The Gauntlet (www.thegauntlet.com) has issued an interview with MACHINE HEAD leader Robert Flynn, conducted by Charlie Steffens aka Gnarly Charlie.

In the following excerpt Flynn explains how he and his bandmates came up with the title of The Blackening for the group's forthcoming new album (due to be released in late March 2007 via Roadrunner), and describes it's theme:

“It’s a dark record. A lot of the other titles we were thinking of were a little too 'hit you over the head' and 'ram the idea down your throat'. We wanted something a little more timeless and The Blackening seemed to have a more timeless feel.

Right now we’ve been working on a cover that’s based off of this image. It’s a metal carving from the 1500’s. Back then they used a lot of crude metal carving images… almost as propaganda. It was kind of like scaring people about going to hell or whatever. A lot of it had to do with devils and death and stuff like that. They were eventually banned for a while.

The cover right now is like a skeleton sitting on a throne with his foot on top of the world and he’s holding up a mirror and the mirror says 'The mirror which flatters not'. The reason we chose that image is that this whole record is like holding up a mirror to ourselves. It’s talking about things that are going on now, but it’s not necessarily specific to this time.

There are two songs that have a pretty strong anti-war sentiment, but it’s not the type of thing that’s just about this war, you know what I mean? It’s not necessarily a concept record in that sense, because the songs don’t all tie together thematically. There isn’t a story being told. I probably would have lost my mind if I would have had to tie all the lyrics together (laughs). It is about holding up a mirror to society.”

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