MACHINE HEAD To Film 'Darkness Within' Video In Czech Republic

San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD are inviting fans in the Czech Republic to take part in the band's next video shoot. A message on the group's Facebook page states, "Calling all MACHINE HEAD fans in Prague! MACHINE HEAD will be filming a video for the track 'Darkness Within' in the Czech Republic, and we want you in it!

"Only the most die-hard, crazy and insane MACHINE HEAD fans are asked to apply as you will be required to show your passion and intensity on camera. Send your age, contact info and a photo or video proving to us why you should be in the video to [email protected].

"Filming will take place between May 4 and May 9."

"Darkness Within" 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.

When asked in a July 2011 interview with "Metal Zone" host Nikki Blakk of the San Francisco, California radio station 107.7 The Bone if there is a song on "Unto The Locust" that he is particularly proud of or looking forward to playing live, MACHINE HEAD guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn said, "I always look forward to playing the thrashier songs because I know that it will make the pit go crazy, but there's another song on the record called 'Darkness Within' that's really pretty left-field for us. And I have such a great feeling about it; I think it's gonna be a song that just flips people on their heads and really is able to connect.

"We've been doing this for awhile now and even though we're a super-brutal, heavy band, we've somehow started to infiltrate the mainstream. They didn't really wanna let us in at first, but they were kind of like, 'Alright, we'll let you in.' Especially with the Grammy nomination, it's kind of weird, but I think it's pretty cool. And this song, it's a very dark song, and it's a really good song. I think it's maybe one of the best songs we've ever written, and I'm really proud of it.

"Our drummer, Dave [McClain] had written this really cool, kind of PINK FLOYD-style acoustic riff, and I loved it, and I was just jamming on it one night.

"I had just watched that movie 'Crazy Heart' and they had this one song that was kind of like, the dude was singing in this [lowers his voice] croaky cigarette voice like this. And I was just jamming along, strumming just random words… I was thinking in my head, 'If I ever record this song, I'm gonna drink a pint of vodka and smoke half a pack of cigarettes while I'm tracking it.' [Laughs] I didn't really have lyrics to it. And the next morning, it was in February, so we were having all those rains and it was freezing. I dropped my son, Wyatt, off at pre-school. And it was just the perfect miserable day — it was pouring rain and cold and gray. I live kind of in the hills and so there was all this fog pouring over the hills. And I just sat and I parked. And I was like, 'Alright, let's see what happens.' It was like being in an H.P. Lovecraft poem or something.

"Where I live, in Virginia Hills, which is in Martinez, there's this virus that's going around that's killing all of the oak trees, so all of the oak trees are dying or dead.

"At first I started writing all these lyrics — I just pulled out my iPhone and started typing in the notes — very Lovecraft-ian [words like], 'feted branches and spider webs and whippoorwills'… And then it kind of took on this turn where it just kind of went into how much music has meant to me in my life, that it's basically carried me through my darkest times and what it means to me. For about a half an hour I just sat there typing stream of consciousness and it [turned out to be] probably one of the most prolific writing sessions of my life. And I just basically wrote the whole song right there. And then I came home, had another melody for the chorus, and I dumped out the lyrics there and I put it together. And I called up Dave — we weren't supposed to practice — and I was like, 'Dude, I freaking wrote this amazing song. I wanna jam it with you.'"