Hey Fuckers!!!
Just got back from merry ol' England, where the Chicken Tikka Masala, Cobra Lager and Budvar flowed like... well... wine. I was technically there to check out mixes, but jet-lag essentially prevented me from being any sort of real help. It wasn't necessary anyway though, as Colin is fucking destroying... Jesus, it is so – fucking - heavy!!! He had been sending us mixes to listen to and approve as Mark Keaton (our engineer) and I were WAY behind *cough* and still in Oakland putting the finishing touches on some vocals. It was actually pretty cool to be able to hear stuff at home on my crappy real-world car stereo, and not those amazing $20,000 studio speakers that can make a monkey farting into a trumpet sound FUCKING CRUSHING!!! So, the main purpose of my visit was to do a mini-press tour. Yes, 3 days of 10-11 hours of interviews, while existing on 3 hours of jet-lagged sleep a night and black tea... it made for some great interviews, let me tell ya. I was pretty much hallucinating for the last 3 hours of each day, which inevitably led to me talking about frying on acid / mescaline and real-life hallucinations... koo-koo bird!?
Press is flipping out! Some people said it's the best thing we've ever done, others said it was "So epic, it sounds like The Bible!!!" I was like, "WOW!... wait, is that good?" He assured me, yes. Really stoked though, man, great response from pretty much everyone. Label is LOVING it. Played it for a couple of fans who were lingering around too... "oh my God's" were uttered, heads were banging and horns were flying!!!
Colin is gonna be moving to another studio, as we still have 2 songs left to mix *cough, cough*, but rest assured my beer-breathed-brethren, we're almost there. We just got the mix of the opening track, "Clenching The Fists Of Dissent"... I practically wept... but not really. Ok, maybe a little.
That video update is still coming. No really, it is.
-Flynn
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UNLEASH THE KRACKEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We've got 3 mixes done at this point and as my friend Sir Sparks-A-Lot put it, “Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a crutch!!!!!!!??????”... ”SICK!!!!!!!!”
Colin Richardson is KILLING it!!! Guitars are massive!!!!!!!!!
We wrapped up tracking Saturday, went to the Re-Ignition record release and got PLOWED and gloriously wrecked, had a fucking blast!!! Early-Metallica cover band Damage Inc. closed the show, and fuckin' RULED it!!! Bassist did “Anesthesia Pulling Teeth” flawless... WOW! I haven’t headbanged that hard in ages. We raged so hard, Damage Inc. got shut off, and everyone nearly fought the whole security force... great, GREAT night!!
Leaving for London tomorrow to do press for a few days, and then back home for some much needed R&R.
Video update coming quick.
-Flynn
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Well, well, well...
Long time no talk ya'll, what's crack-a-latin'!!??!!
"ZANG Robb, what's the reason for the lag in diaries?"
WELL...
Believe it or not, we're still recording! Yes, we're still in the studio tracking!! We... uh... er... grossly underestimated how long it was going to take to record the guitars on this mofo. I guess it never really dawned on us before recording began, but The Blackening is by far the most complex, dynamic, and ambitious album we have ever even attempted to pull off. We have officially pushed ourselves well beyond our musical standards this time around. Ya heard of Pink Floyd's "The Wall"? Well, I've been joking that this album is "The Wall" of thrash metal. Seriously though, the riffage, the harmonies, the octaves, the layers, and friggin' three 10-minute-long songs, and one 9-minute song that has about 75 riffs in it has well... made things go a little slower than planned. It certainly didn't seem like it would when we went in but WOW... who knew. Throw in a weeks worth of guitar breakage with 4 volume pots blowing, 2 replaced pick ups, tuning peg breakage, bending neck, add that in with "Bubba" (my supreme 5150... The More Things Change 5150!) going down for a week, me getting sick during vocal tracking, and shit, might as well throw in my license plate(s) getting stolen, and my car getting busted into twice in 2 weeks, window getting broken, and stereo getting stolen twice (...fuckin' Oakland!) and you've got a snapshot of why it's taken a little longer than expected.
