MACHINE HEAD Frontman Shows You How To Play 'Locust' (Video)

In a series of videos from GuitarWorld.com, MACHINE HEAD guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn shows you how to play "Locust", a song off the San Francisco Bay Area metal band's forthcoming album, "Unto The Locust", due out September 27 via Roadrunner Records. Check out one of the clips below.

Flynn recently went a little deeper about the meaning of the song, saying, "'Locust' is a metaphor. Locusts fly in a swarm, but they can't control which direction they fly; they float on the wind, they land, cause massive destruction, and then float away on the wind to leave you in the aftermath. The song is a metaphor for a type of person that sometimes comes into your life and has a similar effect."

Musically, "Locust" is the essence of what MACHINE HEAD have been doing for nearly two decades. "It feels like the culmination of what we've been doing for the last 17 years: power grooves, patented MACHINE HEAD harmonics, crushing guitars and dark melodies, but taken to a new level," Flynn said. "It's a natural progression from 'The Blackening', but different than anything on that record. In the past, when we debuted a new song, it was usually the fastest, thrashiest tune. This time we wanted to go with something just straight-up heavy."

The song is eight minutes in length, which is not unfamiliar territory for the band. Flynn even joked, "We still can't seem to write a damn song under six minutes. But MACHINE HEAD aren't writing music for the radio or MTV. This is for us. This is for the metalhead who let's music take him on a journey. This for the metalhead for whom music is the only thing that matters, to whom music is a savior. The music fan who's going to study every detail of the artwork, go online and find the lyrics and memorize every word, and let it take them away from their fucked up life for a while. It's for the music freak, who maybe just wants to get hammered, air-guitar and sing at the top of his lungs, and act like an friggin' idiot while starting a moshpit in their living room with reckless abandon. Because that's who wrote this song, and that is the only people we care about connecting with."

"Locust" is a true metal anthem from these metal torchbearers, and it's erected upon the band's signature, crunchy guitar tone, pummeling riffage, a thunderstorm of percussion and Flynn's militaristic barks. "Locust" is one of those cathartic, "gets the red out" songs that will incite moshpits across the globe and cause the listener to be purged of all their anger (and exhausted from rocking the hell out) once the last note fades out.

"Locust" lyrics:

Sweet caress
Grazes my skin
It's loveless
These hooks sink in
Behind an angel's disguise
An insect preys
Mandibles cut like a knife
A reckoning

Forming clouds
Their shadow shrouds
Louder the tattered wings they sound
Descending down

Down they come
The swarm of locusts
Skies above
Converge to choke us
Feast of souls
Consume the harvest
Young and old
Suffer unto the locust

Surrender
These veins are bled
Devoured
Nothing sacred
Strings pull the marionettes
See how they dance
Upon the winds that beget
Our pestilence

Forming clouds
Their shadow shrouds
Louder the tattered wings they sound
Descending down

Down they come
The swarm of locusts
Skies above
Converge to choke us
Feast of souls
Consume the harvest
Young and old
Suffer unto the locust

Bleeding from my eyes
This plague is sent to erase us
Bleeding from inside
These vermin can't infiltrate us

Faith appears and holds a candle
Hark the angels sing

Forming clouds
Their shadow shrouds
Louder the tattered wings they sound

Tear the veil
The lies derail
Purity ever will prevail

Trumpets sound
The shattered crown
Halos of truth now they surround
The charade comes down

Down they come
The swarm of locusts
Skies above
Converge to choke us
Feast of souls
Consume the harvest
Young and old
Suffer unto the locust [End of lyrics]

"Locust" audio stream: