MACHINE HEAD Guitarist: Performing With HETFIELD Was 'One Of Highlights Of My Musical Career'

Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal of Full Metal Rock conducted an interview with guitarist Phil Demmel of San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD on December 5, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Full Metal Rock: A few months back in Europe, [METALLICA's] James Hetfield joined you guys on stage. Can you tell us how that felt?

Phil: It was one of the highlights of my musical career, having him approach us. He originally came into our dressing room and played it on the drums first and then he was like, "OK, maybe I'll play this one with you live," or something like that. So he came up and did it twice and it was awesome — very amazing and very surreal.

Full Metal Rock: What is the reason for not doing a proper headline tour of the U.S.? Is it just because of your schedule and not being able to fit it in with the support treks?

Phil: We wanted to, but then the megadeth thing came up. How can you deny doing SLAYER and MEGADETH? And then the MEGADETH tour, and then the METALLICA shows came up. We headlined so much in the States. So it was better off doing this. We're doing a proper headlining of Europe, which are more deserving in my eyes.

Full Metal Rock: Your "The Blackening" album was released back in 2007 and you're coming to the end of its touring cycle. So when are you planning to go back in the studio and write some new material?

Phil: We'll write in the spring when we get home from the tour. We'll be home in April, so I would imagine late April we will reconvene in the studio and start writing the follow-up. So I don't know when it will be ready and when we are going to record. We are not setting any time. When it's ready then we'll go in.

Full Metal Rock: You have a heart condition because of which you tend to black out. How much progress have you made with that and recently have you been confident enough that it won't happen on stage?

Phil: I can never be sure that it won't happen because three out of the four times I was pretty surprised that it did. Health-wise, it's been better. It's more a head-space thing than anything else, you know, so it has a lot to do with depression and has a lot to do with stress. Ever since my father died two years ago — tomorrow is the anniversary — it's been tough man. So it's hard to gather all those emotions and keep things in check. So I can't be sure. But I feel better these days for sure.

Full Metal Rock: How were the gigs that you did in places like India, Israel and Dubai last year?

Phil: That whole run was amazing. We'd played Dubai before. So we played there first and that was the last time I've been really sick. That was almost two years ago. I was deathly ill, I had pink eye and my equilibrium was really fucked up. So I couldn't go and see all the cool things that everybody was doing, but the show in Dubai was amazing. Awesome festival, and then from there we went into Israel and crazy kids just aching for metal and it was so good. Then we went to India to play this festival with MEGADETH. We were staying in this plantation like hotel with amazing amenities and it was really cool. Then 40,000 kids show up screaming and having a great time. So really exotic places and each one of them was really cool. In India, we remember walking in on this red carpet and they had this procession of people dancing and drums and everything. When we stopped, they stopped. They were kinda following us and gave us a coconut. It was so cool.

Full Metal Rock: What's been your favorite moment or memory of 2009, now that we're coming to the end of the year?

Phil: So many cool things have happened to this band. There's been so many benchmarks made and achieved, bigger things and bigger venues. It would have to be playing the festival weekend. We headlined Wacken and there were like 85,000 people there. It was one of the best shows in MACHINE HEAD's history, if not the best show, and then hurried off to a private plane that was booked for us to fly to Sonisphere U.K. to play with METALLICA, then to wake up and have this really cool hotel. That whole weekend was the highlight of 2009 for me. Then the Kerrang! Awards on the next night and something like that. It was a really cool weekend.

Read the entire interview from Full Metal Rock.