No matter how much I listen to the most brutal bands of the modern era, nothing gives me the homely feeling of an old school traditional Heavy Metal band. So after multiple listening sessions of the debut album by the newly formed METAL MACHINE, it's clear that this band resonates and plays what they promise - unadulterated traditional riff based Heavy Fucking Metal. The fact that 'Free Nation' is the band's debut album adds more interest to the whole music.

The album starts with a fast paced song, and must say musically one of the weakest song on the album, but has moments in it which will remind you of the JUDAS PRIEST hit "Painkiller". "Nailed to the cross" brings out some earth breaking nasty blast beats with some heavy riffs. The Rob Halford inspired vocals by Csaba Zvekan is top notch and is one of the better clean singing vocals to emerge in recent years. "Detox" starts off with violent strumming riffs which in a lot of ways reflects the crux of the musical style of METAL MACHINE. Again the clean singing and the screams along the air-guitar friendly riffs are all over the song. "Morning Star" brings in slight progressive and chaotic feel though most of the song goes along the same style of the previous songs. Some of the riffs on "World of temptation" remind me of ACCEPT and I must say these songs are very well written in every aspect including the lyrics department, which explore human emotions and nature in general.

The drum beats are tasty and Pierre Andre Mougenot utilizes the studio to his optimal utility here and does not try to experiment too much and regular traditional way works just fine for this record. The next few songs go along the same line, though they are good, sadly they fail to bring anything new to the table compared to the songs heard so far. "Hellraiser" is more like an anthem and is one of the stronger songs here, occasionally reminding me of DIO due to the Power Metal style vocals adopted here. Both "Lord of War" and "Black Sun" are almost similar sounding songs to the previous songs, except that they bring in some tasty solos in the latter part of the songs keeping the listener wanting for more. The final, also the title track of the album, "Free Nation" the only politically driven song with the band bringing in more headbangable riffs and more solos and more of everything as you would expect with any last song of an album.

This is the kind of music which will appeal to mostly the old school fans and must be listened by those people in the Metal scene who are under an impression that nothing old school, traditional and worth their time comes out in these days. While production is very polished and is worth all the effort the band has taken to do it, this record does have its occasional flaws, but the band deserves an applause as they were bold enough to do what they believed in, i.e. follow the footsteps of their heroes. The music is reminiscent of bands like WOLF, LORD, ICED EARTH, SWITCHBLADE, JUDAS PRIEST and goes in a long way in underlining the fact that 80s style of Metal is still not dead, but it's only getting more popular. And fellas, go drool over the riffs.