The mighty Machine Head will be releasing their ninth studio album, Catharsis, on January 26th via Nuclear Blast Entertainment. Robb Flynn previously told fans to “lower your expectations for the heaviness and speed,” and in a new interview with Metal Hammer, the front man explains how the sound for the new record came together. He states, “I think everything Machine Head does is a happy accident! There’s this misconception of how music is written, I think, that when you write you have this agenda. It doesn’t work like that. We didn’t try to do anything, it was just the melodic, grooving stuff that got our dicks hard. Tthis is a very grooving, melodic record. To my ears it’s the record that could have followed The Burning Red, except that this has a much more aggressive production. The Burning Red had a much darker, more stoner vibe. This has a real classic Blackening, Burn My Eyes production, but I’ve still been saying to people on these Facebook Live things I do that you need to lower your expectations for the heaviness!”

Read his full interview with Metal Hammer here, and in case you missed it, blast the first single, ‘Beyond The Pale’, below!

Pre-order Catharsis here.