03/07 - RAG Magazine

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MACHINE HEADStory: Matt PashalianSince 1994, Oakland, California’s Bay Area Metal band Machine Headhas been charging forward in there genre proving themselves witheach release as a band to be reckoned with. Receiving critical acclaimfirst in Europe before making a splash in the states, everywhere theband played, new fans were sure to be won over in throngs.Machine Head started to make waves in the United States with theirsophomore effort, The More Things Change... which pushed newfans to check out the band’s debut, Burn My Eyes.Rob: It just kind of happened, I mean we never wanted to make thesame record twice. We’ve always wanted every record to standon it own. With this one, with all the success that we had withThrough The Ashes... The one thing that we all didn’t want to dowas play it safe and stick with the Through The Ashes... formula.Right off the bat, we started writing these really long songs, whenit was four seven minute songs in a row it was like whoa! Hold on,what’s going on. There was actually some talk about trimming themdown, and in the end, you know we tried to, but it just felt wrong,you know. It just didn’t have that fun rollercoaster of a ride. We justsaid fuck it, the songs feel good,and if they’re longer, than so be it.As long as it’s not getting boringand not turning into a hippie spacejam, droney or repetitive. As longas it still sounds like a song, in theclassic sense, like a pop song, ithas a thread of consistency, thanit’s like, let’s do this, because it’sreally cool.When the band headed into thestudio in August last year,what was the collectivesongwriting process like?Initially, we started writing about ayear before that, around August of2005. The first four songs wewrote I don’t even think ended upon the record, we ended up writingabout 26 songs. Of those songs,we narrowed it down to eight,which are now on the album.Proving that the band was very different musically, and lyricallyfrom the rest of the hard musical landscape with songs like“Davidian,” “Old,” “A Nation On Fire,” and “Ten Ton Hammer,” MachineHead seemed poised to take it to the next level after major tours ofEurope, and the Ozzfest tour when lead guitarist Logan Mader leftthe fold. Replaced with Ahrue Luster, Machine Head moved forwardwith the commercially successful The Burning Red spawning singles“From This Day,” “Silver,” and live favorite, “The Blood, The Sweat,The Tears.”After much touring, two more albums, a live disc and DVD, a newguitar player, work on a tribute to Metallica album, and a TwentyfifthAnniversary album to the band’s label Roadrunner Records,we’re at the present where the band is ready to unleash the albumof their career, The Blackening.RAG: The band makes really huge progressions from onealbum to the next, you could definitely however see whichdirection the music was going in from Through The Ashes ofEmpires to The Blackening. Was that direction one that theband was planning on heading into anyways, or was itunconscious?You guys have been prettybusy the past year and a half,between Sounds of TheUnderground, The Kerrang!Magazine disc, the Roadrunner United album, and TheBlackening. Does the band ever pull any of these trackslike the one’s from Kerrang! Or the Roadrunner United in alive setting or are those kind of songs strictly done oneshot?We did “Dagger” at the Road Runner United party, and KillswitchEngage will be supporting Machine Head over in Europe, and weactually have talked about jamming it at some of the shows, so we’llsee if that happens. With “Battery” from the Kerrang! Disc, I knowthat they’re planning on putting it on the European Digipak’s, whichthey don’t do over here in America as much, I don’t know why. I thinkit’s pretty lame that they don’t because all of the fans have to go andbuy the import for twice as much money. I think they should releasethem simultaneously; in America, in Europe, in Japan, etc. Plus youget the cooler package. They just don’t do those in America forsome reason. But “Battery” is coming out along with a B-Side thatdidn’t make The Blackening.Lyrically, the subject matter of The Blackening is somewhatreminiscent of Burn My Eyes, emphasizing society andpolitics more, was this due to the current state of what’sbeen going on in the world the past few years?44| DEC RAG MAGAZINE
There was some of it on Through The Ashes. “In The Presence OfMy Enemies” was very much about the very beginning of the war.With this though, kind of having learned everything that we’velearned since the war began and just kind of seeing the change forthe worse that things have taken. It wasn’t like, hey, let’s writeabout this stuff now, it’s just what started pouring out. Now to saythat this is a political record, because I don’t even consider us apolitical band. There’s just more social commentary, and at the sametime, there’s still some personal stuff on there. Songs like “BeautifulMourning,” “Now I Lay Thee Down,” and “Slanderous,” they’re allvery personal songs that are addressed in a more raw manner.When I go to write lyrics, it’s not really; I’m not going to sit here andtell you I have this vision...; but it’s not like that. I’m kind of like RainMan, I just spit out a bunch of different shit, trying a bunch ofdifferent lyrics and different vibes, and just try to match what thevibe of the song is.One of the album’s standout tracks I think is “Slanderous,”which you just mentioned is one of