MACHINE HEAD’s Unto The Locust Metal Hammer fanpack was released today and in case you need an excuse to buy a copy, you can see a statement that the band released on their site, including some glowing reviews, below. We only pasted the first and last paragraph of each review as they are quite lengthy but you can check them out in full over on MACHINE HEAD’s website HERE. We took Robb for a curry when he was in the UK promoting the album and you can see that film over on Play.com by CLICKING HERE and selecting ‘product details’. And as if you needed convincing any further, check out this message from Robb on Metal Hammer’s website about the fanpack, HERE.

Extracts from a news post on MACHINE HEAD’s website:

While you’ll find a plethora of passionate critical acclaim for “Unto The Locust” from all over the world, (compiled below for your reading pleasure) absent from the party once again is a large portion of the North American music media, still curiously reluctant to praise Machine Head, even in positive reviews. Having created some of the most respected heavy music for some 19 years now, influencing and inspiring some of the biggest and credible names in metal and hard rock throughout the world, this fact seems clearly lost in Machine Head’s home country’s music press with many Unto The Locust reviews referring to the Bay Area kings as “trend hopping”, “copy cats”, whose “groove metal” resides in “formulaic songwriting” and “ultra-indulgent doodley-doo’ing”. Peculiarly, many American reviews voiced a considerable amount of disdain for the “controversial” track “Darkness Within”. Some journalist’s benignly referred to it as a “power ballad” or “momentum killer” while others claimed that is was “long winded” and “out of place”, and inexplicably, one mainstream website going so far as to say, this “melodramatic” “stumbling point” was a “sticky mess” and ultimately wished they had “never heard it”!

Thankfully most in the metal community disagree whole-heartedly and have heaped some of the most passionate acclaim the band has ever received upon the new record, applauding them for the bold chances they’ve taken and their decision to reach beyond their last album to create more than just The Blackening 2: The Blackerening…

SHOCKBLASTMEDIA.COM – 10 out of 10!
“Music, it will set you free.” These are more than words; they are a way of life. For the four men in Machine Head, that statement is more than an expression; it is the fabric of their very being. “Unto The Locust” is the seventh studio release from the heavy metal icons from Oakland, California, and it could very well be their defining moment as a band. Those are pretty powerful words when you consider the band’s catalog, but this is not your average band, and “Unto The Locust” is not your average album.

If I had to describe this entire album in one word, it would be artistic. “Unto The Locusts” is what happens when four men let their heart take them wherever it will and literally bleed their passion into the sound of music. With the success of “Through The Ashes Of Empires” and “The Blackening,” it would have been extremely easy to mail it in and put out an album of like nature in an effort to maintain consistency, but Machine Head clearly challenged themselves into creating something more. That is something that is severely lacking in heavy metal today, and I can’t applaud this band enough for answering the call. “Unto The Locust” is everything I could have hoped for in a Machine Head album and more. Words like “masterpiece” and “epic” seem to be used very loosely these days, and I might even be guilty of overusing their varying level of synonyms myself, but there isn’t a Thesaurus entry big enough to expound the number of clich