MACHINE HEAD To Enter Studio This Weekend

San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD will enter GREEN DAY's Jingletown Studios in Oakland, California this Saturday, April 16 to begin recording their as-yet-untitled seventh album for a late summer release via Roadrunner Records.

A six-minute video clip in which the four members of MACHINE HEAD talk about the forthcoming CD can be viewed below.

Robb Flynn (guitar, vocals): "I wasn't really raised with religion. And in a lot of ways, that's what this record seems to be symbolizing for me — music as religion, music as the thing that's carried me through the darkest chapters in my life. It's carried me through the brightest, highest highs of my life, and everything in between. It's always been there for me."

Phil Demmel (guitar): "Expectations? There's always high expectations. I mean, we don't just put a record out that often, so there's a lot that goes into this. We expect a lot out of ourselves; we expect everything that we can possibly put into a record. So we're reaching deep, but we've grown a lot in the past five years as well — as musicians, as friends, as bandmates, and just as people in general. So I think there's a lot of emotion getting poured into this, and a lot of creativity, too. So don't expect 'The Blackening 2'. It's gonna be... We're putting everything that we have into this one, but we do that on every record. 'It's gonna be heavy, but melodic, too. It's gonna be the heaviest thing we've ever done.' I'm gonna stay away from all the quotes you see all the time. It's gonna be our best effort, though — for sure."

Dave McClain (drums): "The first two or three songs that we started working on were just parts that were really exciting. And we knew — as with the last two records, [2003's] 'Through The Ashes Of Empires' and [2007's] 'The Blackening' — we knew we were onto something really good.

"The songwriting process can definitely be frustrating sometimes. Because sometimes you're working on the same thing for two or three weeks and the same parts, you're kind of waiting for something to happen. The next time you don't have a part coming up, and you're kind of just waiting around for something to happen. You can get kind of stuck in a rut. And it's frustrating, to say the least. At this point, where we're at now, as far as demoing everything, that's when everything just starts flowing, whether it's by accident or on purpose or whatever, things just start happening. And doing this right now — demoing — definitely gets you excited for getting into the studio, and by that time we're pretty well prepared. I mean, after demoing things a few times and everything else, you're kind of chomping and ready to start recording."

Adam Duce (bass): "We were looking at recording at a couple of different places in Oakland, but it turns out that we're gonna end up doing everything over at Jingletown.

"Right now in the recording process, we just finished demoing some stuff.

"Putting out music for as many years as we have, we always have to kind of make it new and fresh and interesting for us, and we always look for that thing that makes it MACHINE HEAD, that gives you that feeling.

"The feeling that you get from a MACHINE HEAD record is nothing if not motivating. I mean, that's what we do; that's our niche. So that's enough motivation. Just to be in here making music, when that finally gets there, it's so epic and huge and fulfilling when you get it right. I mean, you jam it sometimes for nine months without it being right, but the time that you play it and it comes out right and the one little twist that you didn't have in there gets put into it, and it makes it. It's like magic. I mean, that's what the magic of music is right there."

In a recent issue of Metal Hammer magazine, Flynn stated about the material for MACHINE HEAD's follow-up to 2007's "The Blackening", "So far we have two songs done, 'This Is The End' and 'Who We Are'. We have a third getting there, and six or seven jams that aren't songs yet.

"It's too early to see what direction it's headed, but the two that are done are anthemic, riff-tastic, and have an epic, neo-classical kind of vibe. Lyrically, songs are angry but about struggle.

"Don't expect 'The Blackening 2'; we're moving forward."

Working songtitles for next MACHINE HEAD album:

* This Is The End
* Who We Are
* Pearls Before Swine
* Under The August Moon
* I Am Hell
* Darkness Within
* Locust

"The Burning Red", the third album from MACHINE HEAD, was certified silver by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) on February 25 for sales in excess of 60,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

Exclusive for Record Store Day 2011, MACHINE HEAD will release 10-inch vinyl, aptly titled "The Black Procession". The set includes three previously unreleased live tracks that were recorded along 2010's Black Procession Tour, in support of the band's last studio effort, "The Blackening".

Side A:

* Beautiful Mourning (live)
* Bite The Bullet (live)

Side B:

* Halo (live)

About Record Store Day: Record Store Day is managed by the Music Monitor Network and is organized in partnership with the Alliance of Independent Media Stores (AIMS),the Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS) and celebrates the culture of independent record stores by playing host to in-store events/performances, signings and special product releases on a global scale.

Record Store Day takes place annually on the third Saturday of April.

For more information on exclusive Record Store Day events, products and participants, visit www.recordstoreday.com.

(Thanks: TakeMyScars.com)