MACHINE HEAD Drummer: 'We Have A Hardcore Fan Base That Loves What We Do'

Greg Giles of Midwest Excess recently conducted an interview with MACHINE HEAD drummer Dave McClain. A few excerpts follow:

Midwest Excess: Album after album, MACHINE HEAD has radically developed their overall sound, while trying out new concepts, yet staying true to the thrash roots. The brand new album, "The Blackening" is just being released, and it's brutal. How did the writing process develop in creating this one?

McClain: The last couple of records, we kind of had, you know, we've been basically creating music for just the music fan in us, and the musician in us. There was a time period after "Supercharger", where…no labels [were] involved, we were off of Roadrunner [Records]… We didn't have a guitar player, and it was basically a breaking point, it would have been a breaking point for a lot of bands. We were like, we can either fold it in, [which] was never really an option, so we just…started writing. Phil [Demmel] came back into the band, and doing stuff. From that point on it was really just like, making the songs as… not difficult, but challenging ourselves in songwriting and playing the songs, and…not worrying about if a song was over four minutes or five minutes, or whatever…and taking pointers from bands like RUSH. Making your songs as fun to play, and like I said, just challenging ourselves. On this one, we just… took what we did with "Through the Ashes", and on the new one, took it even further.

Midwest Excess: We were talking about when Ahrue [Luster, former guitarist] left the band. You guys go back old school. You were the drummer to SACRED REICH at one time, and Robb Flynn and Phil Demmel were both in VIO-LENCE, so I'm assuming you go back to the Bay area (San Francisco) thrash roots, and is that how you came upon Phil playing guitar?

McClain: Well, yeah. That's how, you know. Phil and Robb having the VIO-LENCE connection, obviously…and when Ahrue was out of the band, right before he quit, his vision of the next album, which would have been "Through The Ashes" was one that was gonna be, mostly a mellow album. Just kind of laid back, kind of really mellow tunes. We were at the opposite side of the spectrum. We were like, "What are you talking about, dude? If anything, we're going, we want to do a fuckin balls-out record! That's what we're feeling." And Phil coming into the band… Phil originally just came in to do some dates with us, some fill-in festival tour, festival shows we were doing over in Europe, and from the first practice, the chemistry was right on. It was like we had that chemistry with him, and we started playing some songs off the first couple of records that we hadn't played in a long time. We were like, "Wow, that was fun to play…that was one of the harder tunes on that record, [one of the most] difficult songs to play." We started getting into that mind set. He definitely brought a new dimension to the band being that he and Robb can actually be like this guitar team, now. Instead of just two separate guitar players…one guy doing one thing, and one guy doing another. They're actually like, feeding off each other, doing harmony leads. Kind of like an old Glenn Tipton, K.K. Downing kind of thing. It definitely brought killer new stuff to the band.

Midwest Excess: So going back, right before that, do you think that maybe the "Supercharger" era, that Ahrue was part of, do you think that maybe was a collective decision to focus on becoming more of a mainstream act?

McClain: No, because we always…there was always that side to it, not to get too deep into music business stuff, but, when you're on a record label, your label's trying to take you as far as they can. The next level of success, basically, to get you to that point, is getting played on the radio, and getting you played on MTV. So…yeah…there [were] songs being written that would fit into a format of commercial radio, or whatever. Keep it under four-and-a-half minutes. Then there were the other songs…these songs aren't ever going to be played on the radio, so we're just going to do that. There was always that thing, so…after "Supercharger", and after getting off Roadrunner, and then coming back to Roadrunner, internationally at least, at first, was, "We're never gonna do that again. Geddy Lee…from RUSH said this amazing thing… "We're not gonna go to radio. They're gonna come to us." I think that's a great way of looking at things. You're never going to write music for a certain thing, because if we wrote a whole album to get on commercial radio, and it didn't happen, we'd be fucked.

Midwest Excess: Yeah, you would be fucked…

McClain: We have a hardcore fan base that loves what we do, and if we sold out, and went for that audience that really just hears one song on the radio, and they go, "Oh, I like that song" …and half the people don't even go see the bands in concert. We don't get played on radio. There are bands out there that sell ten times more records [than] us, yet, we're all still playing the same venues. It says a lot for our fans, and it says a lot for doing things your own way, and not worrying about commercial success.

Read the entire interview at www.mwerocks.com.