Not only is Through The Ashes Of Empires huge sonically, but the music possesses a fierceness and power that rivals those seminal early albums. By all measures, the results are ferocious. And once again, leave it to the pen of Robert Flynn to scrawl some of the most emotionally intense lyrics in all of metal. While songs like "In The Presence Of My Enemies" and "Imperium" relay all the anger we've come to expect from Machine Head, "Left Unfinished" finds Flynn at his most personal and exposed, as he comes to terms with his deepest unresolved issues about his adoption as a child, and the feelings of abandonment that emerged from that. For this band, a new empire is rising.