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✦✧✧✧ What the actual fuck with this album.

There are touches here (isolated riffs, really) that remind me of the Machine Head I thought I knew: precise, mean, effective metal. The vast bulk of this album unfortunately is something else: a confused and incoherent melange, liberally peppered with references to latter-day nu metal staples like Slipknot and Korn. (Not anything like”Iowa” or “Follow The Leader”, either. This feels more like B-sides from “The Gray Chapter.”) And don’t get me started on when the band try to sound like Ill Nino or Dropkick Murphys Ugh. Also, more than a few of songs on this album have a misguided tendency to occasionally strip down the band’s sound. Machine Head has always been most effective as a bludgeon; trying to act like a scalpel renders the band weak or amateurish in a way I never thought I’d hear.

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