Amazon.co.uk Review
With
Through the Ashes of Empires, Machine Head appear to be taking stock, looking backwards and forwards. Before this, using scratching, samplers and bewildering distortion, Machine Head strove to rise above the ferociously rocking pack inspired by their 1994 debut,
Burn My Eyes. Yet in much of the first half of this album they return to the churning, multi-faceted metal of their early years, as if attempting to rediscover their former flaming spirit. It's not that it's not aggressive--"Bite the Bullet" and "Left Unfinished" are really quite fearsome--just that it's lacking the furious innovation we've come to expect.
Thankfully, this situation changes. "Days Turn Blue to Gray" features what ought to be a crushing riff that's instead hushed and made to back a pastoral interlude. "All Falls Down" veers from crunching metal to melancholy folk, singer Rob Flynn weirdly employing all the seductive softness of INXS's "Need You Tonight" while threatening strangulation and worse. The tough talkover of "Wipe the Tears" and the sub-classical guitar-fest of "Descend the Shades of Night" bring the album to a glorious conclusion. Machine Head still burn brightly, and Flynn, in discussing the birth-parents who discarded him, takes his rage to new levels. You'd think he'd be over it by now. Be glad he isn't. --Dominic Wills
CD Description
On THROUGH THE ASHES OF EMPIRES, Machine Head delivers another potent dose of the group's signature blend of late-1980sthrash and Pantera-inspired alt-metal. This time around, though, the band takes frequent musical interludes from the sonic onslaught--a tinkling toy piano provides "Left Unfinished" with a nicely eerie, horror-film intro, while "Wipe Away the Tears" features a Black Flag-style spoken rant. In a fewplaces, the ordinarily pummeling juggernaut that is MachineHead even gets downright melodic--"Shades of Night", for example, features vocal harmonies would fit right in on an Incubus disc. Longtime fans need not worry, though--THROUGH THEASHES OF EMPIRES provides enough angst-laden growls and six-string shredding to keep heads banging, machine or otherwise.