The good news is, the finish line is in sight, and things that have held us up are not the kind of obstacles where we're like, "oh man, what are we doing?", or "jeez, the songs don't feel right", it's the type of obstacles where each time you get over one of them, you hear a little bit more of the bigger picture of The Blackening, and each time we're like, "FUCK!... this is awesome!!!" I'm telling you fuckers, this shit is a monster!!! It's a big, ugly, dark, mean, fiery, beautiful, beast of a monster!
SO... yeah, it could be going better... but man, it could be going WAY worse.
Like you guys always say, "just be totally honest", and so there you have it.
There have been some really cool, amazing moments, without a doubt. Demmel has been putting the finishing touches on his leads, and you're gonna freak! The Lord of the Low End Frequency – Mr. Adam Duce - has been absolutely KILLING IT on the bass... Jesus! Lyrics are coming together splendidly, and they are the most fucked up shit we've ever done. They don't tread lightly around the topics they cover... everything from the war, to organized religion rising in power, to love, death, suicide, depression, ignorance and racism... they're fucked. Some people I've played it for have said it's the darkest shit we've ever written. I've also been incorporating a new technique I came up with, of dropping out the conjunction-esque words that connect other words (the, of, and, etc.) and simplifying the train of thought. It kinda reads weird, but listening to it in a song makes the impact a lot more powerful and direct.
One of the best moments though was having a bunch of Board members come in and sing back-ups on the song "Clenching The Fists Of Dissent". Some were friends already, some of them became friends that night, but man, in the end it was really fucking cool. We busted out the super-duper-enormo bottle of Grey Goose vodka, bought a shitload of beer, and proceeded to get hammered! We then broke them into groups of 6 to sing the "fight"'s. We even had a group of our girls and they KICKED ASS, but in the end, the fans ruled the day. Here are some shots courtesy of our boy Dirt Jr.:
We're sending songs off to Colin to start mixing tomorrow, and we'll have more updates soon... I promise!!!
Video coming too.
-Flynn
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Yeah yeahee!!!
Man!!! Had a rockin’ good Fri. night. After having a bullshit day at the studio... (technical difficulties, my guitar tuning peg breaking, and just having an all around shitty god damn day), all was made well when McClain, Dan and I went and let off some steam at the Bleeding Through / Unearth / Terror show. Was bummed I missed Animosity and Through The Eyes Of The Dead, but got there 2 songs into Terror who fuckin’ BROUGHT it! Dang! Fools were going nuts, and they got a great response. Bleeding Through was up next and fucking killed it... such a good band! Brandan got a “moustache” chant for his extra-horrible moustache that he grew for SF... hysterical... and “On Wings Of Lead” just might be one of the best closing songs... well, EVER. Caught some of Unearth, but was drinking beers with friends, people were really going crazy for em’ though, so it was fun! Big props to Brandan, Doug, Buskey, and Eric for the beers and hospitality.
Record is coming along spectacularly, though we are running a little behind our own self-imposed schedule... shit is sounding killer. We have The Honorable Sir Colin Richardson scheduled to mix the 2nd week of Oct. And we have a possible cover art idea finally that’s, well... kinda black... and kinda deathy.
Want to give a shout out to our boy Shawn Sparks for all the hard work and tireless effort he’s put in for the band over the last 3 years. Shawn is “moving on up, to the east side, to a de-luxe apartment, in tha sky-hy-hy”... good luck with the new pad, new job, and all that dude, thanks for everything you’ve done bro.
And thanks to all the people who applied for the videographer job. It means a lot to us that so many of you were willing to take time out of your lives (or in some cases, quit jobs and fly across the ocean on your own dime!?) to help out... seriously... very cool. And a big “hell friggin’ yeah” to all the folks who were willing to start up a Paypal account to fly their fellow Frontliners out to help The Head... we were all pretty blown away by that. We were really fuckin’ proud to have the Board and community that we do on that day man, real proud.
Last but definitely not least, thanks to Johnzo from Devildriver for hooking us up with our new videographer, the swell, the lovely, the talented, all-around great guy, and Silent Bob look-a-like, Dan Burke.
