Review Summary: A beast of an album - a lean, muscular, pissed off, swaggering beast.
I got criticized elsewhere for suggesting that an album was a 5. However, in my humble opinion, this album is pretty much a definitive classic. I remember when it first came out - Metallica and Megadeth were ailing and Pantera were were doing what they could to revive the metal scene. When I first heard it - that first flurry of drums dropping into the iconic riff of Davidian - wow.
Looking back with a modicum of hindsight - this album is a classic in every sense. The context and the content both play important parts in my rating. The music was new and fresh and full of aggression and vitality. Robb Flynn's voice had the abrasiveness of Anselmo on Far Beyond Driven and yet I found it more palatable. The grooves married to agro and punk made a perfect platform for the lyrical social commentary. For me, this was a new innovation in Metal. I guess some would suggest that this was all building towards the nu-metal scene but in 1994 that was literally unheard of at the time. This injected a raw swagger back into metal which would spawn countless copycat bands.
Chris Kontos was just a beast behind the kit and whilst I think Dave McClain is a great fit for Machine Head I just don't think he ever reaches that pure tribal aggression showcased on Burn My Eyes. Kontos really drives the album along with his raw drumming and the guitar riffs seem to flow alongside that. Over the years the guitars occupy more foreground with the drumming becoming less expressive within the music. That is not to say the riffs play second fiddle. The album is chock full of monstrous riffs that both thrash and groove along with sinewy muscularity. And one thing they nail is the dynamics of quiet-to-loud making the album an interesting listen that never becomes monotonous.
Davidian is an instantly recognizable song and I defy anyone not to at least nod their head along to it. 'Let freedom ring with a shotgun blaaasst' indeed! The grooves follow in Old and A Thousand Lies. Songs like Blood for Blood and A Nation on Fire evoke more of a Slayer like trash. The only song that was really sub-par was Death Church mainly because it felt a bit under cooked - that it was one of the earliest songs suggests that it was written before Machine Head became identifiable as Machine Head.
I'm Your God Now is perhaps the 'ballad' (as much as MH could do a ballad) of the album but it showcases some very delicate writing and the performance is entirely in keeping with the lyrical theme. I find this impressive, the vulnerability of the verse vocal matches the tone of the song amazingly well.
The final one-two punch of the album is a smart bit of sequencing - whoever decides song order deserves credit here. Real Eyes into Block is a bit of genius. Firstly, Real Eyes is simply media soundbites over a pretty cool riff but I can totally imagine the video on heavy rotation on Headbangers Ball. Block is a great bookend to the album bringing back the 'Let Freedom Ring...' clarion call of Davidian - 'Fuck it All!' - absolutely. And 7/8 time for the verses -
respect is definitely due. The social angst of the album is absolutely and emphatically underlined by these two songs and because of this the album is totally relevant to today.
If any album could be considered a classic then I would argue that Burn My Eyes is that album. It brought something new and needed into the music scene when it was first released, it has stood the test of time, and more impressively, I can listen to it today and still feel like it is significant to the world in which we live.
