MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn states: “We’re really proud of the video for ‘No Gods, No Masters’. It was an incredible collaboration between three different creative teams working across two different continents. Our director/editor Mike Sloat teamed up with the amazing Grupa 13 (BEHEMOTH, AMON AMARTH) and then the stunning 3-D CGI came from Phil Radford a.k.a. MayaGuy of Strangebox. The track was masterfully mixed by longtime MACHINE HEAD collaborator Colin Richardson and his engineer Chris Clancy. This is a really special song from the album.”

The follow-up to 2018’s “Catharsis”, “Of Kingdom And Crown” includes the three songs that were featured on last year’s “Arrows In Words From The Sky” single: “Become The Firestorm”, “Rotten” and “Arrows In Words From The Sky”. Much of the new MACHINE HEAD album was recorded at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, California with engineer/producer Zack Ohren.

Back in December 2021, drummer Navene Koperweis (ANIMALS AS LEADERS, ENTHEOS, ANIMOSITY) joined Flynn, MacEachern and Ohren at Sharkbite Studios to jam on the final tracks for “Of Kingdom And Crown” and add some finishing touches to the songs.

In a recent interview with El Cuartel Del Metal, Flynn stated about the lyrical inspiration for “Of Kingdom And Crown”: “The concept is set in a futuristic wasteland where the sky is always crimson red, and it’s based around two characters. Character number one is named Ares (pronounced Aries), and he loses the love of his life, Amethyst, and goes on a murderous rampage against the people who killed her. Character number two is Eros (pronounced Arrows), who loses his mother to a drug overdose and, in his downward spiral, depression, becomes radicalized by this charismatic leader and goes on his own killing spree and is one of the people who killed Amethyst. And so the lyrics detail how their lives intertwine. The opening track, ‘Slaughter The Martyr’, is essentially… it’s the origin story for character number one. He’s just lost the love of his life and he’s in just a murderous, venomous rampage and revenge is all he’s thinking about. And so the story unfolds from there.”

As for how he was inspired by the Japanese anime series called “Attack On Titan” for the new MACHINE HEAD album, Flynn said: “When I first started writing the concept, it was a very American story arc: it was good guy, bad guy, good guy wins. And I wasn’t connecting to it. It was good, but I couldn’t connect to it; I couldn’t get any kind of emotion out of it. And then my family, my kids started watching — I’ve got two two teenage boys and they both started watching a lot of anime over the pandemic. And we were all locked up anyway and we couldn’t go out.

“I used to be a total anime nerd when I was their age — ‘Akira’ and ‘Space (Battleship) Yamato’ and ‘Robotech’ and all these anime series. So to see them go through this same thing, I was just, like, ‘Dude, this is rad.’ And of course, it’s now modern and it’s super bloody, and it was even better. So I was, like, ‘Let’s watch this together. I’ll fucking totally watch this with you.’ So we started watching it. And one of the things about that particular series — ‘Attack On Titan’ — the part that inspired me was in that series there is no good or bad guy; both sides believe they’re doing good, but both sides are committing evil and atrocities. And that was like a total lightbulb going off in my head. I was, like, ‘Oh, wow. I can maybe write it like that.’

“So then… here I am writing through… Now I’m writing through not just one character’s eyes but a polar opposite character’s eyes. And for a guy who’s written nine albums pretty much solely through my eyes — my experiences; the way I see the world — now to have to try and write through these other characters, it was really cool,” he added. “It was really interesting and it just made the whole experience awesome.”

Asked if there was any research involved in writing the lyrics for “Of Kingdom And Crown” or if it was all just in his head, Robb said: “It was just in my head. Jared (MacEachern, bass/backing vocals) wrote a lot of lyrics too — Jared contributed quite a bit of lyrics, and we bounced a lot of ideas off of each other. He came up with some great melodies, some great lyrics. But it really was just about constantly writing and just consistently waking up… Most of this record was written at three in the morning. (Laughs) I’m a total night owl — I wake up at 3 a.m. almost every night and I just do work or I write or whatever. So I just would set a timer for 20 minutes and I would just write anything that came to my mind — dumb shit, killer shit. I would just try and make everything rhyme; I would try and make a sequence out of it. And then I would just go back to bed and then wake up and look at it the next morning and then I would either sing it or try and mess around with it. And I think just doing it, kind of just chipping away at it like that every day, really helped the story come together.”

“Of Kingdom And Crown” track listing:

1. Slaughter The Martyr
   02. Choke On The Ashes Of Your Hate
   03. Become The Firestorm
   04. Overdose
   05. My Hands Are Empty
   06. Unhallowed
   07. Assimilate
   08. Kill Thy Enemies
   09. No Gods, No Masters
   10. Bloodshot
   11. Rotten
   12. Terminus
   13. Arrows In Words From The Sky

Digipak CD bonus tracks:

14. Exteroception*
    15. Arrows In Words From The Sky (acoustic)*