Catharsis

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.