MACHINE HEAD's ROBERT FLYNN Gets Dissed By SLAYER's KERRY KING

MACHINE HEAD frontman Robert Flynn has posted another installement in his online "diary" at the group's official web site. An excerpt from the entry follows:

"Played in Paris with SLIPKNOT and SLAYER. MASTODON opened the show, which was really cool. Hung with them for a while, really nice guys, drinking absurd amounts of booze together, singing GEORGIA SATELLITES songs on the acoustic (it's a long story). Our show was nothing short of a-fucking-mazing. 14,000 people screaming along to 'Hear Me Now, Words I Vow, No Fucking Regrets' was just... FUCK!? 14,000 fuckers clapping along to 'Descend' was the real surprise though. We were a little nervous about playing that one (...SLIPKNOT / SLAYER fans) but it brought the goddamn house down. SLIPKNOT were fucking awesome! People just going apeshit for 'em. People LOVE that band. We hung out with them 'til the end of the night, drinkin' brown eyes and shit. We hadn't seen those guys in a while due to our tour schedules, and it was a blast hanging out again. SLAYER played an awesome set, it was my first chance to see them with [Dave] Lombardo, and with all due respect to Paul Bostaph, who I've seen play probably 70 shows with SLAYER, Lombardo is just amazing!!! Live... Lombardo IS SLAYER.

"Spoke with both Tom [Araya] and Jeff [Hanneman] for a while. Both were way cool as usual. Adam [Duce, MACHINE HEAD bassist] and I went into SLAYER's dressing room to talk with Kerry [King], who I hadn’t seen or spoken to since our little spat began 2½ years ago [see previous BLABBERMOUTH.NET articles: Story#1, Story#2, Story#3, Story#4, Story#5], but who seemed like he had let things go. He stopped slagging us in the press, and both Dave [McClain, MACHINE HEAD drummer] and Adam had seen him at the Metal Hammer Awards and he'd told them that he loved 'Through the Ashes of Empires', and was very cordial to them.

"At first he avoided me for 10 minutes, then I finally went into his area to shake his hand and say, 'What's up fucker.' He was eating a sandwich so he declined the handshake, which didn't seem weird. He was pretty stand off-ish but we made small talk about the Paris show, and how unbelievably happy they were that the tour was over, then he left to other room again.

"At this point I decided, 'Hey, I'm gonna try and squash this thing officially, 'bring it up,' and kinda break the ice. So I went up to him a second time, extended my hand to shake and said, 'Hey man, so are we officially done?' He didn't shake my hand, just kinda knocked it, and replied sarcastically, 'Done with what?' I said, 'Done with our little spat,' he said, 'It was never a spat with me,' I said, 'Then shake my hand, and call it a day,' he gave me a smarmy look and said, 'No.…' I said, 'You're not gonna shake my hand?', he pursed his lips, shook his head and said, '...No.' I just stood there for a few seconds, kinda like... what? I took a deep breath, exhaled, and was like 'Alright man, whatever...' I wished him safe travels, he said, 'Thanks...' I left the room.

"I gotta say man, when I left I was steamin'. I don't know why I was so mad really. Maybe it was because he'd acted so seemingly friendly (faked or otherwise) to my guys at the Metal Hammer Awards. To the very people who he claimed had 'no integrity, no credibility, and were sell-outs who tricked him into thinking they were metal.' Maybe it was because he was so cool to them, I had (mistakenly) thought he would be cool to me, even when my guys felt the exact same way I did. Maybe it was the fact that I felt like I had gone out of my way to give him a certain level of dignity by not calling him out in public, in front of the entire French metal media, like all of them were asking me to do, and instead went into his dressing room, on his turf, in private, went up to him, offered him my hand three times in reconciliation, obviously giving him the higher ground, and yet he still couldn't let it go. Maybe it's because I wish we were friends again. But then again, if all it took to end the friendship were a few songs he didn't like, maybe we weren't that good of friends to begin with. Maybe, it's because this time he got the best of me, and I don't like that... at all. Or maybe, just maybe, I expected him to be the bigger man about this whole thing, and I guess that was just a little too much to expect." Read more at this location.