Dan will be editing the SOTU footage that was shot a month and a half ago, should be up pretty quick, hopefully this week.
This weeks top 5:
Ignite – Our Darkest Days
Immortal Technique – YouTube battles and freestyles.
Terror – One With The Underdogs
Bullet For My Valentine – The Poison
Kanye West – “Gold Digger” (I can’t help it man... total guilty pleasure!!)
-Flynn
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WOO - HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have guitar tone!!!!!!!!! And I'm not talking your average chugga-chugga metal tone, I'm talking face-peeling, ear-shredding savagery... fuck yeah!!! Hetfield eat your heart out! Woo-hoo! Can't wait to get tracking on some tunes tomorrow.
This last week we did some Duce and Demmel scratch tracks for reference when Adam and I sing... I threw on some vocals, some of which may or may not be keepers... had Adam come in for vocals and harmonies and MAN, he is sounding KILLER, we may have some keepers even though they were just for practice. We took a couple days off for the holiday too, drank a bunch'a beers, it was nice, cleared the head.
Here's some photos of us jamming at Sharkbite, we'll have some video footage up for you soon.
-Flynn
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Yeah-YeahEEE!!!
And Dave McClain... is... done!!! The man is ON muthafuckin' FIRE!!!! He put down 6 out of 8 songs Friday, including two of the 10-minute bad boys... and then the last 2 Saturday... DANG!!! Yeah, yeah, par for the course for Mr. McClain, but still!!! First couple of days were spent getting the ultimate drum tones, trying out a multitude of different kits, heads, etc... Dave was ready to strangle Mr. Producer here *cough* at several points during the 2nd day, but he finally saw the light, and in the end we got the sickest drum tones EVER, he's really fuckin' stoked. Dave and I both feel strongly about having real drum tones on this record, and getting away from the overly triggered (and in a lot of cases completely triggered) drum sound that is so prevalent in metal today. Sure, you gotta have a little bit in there - a bit in the kick, blend some in with the snare, but man, real drums sound fucking awesome when you get 'em dialed in. Been listening to "South Of Heaven" a lot, and jesus... even by today's standards the drum tones sound just incredible... that’s what we’re going for... timeless shit.
Had a couple days of studio-technical difficulties after getting drum tones, but then the rocking commenced. At Dave's request, he wanted to try just him and I tracking stuff, which is how we demo everything anyways, and it worked great... he's killing it SO hard. Drum magazine editors take note... your new king is here, and his name is Dave McClain!!!
Gonna lay some scratch vocals today, and move on to getting the heaviest guitar tone known to man!
-Flynn
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Hey Fuckers!!
Motherfuck, motherfuck, noich, noich, noich... smokin' weed, doin' coke, drinkin' beers, who drinks the beers? We drinks the beers...
Just watched that movie the other day... still a classic!
We are loading in today to start on our new album!!! WOO - FUCKING - HOO!!! I can't remember being this excited about recording, well... EVER. Seriously, we're ready to fucking blow shit up! Spent Fri. and Sat. with Dave down at the jam spot fine-tuning the songs, doing pre-production, and Saturday was really productive. Dave is fucking KILLING IT on the new shit, this will certainly be his finest hour to-date. I think we both walked away (as dorky as it sounds) giddy with excitement... we're SO friggin' stoked with how cool the new stuff is turning out!
We have officially narrowed down our song selection to 8 songs. What, only 8?! That's right fuckers, 8 songs! We have a 10-minute opening track that's practically 4 songs in one, with stop-on-a-dime changes and a roller coaster ride of molten riffage! In fact, we have three 10-minute long tracks, so even with only 8 songs the record is damn near an hour long. It feels right though. It was a tough call, we wrote 26 songs in total, but these 8 are the very best songs of the bunch. The other 18... though heavy,
or catchy, or what-have-you... man... they just lacked that special something, or they didn't end with enough of that "WOW!" factor, so we were brutally honest with ourselves, exercised a little self-restraint, and we think you will be incredibly impressed with the results.
