MACHINE HEAD: New Single 'Now We Die' Available For Streaming

"Now We Die" a brand new song from San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD, can be streamed in the YouTube clip below. The track is taken from the band's new album, "Bloodstone & Diamonds", which will be released on November 10 via Nuclear Blast Entertainment. The CD was recorded in part at GREEN DAY's JingleTown Recording compound in Oakland, California.

Writes MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn in the latest installment of his online blog, "The General Journals: Diary Of A Frontman... And Other Ramblings": "'Now We Die' has officially leaked

"And why am I telling you this information?

"Information that just a few years ago, labels and bands would have been trying their hardest to pull down from torrent sites and flag YouTube channels?

"Because in 2014 you just have to own shit like this.

"Own it…and move on.

"John Lennon once sang 'life is what happens, while you're making other plans…'

"That's right my friends, 'Now We Die', the first track and lead single off of 'Bloodstone & Diamonds' has officially leaked, three weeks ahead of its originally scheduled October 10th release date as a digital single.

"Mindbogglingly, it was leaked via an iTunes UK pre-order page that 'someone' fucked up on (and who is about to be fucking fired!) that basically said, 'pre-order MACHINE HEAD's new album and get TWO free songs.'

"Oh yeah, that's right, the official album version of 'Killers & Kings' has leaked too.

"Un-fucking-believable.

"We are FURIOUS.

"Imagine what a total shock it was to the band and our new label, Nuclear Blast Entertainment.

"I found out about it when a friend of mine from the UK texted me saying, 'Dude, 'Now We Die' is KIIIIILLLLLLLER,' I went "uh, how did you hear it…?"

"Regardless, there is no sense fighting it. The Internet is the speed of light nowadays, and you know, what? That's a good thing.

"It had only been localized to the iTunes UK site, (meaning: nowhere else in the iTunes World had a 'Bloodstone & Diamonds' pre-order page even up to be seen) but let's face it, it was only a matter of hours before it went all over torrent sites and YouTube, so us and our label have made the bold decision to follow suit with the UK iTunes page, and offer the 2 songs as a 'gratis' purchase when you pre-order the album from any worldwide iTunes site.

"It is going up on Spotify as soon as humanly possible.

"And we've taken it one step further.

"We have decided to upload both 'Now We Die' and 'Killers & Kings' to our own YouTube channels for anyone who wants to hear both songs for FREE, without a pre-order. This is our way of saying 'thank you' to our fans in the U.S. for their patience and understanding in our difficult decision to postpone our U.S. tour.

"We hope these songs show a glimpse of what we've worked on over many months of recording to achieve. Our hope is that this represents why we are taking so much pride and putting in the extra effort and workmanship into creating something we feel is truly special.

"There is no half-stepping in MACHINE HEAD. It's all or nothing.

"And if you like it, we want you to SHARE IT! We've told the distributors specifically 'do not take down fan YT channels with 'Now We Die'.' Spread the word on your own YouTube channels, post it on your friends Facebook pages and feeds, make your own tribute pages, make your own lyric videos, make parody videos, post your own guitar videos of it, post your own singing videos.

"We want to post YOUR videos of these songs too!!

"Pre-order pages for Nuclear Blast will be coming in the next few hours, it may be up on your iTunes now, but either way, we are going to turn this into a positive for the fans.

"We cannot wait to share the rest of the record with you."

"Bloodstone & Diamonds" track listing:

01. Now We Die
02. Killers & Kings
03. Ghosts Will Haunt My Bones
04. Night Of Long Knives
05. Sail Into The Black
06. Eyes Of The Dead
07. Beneath The Silt
08. In Comes The Flood
09. Damage Inside
10. Game Over
11. Imaginal Cells (instrumental)
12. Take Me Through The Fire

Says Flynn: "I cannot even begin to tell you how proud we are of this album. It's been a heck of a ride. It looked like it might not ever happen again at one point, but man, this album is a milestone for us.

"Without getting too philosophical on ya, bloodstone and diamonds represent two of the hardest materials on earth. It is also a lyric from the opening track of the album, 'Now We Die'.

"In many cultures, the bloodstone has been used as an amulet to protect against evil, and is the symbol of justice. Diamonds are the hardest natural material on earth (which is how we feel about our music),and it also represents the diamond logo I drew 22 years ago (in my wife's apartment on Dover St. in Oakland) that has become the symbol for the band."

