For 4 years in a row, the family and I have taken a trip down to Rancho Mirage in the Palm Springs area of Southern California for the kids Spring Break. They have a few hotels down here that are built around waterslide parks and for 5 days we'll hang at the pool, endlessly hit the waterslides, swim, eat amazing Mexican food, while Genevra and I drink vodka-Mojitos and Blue Moons w/ orange.

It is one of life's little treasures.

I really enjoyed this break, been stressed out. I have a bad habit of letting Machine Head consume my life (and it can be all all-consuming) so from time to time I go "off the grid". Turn off the phone, not check email 100 times a day, not answer texts 300 times a day. So while I'm writing this journal, (this is something I enjoy and don't consider work), I'm on vacation, full journals will resume next week, promise!

My son Wyatt said something today that I liked the sentiment of, we were walking back to the pool, we both had no flip-flops, we're barefoot, the ground was hot, and he said, "Dada, we have to walk in the shadows"

Yes son...

Yes we do.

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As this summer's Mayhem Festival draws near, the Machine Head boys recount tales of mayhem and debauchery in a new blog series called "Mayhem Memories".

This week: Phil Demmel tries to remember 2011.

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Mayhem memory?

It's more of what people remind me that I did one fateful night in Chicago. It all started with our friends from Soil playing a one-off on the Jager stage and raging on (literally) their bus. The drinking started a bit earlier that day so by the time the Underoath-sponsored Cornhole Tournament (a beanbag tossing game) rolled around, Ivan from 5FDP and I were donning red/white/ and blue Evil Kneviel Helmets and bashing bottles over our heads.

Since that wasn't enough, I proceed to impersonate a Bull and knock over all the garbage cans in the parking lot with my head and, rumor has it, tackled a Port-a-Potty like it was game-saver at the goal-line. I guess I had forgotten to take my laptop out of my bunk before I poured into it, and woke up to a cracked screen.

Needless to say this started a 7 month sober period for yours truly. THANKS MAYHEM!!!!!

Man...

I was in a pretty dark place last week, probably the darkest place I've been in a while, one of the most brutal depressions that I can remember. I'm in a better place now. Some really good talks came out of it with the people around me and thankfully the black fog has lifted.

I also want to thank all of you for the well wishes. I just finished reading through a lot of them. A bunch of friends and family both in as well as outside of the music business reached out to me and offered some fantastic insight and advice. Most of all, I want to thank Dave, Phil, and Joseph for being there for me when I needed it. I needed their patience, their strength, and their understanding, and they gave it to me.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I do these Journals because I want a connection. Because I have some kind of disconnection in my life, I NEED this. I get a lot out of these. This is a Journal about not only Machine Head, but a little bit of my life too. And just like everyone else I have good days and bad days, happy and sad days. There are days when I want to take on the world and then the total opposite when I want to just sleep all day. While I would love to deliver you just the good news and do my best to keep it positive, that also isn't the reality of the world, yours or mine.

Sometimes life is hard, sometimes the world is fucked. Most of the time it isn't, and these Journals will reflect that, but sometimes it is, and these Journals will reflect that too. It would feel so phony to me to just pretend like everything is always good and that no bad ever happens in our lives. To only write these uplifting motivational “Machine Head-is-kicking-ass"-things once a week would burn me out. It would make me feel like a salesman trying to sell you some positivity. I am a lot of things to a lot of people, but one thing I am not is full of shit, so these Journals will never be about a sales pitch.

One of the main reasons I stopped doing the Journals back in 2010 was because I WAS burned out on them. It felt like all I talked about was how "Houston was great," "record is doing great," "here's what Machine Head are up to," a maybe a little bit of personal stuff. But mostly it was just "the good stuff."

There’s nothing wrong with the good stuff, especially when it's absolutely warranted and true, but writing a consistent Journal (once a week like I'm making the effort to)... it gets boring. Writing these takes some effort. I mean the first 5 are easy but then what do you write about? When I became inspired again to share this stuff with you guys (and girls) I decided that it needed to be more than just Machine Head and more than just the “good” each and every time, and while I always tie MH into it somehow, truthfully our life just isn't always that interesting (LOL!).

I certainly didn't expect to be writing things like "Beneath The Silt," I had no idea what I was even going to write about that morning. I sat down and started typing, and it felt like a broken fire hydrant of shit just poured out. It's a topsy-turvy moment in our lives too.

So I'm trying to find a balance. But it won't be perfect, and not being perfect is something I need to be "ok with" in my life. Not all my journals can be "thrash reminiscing", not all of them will be funny and uplifting. Some will be great, others will suck, just like life itself. I'm not here to lead you; I'm not here to inspire you. I’ve said it in song lyrics, "I'm just as lost as you". That’s 100% true, and getting that connection I mentioned earlier... maybe we can help each other out? Maybe we can learn from each other along the way? I’ve accomplished a few things so far in life but I still have A LOT to learn, believe me!! Teach me.

