MACHINE HEAD: 'Unto The Locust' Track-By-Track Breakdown By PHIL DEMMEL

Brandon Marshall of Sonic Excess recently conducted an interview with guitarist Phil Demmel of San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Sonic Excess: With the success of MACHINE HEAD's 2007 release, "The Blackening", was there extra pressure while writing and recording "Unto The Locust", and did MACHINE HEAD have the mentality to bury "The Blackening" when going into the studio?

Phil Demmel: I don't think so. I think it was the same pressure that they felt after "Supercharger", doing "Through The Ashes Of Empires", or "The Blackening". The band always wants to do a different record, and that's certainly been proven with the discography. I mean, no record has been the same, and that continues to trend. We've been writing for ourselves since I've been in the band. I can't speak for before then, but we write for ourselves. That's what we've been doing. We've been growing in the music, as people, as friends, and bandmates. We've grown as brothers and in our everyday lives. So, we see the world from a different perspective now. So, that's also going to change our moods and the way we write. That's been the case, for sure. I wouldn't say there was any more pressure than the last one. You always want to write the best record that you can.

Sonic Excess: Did MACHINE HEAD take a new approach during the writing and recording process? I understand Robb [Flynn, vocals/guitar] took vocal classes.

Phil Demmel: Yeah, Robb took some vocal classes, and he's singing really low. He's trying different things, but nothing too crazy. There's a couple departures from what we've done in the past, but the writing approach is the same. We're all fans of different kinds of music, writing and creating what makes us satisfied, for whatever need or purge that is hitting us at the time.

Sonic Excess: So what were some of the lyrical themes you touched on?

Phil Demmel: The first thing I approached with Robb... I've always thought Well, I come from a really descriptive writing style. Robb is more personal, more first and third person. I'm more descriptive. So, I thought of this, maybe taking the pages out of a pyromaniac's diary, as he's learning and the sickness is taking him over; how it kind of grows with him, and how he becomes a murderer and maniac. It's something we started researching a little bit. We found out that women are actually the most dangerous, because their crimes are, more often than not, crimes of passion. So, he took it from this female perspective. Taken in that vein, it's not really something MACHINE HEAD has done in the past, but it's kind of a cool story.

Sonic Excess: Can you give us a track-by-track breakdown of the album?

Phil Demmel: Well, it's not really finalized yet, but it's pretty close.

01. I Am Hell (Sonata In C#) consisting of three parts I) Sangre Sani (Blood Saint) II) I Am Hell and III) Ashes To The Sky

"I Am Hell", the opener, is actually a sonata. It's a song in three parts, and it's the pyromaniac song that I was talking about. You know, it's the most brutal song MACHINE HEAD has ever written. It's got to at least be eight minutes long. So, it starts off with, you know, I'm not going to break down the music too much. I mean it's still pretty early before the record comes out but it's a three-part tune.

02. Be Still And Know

"Be Still And Know", which is, uh, kind of a few riffs that I threw together that kind of got shelved for a minute, got put away, and got brought back from the dead when I came in one day and those guys were kind of jamming on it. It kind of got some chest compressions, and it got brought back to life. Epic jam. It's about struggle, and overcoming struggle, and knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel is only there if that light shines inside of you. The title was Like, my grandmother handed down all of her grandchildren bible verses in all their Easter cards and Christmas cards. She used to sign one to each, and mine was Psalm 46, which is, "Be still, and know that I'm the Lord". Basically, be steadfast. Know that you will get through, and this shall pass. It kind of fit into the tune and kind of fit into the chorus. I mean, I got it tattooed on my arm around eight years ago. So, it's been kind of my mantra through my life. So, I'm really stoked that Robb chose to title the song that.

03. Locust

"Locust", is a concept I came up with, based on a few people I have encountered in my life, just like everybody has. The type of person that just comes into your life under a different guise, under false pretenses, to befriend you, be your buddy, be your man, be on your team, or, you know, to be your lover or whatever. Their goal is just to soak up all your resources and just to drain you of all you've got, whatever you have to offer. Once they're discovered, they fly off into the next crop and drain that of everything. Yeah, it just feels like hell.

04. This Is The End

"This Is The End", a burner, one of the faster MACHINE HEAD songs ever. (laughs) Robb and David [McClain, drums] got together, and we took a break from everything after touring for three years. We took about a six-month break, got back together, and wrote this song. It's really fast. Kind of a death metal song, but it's got the classical sound like a death metal tune. The whole record has kind of neo-classical feel to it. The song, Robb's going to have to describe the lyrics. It's basically about people kind of living and not being able to accept present times and moving on to things.

05. Darkness Within

"Darkness Within", this song is probably the biggest departure of our record, in terms of when we did "Descend The Shades Of Night" on "Through The Ashes". It's kind of a ballad, with acoustic guitars. This one I'm going to leave up to something of a surprise. All of my friends that aren't kind of into metal say, "Damn, is that you guys?" It's a beautiful, beautiful song. Still heavy, but us growing as musicians. It has my favorite, the best solo I've ever done for this band, so far, dripping with emotion. I'll leave it at that.

06. Pearls Before The Swine

"Pearls Before The Swine", which was a song about addiction. It was a song without lyrics really for a while, without a concept. We kind of came up with an idea to write about addicts and addiction, when talking to each other and watching "Breaking Bad" episodes to kind of catch up and start again to see it. (laughs) It's not a song about hope. It's just a song about being in the throes of addiction, in its claws, and a lot of my lyrics are in there. So, there's a lot of descriptive thoughts of addiction. It's not a song of hope for sure. It's not "Stairway To Heaven". It's not a song of hope for sure.

07. Who We Are

And the last song is a song called "Who We Are", which another song that Robb wrote. He and Dave kind of had it before I started writing for the record. I took some time off last year to deal with some personal stuff. This one and the other one I talked about earlier are the two that Robb had already written and brought. You know, he had all this music pouring out of him, and he had to get it outso. Yeah, I don't know really how to describe those two, so I'm going to refrain from doing that.

Sonic Excess: Any tracks that were left on the cutting-room floor that we could potentially see as bonus material, maybe within a year or in a release in Japan or Australia?

Phil Demmel: We are doing some B-sides and I am not ready to release what those are yet. It's still kind of early and stuff's not going out for another few months. But there were a few songs that didn't make it on the record. I think with these seven tunes, we have got about 50 minutes or so. That's long enough. (laughs)

Read the entire interview from Sonic Excess.

"Locust" performance footage: