MACHINE HEAD Frontman: We Wanted To Make A Record That Defined Who This Band Was

Patrick Douglas of The Culture Shock recently conducted an interview with MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

The Culture Shock: Obviously you wrote the songs [for "The Blackening"] and then recorded them, but how much fun is it for you guys to really get together and fine tune them and be able to play 'em live?

Robb: Live is definitely a different environment than when you're writing. You're getting that instant gratification, instant reaction, looking at everybody's faces, seeing jaws drop and you're like "cool." Whereas when you're writing, it's your gut instinct going "Man, this is really fun and this feels right and this is really good." It's cool to get up there and see the reaction of people freaking out to the new stuff. I mean, like going crazy. Especially considering that probably half of the audience hasn't seen us in a long time or us for the first time or hearing us for the first time. If we play L.A., if we sell out the House of Blues that's like 1,100 people. But, we just played the Wiltern in Los Angeles and that's 3,000 people, so you gotta figure that 1,900 people are seeing us for the first time in a long time or the first time ever. It's awesome, man.

The Culture Shock: You do some nice vocal harmonies in "Beautiful Mourning" and "A Farewell to Arms". Was that something that you really wanted to work on for this album?

Robb: Yeah. I really started doing a lot of that stuff on the last record, "Through the Ashes", and we definitely wanted to take that and build on that just because it's kind of a new thing, well not a new thing, Adam [Duce, bass] and I have always done trade-offs and harmonies on the other records, but we just wanted to take it even farther than we had ever taken it before.

The Culture Shock: Dave's [McClain] drumming is particularly sick on "Aesthetics of Hate". How jacked up do you guys get when a killer drum line like that is busted out in the studio? Does it affect the overall vibe of the song for you guys?

Robb: Yeah. When it came to the drums, the drums were the easy part (laughs). We basically got all of the tracks done in about a day and a half and then we went back in like three or four days after and just tried the craziest idea. Just tried different fills and all this crazy shit just that we would fly in later. The basic tracks, the basic drum parts, he laid down in about a day and a half. Him and I have been working on a lot of pre-production prior to that. He was coming down on his own, pretty much for the last year. He'd get there about three hours before we would even show up, practice for three hours by himself and then we would show up and he would practice four hours with the band. He was busting his ass, man, and it really shows. His drumming on this record is a whole 'nother level that metal has yet to be seen.

The Culture Shock: Going on that same song, the riff war that goes on is bad ass. How much do you feel like your guitar playing has improved over the years overall as a band?

Robb: Yeah, we all stepped it up. There's no doubt about it. Sometimes, there's definitely complex parts, but you always gotta kind of have that classic, Neanderthal, MACHINE HEAD breakdown where it's like the two heaviest notes ever. We try and keep a balance. It's not necessarily ever about … granted there are some riffs on here that are hands down the most technical stuff we've ever written. There's also something to be said about simple, stupid Neanderthal riffs (laughs). You know?

The Culture Shock: Everyone's gonna tell you that their newest album is the best one they've ever done. In your opinion, what is it about "The Blackening" that makes it the best MACHINE HEAD album? Or do you feel it isn't?

Robb: I feel like we tried to make something extraordinary. Our goal when we were writing this record was to write the "Master of Puppets" of this generation. I know that that's a very lofty goal and even sounds like an arrogant goal, but to us, when we said that, it wasn't like we wanted to write another record that METALLICA should be writing, or we wanna be the next METALLICA. It's nothing like that. This is very much a MACHINE HEAD record. It's our version of what it would be. What we meant by that was a record that would have a kind of epic grandeur and timeless power. A record that you put on twenty years from now and it sounds as good, if not better, than ninety percent of the metal bands out there. To me, that's what "Master of Puppets" is. That's was what our aim was with "The Blackening". To put out a record that would just be timeless. To make a record that defined who this band was and what we were.

The Culture Shock: I also noticed that you had another son. My first was born in June, so he's just going on nine months now.

Robb: Awesome. Cool.

The Culture Shock: So, I know what it's like now. I never could have imagined how awesome it is to be a Dad.

Robb: What's his birthday?

The Culture Shock: June 5.

Robb: Oh, June. 5. Mine's June 21st.

The Culture Shock: Nice. Right around the same time.

Robb: Yeah.

The Culture Shock: What's it been like for you with this latest child?

Robb: It's cool. It's tough. My wife and I really didn't … we planned having them close together in age, but we didn't expect for me to be on tour four weeks after having a kid, so it's a lot of responsibility that I've left her with. We'll get through it and we'll get over it and we'll keep on going.

The Culture Shock: When I interviewed you a couple of years ago you said, "We knew from day one that we were making the type of music that was way more extreme than what most radio stations and MTV would play." Looking back on that comment, just the short time since then MTV has pretty much eliminated any sort of video play and radio's always sucked. How happy are you that you guys never really intended to go that route and aren't one of those bands that might be suffering because of those media outlets not really playing stuff anymore.

Robb: Yeah. Like I said then, we went about making our fan base in a different way. It was a tougher way, there's no doubt about it. There's definitely a lot more work and there's still a lot more work involved. Ultimately, we've got one of the most loyal fan bases on all of metal. They stand by us and they pick up the record and they support the band no matter what. It's pretty cool to have that freedom. The thing that's really cool now is, radio hasn't really… they're not gonna be receptive to this record either. Especially because we've got these five-and-a-half-, six-, nine-, ten-minute-long songs and clearly don't fit into any kind of video or radio format. There's been a lot of other things that have popped up. There's been a lot of different formats and a lot of different avenues for us to get our music. A lot of the satellite radio stations, they don't have any problem playing ten-minute-long songs with cuss words. Just like MachineHead1, our web site alone, we get like a two million hits a month. A lot of people go there and they watch the updates and they watch the stuff. It's becoming like its own TV channel. Just being able to put stuff up there and have stuff getting out there in that way. A lot of our fan base, they're like younger kids and they're Internet-savvy. We've started using the Internet and doing the video updates almost five years ago now. When we started doing them, it wasn't like "Hey, there's this new, great technology." It's like, we didn't have a choice (laughs). We were unsigned. No magazines would cover us. We didn't have a way to keep contact with our fans. We didn't have a record coming out. We started using that as a way to keep in touch with them. Lo and behold, five years later, that's kind of become the way that things are now. Here, being one of the forerunners of it, it's cool to have pioneered that and it's offered a massive amount of exposure to us and it's been pretty cool. The thing's that's best about it is it's not under some sort of radio programmers' control. It's not under a video stations control. It's our site. We have the final say over it and the creative control. It ain't like we're gonna misquote ourselves, you know.

Read the entire interview at www.thecultureshock.com.