MACHINE HEAD vocalist/guitarist Robb Flynn recently took time out from his hectic schedule to chat with BW&BK; scribe Aaron Small. During their conversation, all you needed to know about the band's forthcoming video for the song 'Now I Lay Thee Down' was revealed. According to Flynn:

“It’s been kind of a challenging video for us to make because the subject matter of that song is loosely based on a story I read in the paper that was essentially like a tragedy. A guy who wants to commit suicide, asks his girlfriend to help him commit suicide. She does, realizes she’s lost the love of her life and commits suicide herself – the end.

So we’re trying to be more Shakespearian in nature than autobiographical. The idea is, and it’s not finished yet, is to have the story set in late 1800s San Francisco – the Victorian era. It’s got a main guy and girl character, but rather than have the typical metal video with the cool guy and the cool chic looking hot; we’re not those people and we don’t know those people. We’ve gone the total opposite way. So basically our lead character is modeled after The Elephant Man, which is a character from that time period – the late 1800s, that was a circus freak paraded around, but he ended up being very intelligent. So he’s wearing this giant mask with the fucked up forehead and the giant eye, all this shit. Then he’s got this very Victorian looking woman, who’s beautiful in a kind of tragic way. So they’re enacting the story of the song. It takes place in this old theatre that was built in the 1800s in San Francisco called The Regency Theatre. It was built by The Masons, so it’s got crazy ornate detail everywhere. A beautiful fucking theatre with a gigantic 100 ft. pipe organ on one side. So it kind of takes place in this era.

To match that, we’ve actually worn clothes from that era. We’re supposed to be like peasants. We’re taking it in a different direction. Basically it’s a play that’s happening. So the story is being played out in a play and we are performing in the orchestra pit of the theatre. Then when it ends, I won’t tell you the ending but it’s cool and we take a bow in our regular fucking Machine Head clothes.

It’s all black and white. Actually, the inspiration for it was to make it like a silent film, basically to make it like the movie Nosferatu from 1922. So it’s all real jumpy and choppy and fucked up. Where there would be dialogue, it’s going to flash up lyrics. It’s pretty cool. We’re really excited about it. It’s pretty crude in some ways but it’s also pretty fucking rad! It’s going to be very different and that’s the thing we’re happiest about.”

Machine Head's new album, The Blackening, will hit store shelves March 27th.