MACHINE HEAD: 'Locust' Video Released

"Locust", the new video from San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD, can be seen below (courtesy of Metal-Hammer.de). The clip was directed by Mike Sloat, who previously helmed MACHINE HEAD's videos for "Imperium", "Days Turn Blue To Gray", "Aesthetics Of Hate", "Now I Lay Thee Down" and "Halo".

Speaking to the MACHINE HEAD fan site TakeMyScars.com, Sloat stated about the "Locust" clip, "The video is all based on the artwork from the [new MACHINE HEAD] album ['Unto The Locust'] as well as the vision of the artist, Paul Gerrard. Together we hashed out some concepts for attack scenes as well as the band's performance.

"We shot the band on green screen in Philadelphia on August 1st, 2011. It was on a 'off' date from the [Rockstar Energy Drink] Mayhem Festival. There's well over 600 shots in the video, all of which have varying levels of CG effects, and ended up taking over two months to complete. [It is] easily the BIGGEST music video I've ever done. With so many CG shots, we had to divide the work among several CG FX people and editors. Once the shots came back, I would edit them in and start the color effects and any last minute tweaks I wanted to add.

"Since the song is so long (six minutes and sixteen seconds for the edited version!!),we had a LOT of time to cover, so I began making up scenarios as I edited; the bearded guy at the window, the woman and child, the bloody attack scenes, the church steeple being smashed...these were all made up on the spot as I was editing and found that I needed more scenes! It was actually pretty fun to have to be creative 'on the fly.' The band wasn't able to see very much until the first edit was done (about six weeks after the shoot). From there we tweaked the edit and the look until we found what we wanted. It was a VERY long process, but the end result is pretty great, I think."

Check out photos from the "Locust" video shoot at TakeMyScars.com.

"Locust" comes off MACHINE HEAD's new album, "Unto The Locust", which sold more than 17,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 22 on The Billboard 200 chart putting MACHINE HEAD in the Top 25 for the first time in the band's 17-year history. Even more impressively, this is the third consecutive album to show at least a 20 percent increase in sales over its predecessor, a virtually unprecedented feat for any band or artist, let alone a metal band in 2011. Add to that the fact that MACHINE HEAD's last CD came out four and a half years ago, a period of time that has seen the music market drop by more than 45 percent, and you're looking at something amazing.

MACHINE HEAD has consistently averaged more than 100,000 copies sold in the U.S. for each of its seven albums and has shifted double that overseas (accruing several silver records in the U.K.),resulting in cumulative worldwide sales of more than 2.4 million.

MACHINE HEAD's previous CD, "The Blackening", opened with just under 15,000 units back in April 2007 to debut at No. 54 on The Billboard 200 chart. The band's 2004 effort, "Through The Ashes Of Empires", premiered with less than 12,000 copies to land at No. 88.