the more personalsongs.In a broader scope, it’s addressing judgmental prejudice, racism,which is still prevalent in America, and I’m telling it through everysingle name that I’ve ever been called in my life, from “nigga” to“faget” to “pussy,” and then asking the question in the chorus,“Why do I hate my brother?” It’s weird, and as personal as saying Ilove you. For the first two weeks that I sang it, I was like this is tooweird. The way I looked at it was like, I’m definitely out of the safetyzone here, stick with it, see if it works, because my first instinctwas like, ok, it’s gotta go. In the end though, it seemed to be thething that tied everything together.In a sense, Machine head has kind of Spinal Tapped, insteadwith guitar players, from Logan Mader, to Ahrue Luster,and now Phil Demmel whom you used to play with inViolence 15 years ago. Was Phil an obvious choice as areplacement?Phil was actually going to retire from music. He had some things goon in his life, was disillusioned, and he came to us after Ahrue leftand we were getting ready to do these festivals over in Europe andwe did need a guitar player for it and he was like hey I’m gettingready to retire, it would be cool to kind of get this last hurrah. Himand I grew up together, played guitar together, so it was like yeathis could be awesome you know, no strings attached. We weren’teven looking for a new guitar player at the time, we were going towrite the next album as a three-piece, but he came in and it wasalmost instant. We were like, wow, this is fuckin killer. It was onlyfor two weeks and then the tour ended, Phil was like, well, I guessI’m going to retire. We continued writing for the next nine months,and we wrote a huge chunk of Through The Ashes as a threepiece,and then things changed in Phil’s life, and I would see him atshows, or at a mutual friends house and he would be like, so, youknow, when am I going to be in the band, and I was like, “I don’tknow motherfucker, you tell me you’re the one who’s retired!”Eventually he came in, and after those dates, we weren’t interestedin getting anyone else, he was the guy. We weren’t going to evenlook for anyone before the record came out anyways. Phil’s great,he’s an awesome guitar player, brings a great vibe, great attitude,awesome lead player.You can definitely hear Phil’s influence a bit on Through TheAshes..., but more so on The Blackening. What did Phil bringto the band’s plate?He was there for around half of Through The Ashes..., so he hadsome influence on there as well. Dave McClean and I still write amajority of the music. I wrote about 65 percent of The Blackening,and a good 80 percent of the lyrics. It’s more of the detail, andhaving the ability to bounce stuff back and fourth to each other.Back in August, you were rooting this album to be the Masterof Puppets for this generation, and upon first listen of thealbum, I think it’s actually a fair assumption to make aIN STORES MARCH 27THstatement like that. Did that have some play as in why youmade that statement?Our goal was to write the Master Of Puppets for this generation.When I said that, just to be clear, I didn’t mean like, we want to be thenext Metallica, or we’re going to write the record that they should bewriting because it’s very much a Machine Head record. Our goalwas to write a record that had the power and epic grandeur andtimelessness of that record. To me, I put on Master... today, and itkicks about 95 percent of every metal band’s records ass. It’s 20years old at this point. We knew that it was a very lofty goal, andmaybe even a bit arrogant as a goal. But we were going to shoot forthe stars and even if we got halfway, at least we tried it, to make agenre, or career defining record. So that’s really where thatstatement came from. Whether we achieved that or not, I don’t know,that’s for the world to decide. But I know we’re very proud of thisrecord and the response so far has been unbelievable.It’s been said now for a good ten years that rock and metal isdead. What do you think of the current state of Rock and Metal?I think it’s great how metal is on an upswing again. Obviously, peopleat the Grammy’s who don’t know anything about metal nominateSlayer and Lamb of God, and have probably never listened to it buthave kids that listen to it who are like, yea, that’s cool. In that senseit’s awesome. When Machine Head came out with Burn My Eyes, itwas pretty much uncool to be a metal band as any time I have everremembered in my life. No one wanted to call themselves metal,even Metallica was calling themselves a rock band. It’s great to seeit all come back around. I walk down the street now by my houseand I see 14 year old skater kids with the tight pants, big whiteshoes and a Testament shirt and it’s killer. So, in that perspective it’sa good thing. In another sense though, I think with the popularity ofmetal heads there’s also a lot of crappy metal bands are scooped upand touted as this great thing. I think for me the most annoying trendin metal is just that every single heavy band has to have pretty muchan entire albums worth of lyrics about there girlfriend. It’s like, witheverything that’s going on in the world today, that’s the only topicthat you can find to write about ... your girlfriend leaving you. Take alook outside man.www.RAGmagazine.com | 45
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Page 26 and 27: LOCAL MUSICStory: Todd McFliker5th
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