Adds Flynn: "10 songs, an interlude, and an instrumental with an audio collage of spoken word snippets (think 'Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies') by Dr. Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman, taken from their (incredibly inspiring) audiobook 'Spontaneous Evolution'.

"It was once again produced by your truly The General and Juan Urteaga, and like the last seven out of eight albums, masterfully mixed by Colin Richardson. Additional tracking, editing, and mixing was done with heavy metal legend Andy Sneap and Steve Lagudi.

"Guest musicians include two different string quartets featuring the original Quartet Rouge that appeared on our last album 'Unto The Locust'. And a new all-male quartet which we featured on the song 'In Comes The Flood'.

"String arrangements for two of the songs, 'Now We Die' and 'Sail Into The Black', came courtesy of myself and Rhys Fulber who has worked with everyone from Sarah McLachlan to FEAR FACTORY, and the string arrangement for 'In Comes The Flood' came courtesy of myself and ex-WORSHIP and current-BRING ME THE HORIZON keyboardist Jordan Fish, who is a producer in his own right.

"We worked with several artists to complete the 28-page (!) 'standard' CD booklet, as well as the 48-page (!) hardcover leather-bound mediabook that will serve as the special edition, including Rafal Wechterowicz, Marcelo Vasco, and longtime MACHINE HEAD art-collaborator Strephon Taylor. The theme was to have both CD and hardcover mediabook look like an old alchemy book from the 1800s, with weathered edges, sepia toned pages, and magic / masonic / alchemy themed woodcarvings throughout.

"It turned out fucking amazing!!

"All album photos were done with our friend Travis Shinn, who took some mind-bogglingly awesome photos, that again, were set to match the theme of the book with an old 1800s / alchemy feel to them."

Regarding the musical direction of "Bloodstone & Diamonds", Flynn told Metal Hammer magazine: "There's definitely a lot of urgency on this record. It's a really heavy record arid there's a dark and evil vibe to a lot of it, but I feel like there's more of a rock vibe in there too. It's stripped down at times, and I like that. I think that sense of urgency has carried over from the demos we did, which were all done very quickly and spontaneously. We tried to keep that spontaneous vibe on the album."

He continued: "At one point we started getting really anal on the tracks and spending tons of time on stuff, and we'd listen back and say, 'You know what? This doesn't have the vibe of the demos.' The demos were so fuckin' frantic, so we changed our mindset and now it's a little bit looser. Some of the guitar takes are basically live. Often, 40 or 50 percent of a song came from a spontaneous, live take and that's killer! It adds energy and makes the songs feel alive."

As part of this year's Record Store Day on April 19, MACHINE HEAD released a 10-inch vinyl single, with the A-side containing the "demo" version of "Killers & Kings". The B-side was a cover version of the track "Our Darkest Days" from one of MACHINE HEAD's favorite bands, IGNITE.

Flynn recently stated about the band's new material: "I would say… that the songs are as epic in scope [as those on 2007's 'The Blackening'], if not more so, except where 'The Blackening' was more epic in the guitar department, this is more epic in the EVERYTHING department. Strings arrangements, keyboard arrangements, massive vocal layering (one track, 'Sail Into The Black' has 40 tracks of vocals),drum overdubs, and, of course, the standard MACHINE HEAD quadruple tracking of the guitars."

He added: "I want to reiterate, I don't feel this record sounds like 'The Blackening'. It feels like we're still moving forward. If I HAD to compare it to another record of ours, it may be closer to 'Through The Ashes Of Empires' in one aspect only, the simpler song arrangements. It's still what I would just call classic metal, but we've simplified beats, simplified riffs, taken the unnecessary complicated-ness of something and made it simple. I've even applied that to my lyrics, where I've stripped out a lot of extra words ('the's,' 'and's,' etc),and invented a lyrical technique I call 'clustering,' where you cluster vowels or cluster 'plosives' ('K's,' 'T's,' 'Ch's') together to make it sound heavier, or flow better. It doesn't read all that poetically, but in the song it sounds really cool. I've also really worked hard on sharpening up my rhyme schemes, finding clever places to place rhymes, instead of the usual place at the end of a line, or even again, 'clustering' rhymes. It makes an abstract concept like 'Killers & Kings' (which references 20+ Tarot Cards, and that I'm very proud of the end result) to have a real meaning. Out of that stripped down musical landscape, we've then taken that new (to us at least) 'extra space' and added in layers of strings, layers of dark, ambient keys, layers and layers of vocals, and it sounds HUGE."

Photo credit: Travis Shinn