REVIEW: MACHINE HEAD –  UNATØNED (2025)

I was chatting to someone the other day about this album, and he said he’d heard it but bemoaned the “modern choruses.” The riffs, he noted, were really good.

And that’s the problem Machine Head always seems to grapple with. They put out one of the best debut albums of their generation—but it was 31 years ago. Why should they sound the same?

As happenstance would have it, MV was at the second headline show ever that Robb Flynn’s old band Vio-lence played in the UK over Easter. It was great. Three proper thrash metal bands, mosh pits, stage diving—the works.

And yes, of course there’s a place for that. It’s just, I can’t help feeling that listening to “UNATØNED”, I know which band I’d rather be in.

“LANDSCAPE ØF THØRNS” ensures gravitas, the titles rolling (or more likely the lights going down), but it’s “ATØMIC REVELATIØNS” that convinces you this is a great record.

And the reason it does so is precisely why others won’t like it. It sounds like Machine Head—but it sounds like Machine Head in 2025.

“UNBØUND”, one of the singles, is likewise a beauty. If you can’t mosh to this, then you aren’t trying—and if Flynn fancies singing the chorus, then so what?

“ØUTSIDER” has hints of arena rock about it, but have you seen the venues they play? It’s also as heavy as hell and as angry as any record they’ve ever put out.

There’s a depth to this material. “NØT LØNG FØR THIS WØRLD” feels like a centrepiece, and it’s exquisitely done.

Perhaps the crown jewel here is “THESE SCARS WØN’T DEFINE US”, and Reece Scruggs combines with Flynn superbly.

Indeed, this line-up of the band is in fine form. Jared MacEachern on bass and Matt Alston on drums have things anchored down, so that when the rather unsettling “DUSTMAKER” (the second near-instrumental here) gives way to “BØNESCRAPER”, it only serves to make the contrast starker. “Scraping skin from bone, love is just a loaded gun” goes its hook, and the theme continues on “ADDICTED TØ PAIN” and the even more harrowing “BLEEDING ME DRY.” “We talked of you being my wife. Picket fences, some kids, and two bikes,” he sings—and it feels like the descent into personal hell is complete.

Not that the rest is light-hearted. “SHARDS ØF SHATTERED DREAMS”, certainly in its verses, is the heaviest thing here. That “Burn My Eyes” sound is back.

It’s just that, in the mid-90s, they most probably wouldn’t have ended this with the ballad “SCØRN.” As harrowing as the lyrics are, this is not thrash metal.

That’s the point, though. It’s not supposed to be. And the question begs itself: why do we praise some bands for a “re-invention” and criticise others for the same damn thing?

Whatever. The fact is that “UNATØNED”, as brave and as good as it is unapologetic. It’s not the best album of Machine Head’s career—of course it isn’t—but it’s a modern masterclass.

Rating: 9/10