Gonna get going, but we'll be updating a lot more regularly now that the ball has officially started rolling.
Cheers Fuckers!!!
- Flynn
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What's up Everybody? Update time!!!!
We're finally on the home stretch!! A few more songs to go until the writing process is completed. Let me say a few things about the progress and way the songs are coming along.
First off, the freedom and drive we have on this album is far exceeding what we were doing on "Through The Ashes". Being able to take our time without a deadline breathing down our necks has been priceless, when we started writing in August (I think) of last year we had made February our time to get into the studio and start recording, but as we went along, the thought of going into the studio then, just to get the album out in a certain time frame became less appealing.
We were being told things like "you've gotta take advantage of the momentum you have" or "if it comes out in ____, you can get this or that tour". Good advice maybe, but if you don't have the time to try different things and let the songs come to life naturally you're kinda selling yourselves short. So when we all decided to plan on an August recording start, we knew it would (hopefully) be more than enough time.
And it has!
So, about the music!!!! If I could describe the songs in one word it would have to be ANGRY!!!!!!!! I think the song "Struck A Nerve" from The More Things Change album is sitting back smiling at the new stuff! I guess when you're living in times like these it's hard not to be pissed off, and the music and lyrics are definitely a product of the anger we're all feeling. Also, we're just having fun writing these songs! Whether it's continuing to add little segues to parts, harmony shredding, or just making things more difficult to play, the bottom line is we're having a good time writing a 100% metal album. Not, “this or that metal” or whatever kinds of metal are out there, this is just "Fucking Metal!!!!"
We're also gonna be doing a week of dates on the "Sounds Of The Underground" tour!! A very welcome "get the fuck out of the practice room and go do some damage" opportunity! Who knows...we might even be trying out a new song! From there we will move right into Sharkbite Studios and rehearse for a few days before we start recording in the 2nd week of August. Robb will be producing again along with Sir Markus O’ Keatonous, and of course King Colin Richardson mixing once again!!!
Also, I wanted to say a little something about a friend who recently died. His name was Steve Cooper and he had been the singer for one of my first bands, S.A. Slayer. We were five kids that had formed a band solely on the basis that the Iron Maiden "Killers" album was the best thing we'd ever heard in our lives!! He was easily one of the nicest guys any of us had ever met, a laid back country boy vibe combined with a passion and voice built for our brand of metal. He will truly be missed.
- Dave
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What’s up fuckers!
How the hell's it goin’? The Mighty Machine Head are doing fucking splendid these days, been hanging out at home for a while now, after touring so long, it’s pretty nice. Connecting with friends, drinking some beers (Pete’s Wicked Ales are the shit!), hitting the weights, enjoying / complaining about the heaviest rain the Bay Area has seen in the last 100 years, getting out to a bunch of shows, it’s been sweet. Got out to see Children Of Bodom and God Forbid Saturday and then went to our boys Chimaira the next night. God Forbid killed it, as usual, they are such a good fucking band, but the big surprise for me was Bodom. God damn, those motherfuckers can play!!! The keyboard player was fucking ridiculous!!! And even though the guitar player flips his hair WAY too much, that guy can SHRED... holy shit! It’s good shred too, tasty, not the fucking WACK ASS arpeggio overkill that so many of these metal-come-lately’s are doing to death. I was a little jealous of him actually, he’s one of those guys born with "shredder fingers" (long, skinny fingers perfect for shredding). Me, on the other hand (no pun intended), I got blessed with friggin’ sausage fingers, but we make the best with what we got, right? I got the wrist, man, the WRIST!!!