I also realize that I am a lucky man. I get to make music for a living. I get to tour the world in a band that's kicking ass. I’m surrounded by band/management dudes who believe in me. I’m lucky to have fans who believe in me. In my opinion most bands never want you to think that the band life is anything but glamorous. However, that being said, if we could all trade problems with one another, I'm certain that once we saw each other’s problems… we'd be more than happy to trade them all back. They’re just different problems.

Believe it or not, writing "Beneath The Silt" made me feel a little better. When I was finished with that journal, I wrote lyrics for about an hour. What came out was some of the most fucked up, depressing, hateful lyrics I’ve written in my life. They may not ever get used. I mean they're so weird and fucked we’ll just have to wait and see. But writing them made me feel a little better too. Talking with Genevra that night helped me figure out a lot of where it was coming from too (as it usually does when we talk). Over the last week, I've climbed out of the hole. If there was a silver lining (and there always is) some great music has come out of it. We've been really productive writing-wise. As of last night we have 4 songs pretty much done musically, another 5 jams / half songs. The song we finished last night felt like it could be something really special. Phil has been on a riff roll, bringing some really unique sounding riffage and Dave McClain (our secret weapon) has brought some damn cool riffs to the table as well.

I appreciate you guys reading these, I'm lucky to have you guys reading. I'm lucky to have anyone who gives a shit about these ramblings. You don't have to read them, and if you don't like them, by all means, you are free to stop reading them. If I was in a shitty mood, I'm not sure I would want to read about someone else's shitty mood...? Then again, I follow a few peoples blogs, and sometimes reading how they’re going through a shitty time too, helps me make sense of the world.


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Machine Head will begin the process of searching for a temporary bassist replacement for this summer’s Mayhem Festival in the U.S. Interested in trying out? For a limited time the band will accept and review YouTube submissions that include the following:

1) Video: A standalone performance of the songs listed below, just yourself, singing and playing bass along to the the tracks off the albums. **Camera phone is fine as long as it's stable**

2) A brief 1- to 2-minute statement about your musical experience; playing, touring experience, etc.

Please upload your videos to YouTube and e-mail a link (or links) to MHBassAuditions@gmail.com that includes the following songs:

1) This Is The End
2) Halo
3) Beautiful Mourning

Once the band has narrowed down potential candidates, they will hold tryouts in person at a to-be-determined location.

Phil Demmel got up and jammed with the mighty Steel Panther on Saturday night. Check out fan-filmed footage below of him performing "Asian Hooker" and "Turn Out The Lights"!

Check out the new Capital One commercial featuring Jimmy Fallon jamming on Phil Demmel's guitar the Jackson "Demmelition"!

You ever feel let down?

Like everyone you know is just a complete and utter fucking idiot? That the people in your life are all part of some gigantic plot to test you to your very breaking point? That you're in some fucking game that you don't even want to be playing in, and yet, somehow you are forced to roll the dice over and over again, so that you can lose, and learn some goddamned lesson you're supposed to learn, but are never sure if you do learn the lesson, because not shortly thereafter, you have to roll those same black and white squares again, and the same irritating cluster of black dots comes up, and the identical result happens.

That's what I feel right now.

Frustration.

So unbelievably frustrated beyond belief.

A hamster wheel, continually spinning under my feet.

Groundhogs Day, you wake up and the same thing happens day in and day out. You just watch it, powerless to change it. You wake the next day, and the same people are doing the same things, and you just have to fucking take it. Take it, and take it, and take it, over and over and over again.

Swallowed by the suffocating silence of a breathless watery abyss.

At the bottom of a spider hole, staring at the faintest light up above, so far away. Clawing at the jagged rock walls until fingers are bloody nubs

A thick black fog behind my brow, forcing eyes closed.

A dream, running as fast as you can, feet stuck in some invisible quicksand.

A dream, flying, for one brief moment in the air, free... some inexplicable reason you start to fall... nothing stops the descent.

You want to change it, you try to change it, you fight to change it, and just before you hit the ground you wake up. Or you don't... like some slow motion scene in a movie, you watch your body slowly break apart. Smash on the concrete. Shatter in the dirt. Guts splattering. Bones breaking. It doesn't hurt, but you know it's bad, it's very bad.

And then you wake. "Is this dying?", "Is this the afterlife?"

You realize you're awake, heart racing, normalcy sets in, you remember it, understand, take it in.

That every failure, you have to own, it was your fault, that you deserve it, that there is no one to blame but yourself.

Nothing is going to change. Nothing will change.

There's no happy ending.

What did Mitch Lucker write?

"The dead are living".

Sink to the bottom.

Beneath the silt.


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