This Is The End by Machine Head

Album: Unto The Locust (2011)

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This song was written by the band after they reconvened following a break. Guitarist Phil Demmel told Sonic Excess magazine: "Robb [Flynn, vocals] and David [McClain, drums] got together, and we took a break from everything after touring for three years. We took about a six-month break, got back together, and wrote this song. It's really fast. Kind of a death metal song, but it's got the classical sound like a death metal tune. The whole record has kind of neo-classical feel to it."
Demmel said regarding the lyrical content: "It's basically about people kind of living and not being able to accept present times and moving on to things."
This was the first song that was written for Unto The Locust. Robb Flynn wrote the main chorus riff, in Auckland, New Zealand during the Slipknot tour. He recalled to Peter Hogdson of I Heart Guitar Blog: "That's the first riff I remember writing for the record, and I wasn't sure if I was going to bring it to Machine Head at that point. And then the classical bits happened and then the other stuff happened."
The song helped the band up their game for Unto The Locust. Said Robb to I Heart Guitar: "The thing that was really cool about it was that especially because that was the first song written for the record, it just set the bar so high, right off the bat. It was like, 'Wow, man, this is a hard f--kin' song to play.' I mean, we could have sat there and been like, "We're the f--kin' dudes who wrote The Blackening. Everyone can suck it.' But we went in and we came up with that song right off the bat. It was a pretty humbling experience, like, 'Man, we've got to f--kin' step up our game here. This is really some f--kin' tough s--t to play!" It was a really positive mind frame to write from, this very vulnerable place to write from, to try to better ourselves and constantly push ourselves to be better and tighten up our playing and improve ourselves. That was a big motivator for this record, to push ourselves and challenge ourselves as we were writing the riffs and the arrangements."

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