Chimaira were, quite frankly, AWESOME. First time seeing 'em with Andols in a few years and he was fuckin’ RAD. I always thought Talley was a GREAT drummer, but Andols is just "them". Adam and I got up and jammed Pure Hatred with ‘em, and we had a fuckin' BLAST. Metal is definitely on a huge upswing right now, it’s pretty darn cool, but one thing I noticed at both shows, and even the In Flames show a month or so back, is an alarming amount of... I don’t know what to call ‘em... "scenesters" coming out. People who don’t know jack shit about these bands, don’t know the words, don’t know the songs, don’t know shit, they’re just there to "be seen" and look cool hanging out by the bar in their brand new, youth small re-issue RATT t-shirt. In quite a hilarious example, In Flames brought some "fan" up on stage to sing a song off of Clayman (!), and the dumb ass didn’t know ONE FUCKING WORD to the song!! What up with that?!?! Go back to your Taking Back Sunday shows, scenesters.
KILL THE SCENESTERS!!!
BTW... someone just told me that Taking Back Sunday sold 700,000 records in the U.S....
Wow!? THEY SUCK!!!
So, I was gonna write a diary about the RR All-Stars show, but it seems like a lot of time has passed since it happened (uh... four months *cough*) and some folks have already written great, detailed diaries and accounts of the event, so most of the interesting stuff's been covered. But I will say this, it was certainly RAD, and Ducey McDucerson slayed the metal dragon big time on bass and GUITAR! 4-guitar attack on "The Dagger" was awesome. Jamming Davidian with Matt from Trivium and Tim from Bloodsimple kicked ass! And playing with Logan Mader again for the first time in 7 years on Davidian was actually very cool. Weird, but cool. Couldn’t see it happening again, but we've had some good talks, I'm glad he's cleaned up, and his production career seems to be doing great, so right on for him.
DVD is doing amazing, coming in at an impressive #13 on the Billboard charts, and getting rave reviews all over the U.K. and Europe. Of course, in typical U.S. mainstream metal press fashion, they ignored it, or snubbed it altogether, with some U.S. magazines going so far as to call it "nauseating", and "incomplete" (?!). But did any of that stop the Head-Cases of the U.S. (and the World) from going out there and making a statement? Hell muthafuckin’ no it didn’t! Most hard rock / metal bands on average sell, say, 5-10% of what their most recent record sold, and that’s considered really good. If you’re selling 15% of what your record sold, you’re kicking MUCHO ass. To date, with virtually no U.S. press, and very little video play, we’ve sold an astounding 20% of what our record sold, making it the highest DVD-to-CD sale ratio of ANY band on Roadrunner Records! That’s right, fuckers!!! That’s why Machine Head fans kick everyone else’s asses!!! You RULE! Eat your heart out, Nickelback!
We are also writing like crazy, getting ready to demo some stuff out. We started doing this fun thing each day at practice where we start the set off with one old song, not generally in the live set. Man, we been jamming some hella old shit... Blood Of The Zodiac, Bay Of Pigs, Rage To Overcome, Frontlines, Down To None, Death Church, Devil With The King's Card, A Thousand Lies... it’s been really cool revisiting those songs, and kinda sets the tone at practice in a good way. Writing is going slow but good and at this point we’ve pretty much made it our sole priority. As a result we've officially "cancelled" all touring until after the record is done. We thought about heading out, and actually had some pretty nice opportunities, but it was like, "fuck man, we toured for 22 months behind TTAOE... how much more can you tour behind one album?" We also felt it would break up the momentum we have going, not to mention the offers just didn’t feel right. So we passed on Sounds Of The Underground, Download, Rock Am Ring, With Full Force and most of the main Euro festivals just so we could focus solely on writing The Greatest Metal Album Of All Fuckin’ Time! Hells yeah!!!
Frankly, we don’t know if TTAOE was some kind of fluke or what, so we're not gonna take its success for granted, or ourselves too seriously in the process. We’ve just been writing and playing what feels right to us, and it’s made us push our musicianship to new, previously-unscaled heights. I’d say we’re definitely evolving again, and the new album is definitely not BME II or even TTAOE II. Of the 16 songs that we have, 10½ of them seem like they’re going nowhere at the moment. Of the 5 that are completed, we are really amazed with how they are turning out. It feels really fuckin' unique, the material is totally different than what is going on right now, and we think it’s really gonna sound fresh and stand out compared to what’s currently "happening" in the metal scene at the moment. It feels unmistakably "Bay Area", and unmistakably Machine Head, but it's SO in its own little world... it’s a trip man, it’s a little scary, as it kinda feels like uncharted territory, but that makes it more exciting too, something about this feels special, it feels huge.
