MACHINE HEAD The Blackening CD (2007)

There's a moment in 2007 where Machine Head walked back into the room and everyone who'd written them off had to quietly reassess. The Blackening was that moment, a double-down on ambition from a Bay Area band that had nothing left to prove and did it anyway.

Eight tracks, most of them long enough to qualify as short films, built on the kind of riffing that made Robb Flynn a polarising but undeniably skilled figure in heavy metal. It drew from the groove metal of their early days, threw in progressive structures, and landed somewhere that felt genuinely earned rather than calculated. Metal Hammer gave it album of the year. It won a Grammy. People who hate Grammy wins for metal were forced to grudgingly admit this one was fine, actually. The title track alone is worth the entry price.

2007 full length album on CD. US groove and thrash metal.

Fans of: PANTERA, TRIVIUM, LAMB OF GOD, SEPULTURA, DEVILDRIVER, SOULFLY, FEAR FACTORY