If you clicked the link simply looking for more reasons why Machine Head is terrible and worthy of nothing but contempt, I kindly direct you here. I’m sure any album-specific criticism still applies, as well – just substitute the old for the new and satisfy your needs for another album cycle. Otherwise, what follows is a series of thoughts, contemplations, and musings from a long-time – and long-suffering around these parts – fan of Machine Head.
So this is the second time I’ve found myself examining an album by a band fresh off an extended stay at Roadrunner Records. In my review of Devildriver’s Winter Kills, I criticized the band’s decision to stay the course, rather than take chances that their new label Napalm Records might be more willing to embrace. With Machine Head now calling Nuclear Blast (or as I sometimes call it, “The Halfway House for Old Bay Area Bands”) home, I wondered what direction they would take. The answer to that question is “several”. I actually had to go back to the largely unmemorable Unto the Locust to see just how drastic this was. Turns out it wasn’t as much as I originally thought. Still, for a staggering 70+ minutes, guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn (sole remaining original member and even before that the unquestioned creative force) and Machine Head take us through both familiar and unfamiliar territory, across ground both well-worn and previously untrodden.
For christ’s sake, the first sounds you hear on Bloodstone & Diamonds are orchestral strings. It’s not a far cry from the choral voices that led off its predecessor, but I sure wasn’t expecting it. As a local boy, I was hoping that “Now We Die” would borrow heavily from a similarly named track from a defunct Phil Demmel project, but it was not to be. Those strings reappear in the chorus and breakup what is otherwise fairly typical Machine Head fare… yet somehow manage to sully the whole seven minutes. “Killers and Kings” doesn’t mess around with any of that fancy stuff. But wait – “Night of Long Knives” takes it to whole other level, riffing just a little bit faster even before Dave McClain’s blast beats kick in. “Ghosts Will Haunt My Bones” falls somewhere in between, almost sounding like Machine Head circa 1997.
This is about the point where Flynn takes the band down Robert Frost’s proverbial road less travelled, though how much of a difference it will make is yet to be determined. OK, that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s more like they take one step down a new road, then step back to the old path, then one step down a new path, then step back to the old path… you get the idea.
First there is the 8 minute plus “Sail Into the Black”, with a drawn-out first half of acoustic and piano-backed vocals which you’d expect to end around 1:30 but stretches almost to the 4:15 mark before things start to get loud… but not a whole lot better. It might have made an interesting interlude but they decided to stretch the basic ideas into something longer and, in the end, deeply unfulfilling.
The ship rights itself momentarily with the more traditional MH approach of “Eyes of the Dead” before diverting once again with the faux-djent of “Beneath the Silt”. Although the comparison is more based on general sound than actual songwriting, either way you take it, it just doesn’t feel right. After yet another detour with the America-in-crisis messaging of “In Comes the Flood”, here comes the awkward, dark-balladry of “Damage Inside.” To Flynn’s credit, he really puts himself out there with what is essentially an acapella track with some minor choral overlay and subdued guitar noodling. It’s not without its charm, but it is incredibly out of place even on an album loaded with out of place material.
Once again, it’s followed by a less-awkward moment in “Game Over”, which has some minor sonic twists of its own, and the album probably should have ended on that note. “Imaginal Cells” is just a series of sampled dialogue describing the fall of American society, played over riffs best suited for… well, being played behind sampled dialogue. It does no favors to album closer “Take Me Through the Fire”, which sounds like a tacked-on afterthought with its steady mid-tempo riffing that gives way to something heavier at times but is mostly anticlimactic.
So in the end we’re left with an incredibly mixed bag. Arguably half an album of “vintage” Machine Head material, and the rest a head-scratching menagerie of hit-and-miss experimentation. I’m all in favor of that sort of thing, stretching wings and pushing boundaries – but its more miss than hit. Unfortunately, it’s this material that ultimately defines Bloodstone & Diamonds as an album. What will define this new phase of Machine Head’s career will the next album, when we see if they continue to experiment, refine what’s been done here, or get back to what has been historically successful.
