MACHINE HEAD - Catharsis 2LP

Limited edition 180gm black vinyl.

Offering vast quantities of style and substance, Catharsis is a 75-minute, 15-track eruption of pain and fury, hope and joy, melody and savagery. By far the most hard-hitting album Machine Head have ever made, both musically and lyrically, it sustains their long tradition of writing songs about the real world and the authentic, heartfelt emotions that define the human condition. Instant classics like the thunderous, riff-driven “Beyond The Pale”, the lurching grooves and drug-dealer poetry of “Triple Beam" and the grinding psychedelia of “Kaleidoscope“ are among the most evocative and powerful that Flynn and his decades-long band-mates, drummer Dave McClain and guitarist Phil Demmel have penned to date, while snarling, thrash’n’roll bruisers like “California Bleeding” and the Lemmy-saluting “Razorblade Smile“ revel in Machine Head’s thuggish, obnoxious side. All human life is here, expressed with maximum honesty and brute force.

In the era of short attention spans, Machine Head are proudly going against the grain on Catharsis, delivering a bona fide musical journey that demands total immersion and surrender to the album’s dramatic peaks and troughs. Long-time fans will be immediately sated by the crushing heaviness of songs like historical epic “Heavy Lies The Crown”, which tells the tale of Louis XI, the ‘Spider King’ of France, and the swaggering crunch of the grunge-tinged “Screaming At The Sun”. Meanwhile, Machine Head are conquering fresh territory on Catharsis, via the deeply poignant folk-punk curveball of “Bastards“ and the all-acoustic melancholy of “Behind A Mask”, one of numerous songs that showcase the blossoming vocal harmony partnership between Flynn and bassist Jared MacEachern.