MACHINE HEAD'S ROBB FLYNN Recalls 'Horrible' Original Chorus For 'Davidian'

November 21, 2019

MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn has recalled the "horrible" original chorus for the band's classic song "Davidian", saying that the first incarnation of the track wasn't quite as menacing or cool as what it eventually evolved into.

"Davidian", with its defiant war cry of "Let freedom ring with a shotgun blast!", is widely considered to be one of the greatest album openers ever, having appeared on MACHINE HEAD's debut album, "Burn My Eyes", released in 1994.

During MACHINE HEAD's performance in The K! Pit, Flynn told the London audience how "Davidian" came to be. He said, as per Kerrang!: "Logan [Mader, guitarist] came up with the intro riff and I had this other riff that went good with it, which is a total EXODUS ripoff, but I was, like, 'Fuck it, I'm gonna put some double-bass on that shit and make it sound nothing like EXODUS.'

"We started jamming it, and a lot of the time when I write lyrics, I just freestyle, I don't have anything set, I don't write down stuff first I just see what comes. I make up words and look around like, 'PAs! Spines! Blood! People!' whatever comes in my mind.

"For some very bizarre reason… the very first chorus of 'Davidian' was 'Get the fuck up to the bone-breaking groove.' And I thought that was good! I thought that was good for like three weeks. Then I remember we did a warehouse party. When we started out, there wasn't a lot of clubs in the Bay Area, and we were just playing our punk rock friends' warehouse — we were playing a parking lot. I remember getting up, we were getting to 'Davidian', we're gonna do this fuckin' chorus, I said it one time and I was, like, 'Holy shit! This is fucking horrible.' In that moment, in that warehouse parking lot… this shit's gotta change, right fuckin' now, because this sucks. So that night I wrote, 'Let freedom ring with a shotgun blast.'"

The first leg of MACHINE HEAD's 25th-anniversary tour for "Burn My Eyes" kicked off in Freiburg, Germany on October 5 and wrapped in Dublin, Ireland on November 8.

The North American leg of the "Burn My Eyes" 25th-anniversary tour will kick off in Phoenix on January 16, and continue across Texas, Florida, New York, Toronto, Chicago and Denver, wrapping up at the legendary Fox Theater in Oakland, California on February 21 and House Of Blues in Anaheim, California on February 22.

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