement of intent from one of the most consistent and under-rated bands in metal, and sets the bar for their contenders.
(4/5)