I wouldn’t say it’s "heavier" than TTAOE, but it’s AS heavy, and the Battery break (for the Master Of Puppets tribute) did us good... songs that were 5 minutes long are now 8 minutes long, and I’m noticing a healthy dose of the sludge vibe (ala Death Church, Elegy, Violate) coming back... long songs, long intros, but it feels more uptempo as a whole than TTAOE... some of the hooks are just ridiculous! Lots of changes in each song, and musically as well as riff-wise it is very technical... full-on down-picking / million-note mania. Lyrics are dark, darker, and some just plain fucked. Some are about war, some are anti-religion... I’ve officially written my first love song (!) which ends with a homicide and then a suicide... another, (jokingly) nicknamed "The Thrashterpiece” (proper title: “Aesthetics Of Hate”), is a full-on riff-fest with all hard vocals / no singing, and is my pointed and very pissed-off take on Dimebag-basher William Grim.
“Tentative” song titles below, with the topic in parentheses:
- Halo (Anti-religion)
- Aesthetics Of Hate
- The Beautiful Mourning (Suicide)
- Now I Lay Thee Down (Love / death / homicide / suicide)
Let me tell you what our goal for this album isn’t: Our goal isn’t to be the biggest band on the planet, like everyone else is “trying” to do. Our goal isn’t to write the “biggest metal record of all time”, we’ll leave the “biggest” records to the MTV-friendly metal-lite that is getting so much play at the moment... aka the new glam. Realistically, the new stuff is too heavy for mainstream radio / video, too long, and definitely doesn’t have enough gay singing, steal enough Maiden riffs, apply enough make-up, or have enough wack-ass guitar-solo-wankery to be considered “in” enough for the “scenester” crowd. And you know what? We’re not even trying to fish in that pond. We’re gonna fish in another pond, the pond that still wants to hear a new “Vulgar Display”, or a new “Roots”, or a new “South Of Heaven”, or even a new “As The Palaces Burn”. That other pond will never “get” us, and if they do “get” us, it’s gonna be because they heard so many other fuckers telling 'em why they should “get” us.
Our goal is to write the greatest no-bullshit metal album of all time, an album that, 20 years from now, will still be in rotation... an album that has the influence, enormity, respect, and epic grandeur of an album like Metallica's "Master Of Puppets", yet has the fire and “fuck you” attitude of a punk masterpiece like Poison Idea’s “Feel The Darkness”, and the cold, depressive beauty of The Cure’s “Disintegration”. Will we accomplish it? Well, that’s for the world to decide, but the way we see it, if anyone is capable of achieving that goal... it is Machine Head.
Prepare!!!
-Flynn
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What's up fuckers?!! Thought I'd take a minute to fill you all in on what we've been up to this week.
So Kerrang! magazine is doing a tribute to Metallica's "Master of Puppets" — being that it's the 20th anniversary of one of the most kick-ass and influential albums in metal history — where they'll have a different band covering each song from the album, and they asked Machine Head to be a part of it. We happily accepted, and chose "Battery" as the song we'd like to cover.
"Master of Puppets" is an album that we all hold in very high regard. Even at the ripe age of 20, it's still a mainstay of our music "rotation" backstage before shows and while getting drunk afterward, so we really wanted to do the song justice and play it as close to the original version as possible.
Me, I have to give it up to Lars... I know he seems to be everyone's whipping boy these days but, learning the tune (not that I didn't respect him before) was not only a lot of fun, but quite a learning experience too. Some of the shit he does is so off the wall and outside the norms of conventional drumming... think I'll have to be stealing some of that for the new album!
Anyway, I think I can speak for the whole band when I say that learning this tune together really sparked a new fire in all of us to continue to challenge ourselves as musicians on this new album. Stay tuned for some exclusive video of the recording session too!!!
Later,
Dave
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