AwwwwwwwwwwwwwWWWW yeah!
Well, well, well, my beer breathed brethren, as Aaron Lewis would sing, "itsbeenawhi-ile". It has been waaaaaay too long since we had a diary. Kinda needed a break from it all. When the last Euro run ended, it was nice not having to do anything for 6 weeks in the summer except wakeboard and go camping. And to be honest, I had been running non-stop since last August recording and producing The Blackening, press tours, touring, having my 2nd son, more touring Feb thru July... it literally did not end for 11 months straight... straight through to July 8th, I had zero days off, and man, I just wanted to chill the fuck out. So when Adam's leg broke and all the Disney bullshit happened at the beginning of this last tour, I felt I needed to extend the break.
BUT... with batteries fully recharged, I now write to you from the land of the Rising Sun (that's Japan, my fellow barely-graduated-high-school-graduates), gearing up for the almighty Loudpark festival. Adam is back on his feet with us, and we're all really excited about this as it's the 1st time we have been to Japan since August 2001 when we supported Slayer right before Supercharger. Should be a blast. And then this runs in to Australia leg of The Black Crusade which is going to be HOLY-FUCKING-CRAPOLA-AMAZING!!! 1st Sydney show is sold out, next one is about to be, the rest are gonna be wildly nuts. Halloween in Melbourne we're trying to make extra cool, but a friend of mine said you Aussies don't really celebrate Halloween... and well... we don't give a fuck cause WE'RE gonna celebrate it there, so c'mon!!! Get dressed up in your stupidest/goriest costumes and get completely obliterated with Machine Head, Trivium and Arch Enemy... it'll be HELLA FUN!!!
UK/Euro leg of The Black Crusade starts right after that; can't believe we're playing 10,000 seaters... and they're gonna be packed, if not sold out. Wow. What a long way we've come.
I guess I'll catch you up with some highlights of the last 3 months, going backwards. The Black Tyranny tour with Arch Enemy, Throwdown, and Sanctity was... well... the best US headline/co-headline run we have ever done. Period. Biggest attendances, biggest merch, and just all-around best vibe of any US run we've ever done. The folks who came out were so fucking passionate and fired up, and gloriously drunk every night, it was purely exciting. It was really cool to squash the beef with Arch Enemy (who are such a fucking amazing band!! Christopher Amott is SICK!!)... it was cool to tour with a straight-edge band like Throwdown who were just so fucking cool, and such great dudes to be around, and SO fucking HEAVY... and the Sanctity brothers were just amazing, I can't say enough good things about them, great band, great guys, and Jared literally saved the fucking DAY filling in - and farting in - admirably for the missing Adam Duce. Trouble-Standin' Brandon (a nickname earned after a few too many Brown Eyes) from Bay Area metal maniacs the mighty Hostility did an amazing job filling in on bass, and brought a great vibe to the tour with his wide-eyed, everything-is-new enthusiasm. Thanks so much for the help dude!
Highlights of the tour included Pomona, which, especially in light of the Disney fiasco, ended up being sold out, pissed off and fucking insane...like Dee Snider says, "You can't stop rock-n-roll!!". Next up was the ridiculously obliterated after-party at Vinnie Paul's in Dallas... whoarg!!! Houston... was quite frankly...a fucking religious experience. Vibe was ELECTRIC, people climbing up on stage crying and shit, hugging me/us, saying how much MH meant to them, fuckin' sing-a-longs, fuckin' pits, fuckin' passion!!! Angela busted out her 1st (of several) "Let Freedom Ring's", it was an amazing show! The New Orleans "Machine-Fucking-Head-*STOMP*"... WOW!?... never EVER heard that one before... so fucking rad!... only you, NOLA, only you! Orlando ruled, Atlanta ruled, hanging with the Mastodons at their kickass bar was a great way to end the night too. Best Worcester show we've EVER played in our lives!! And it was cool talking with the promoter Scott Lee about the good ol' days of Pearl St. in Northampton, MA.
But New York... NEW YORK!!!??? Dudes and dudettes... HOLY - FUCKIN' - JESUS!!! Absolute fuckin' insanity, and when I say insanity, it needs to be all caps, like, INSANITY!!! Oh - my - God!?!? More Machine-Fucking-Head chants per minute than any other show in the world. Chug-a-lugs, Dimebag chants, DUCE chants, there wasn't a single person at any time standing still... pits on the floor, pits in the upper level, crowd surfing from the top level to the bottom, people swinging from the balconies... BEDLAM!!! Hands down the single biggest headline show we have done in America to date... sold out the friggin' Nokia Theatre in NYC... how 'bout it?!?! Philly was ridiculous and really fucking intense, kids there are hard as nails, and with Phil and I both suffering from a satanic flu virus, their ferocity gave us the fire to carry on... Toronto was absolutely, unequivocally ridiculous, as was friggin' Montreal... Canada totally kicks ass, eh! Chicago was another one of those moments of just utter awe... so fucking crazy, and winner of the sickest, most violent circle pit of the tour award!! Cleveland rocked with Markus 'O Hunterous of Greek Gods Chimaira-cous making a mighty showing on Davidian, but it was the day-off the night before in Cleveland that REALLY rocked. Went to the Cannibal Corpse show (who fucking killed, by the way!) with the Chimaira boys, got drunk and hung with them and Trevor the Black Dahlia singer (who turned me on to a killer band called Skeleton Witch) and his super cool girlfriend. After the Corpse we all went over to Municipal Waste at some tiny punk club and got B-L-O-T-T-O!!! Holy christ it was the best day off ever. We raged, those guys rule, we got CRUNK, and had a fucking blast!!! Grand Rapids rocked, St Louis fucking kicked HUMONGOUS amounts of ass, as did Denver as usual. Albuquerque was really good, and the number of hard ass chicks upfront banging and singing the words was astounding.
But my friends... San Francisco at The Warfield is simply the stuff legends are made of. It was Golden-era Bay Area shit. What a crazy ass show... fucking WILD!! Tyler the wheelchair kid who insisted on staying all the way upfront in the mayhem and toughed it out for 4 songs before we just HAD to pull him out and set him side stage, he fucking ruled!!! The sing-a-longs, P-Diddy's POWERSLIDE!! The balcony was rocking the fuck out!! And The Warfield staff treated all of us and our crew like fucking royalty. Got the "Al Capone" tour (dude?!), as Al Capone used to own The Warfield during the prohibiton era - read: alcohol-less (yikes!) - 1920's... got to see the illegal speakeasy he built downstairs that still stands to this day (as a storage room), it still has all the gold leaf on the walls with trippy paintings of naked women pouring martini's for baboons and shit. Got a look at where the (boarded up) underground tunnels that brought all the prohibition-era booze used to be, as well as the escape routes all the SF "high society" that frequented the speakeasy used to use. It was cool hearing all the old San Francisco gangster folklore / Barbary Coast-revival shit. And man just... the Warfield... it was huge for us, friggin' HUGE! It was fucking awesome in every sense of the word. Hanging/boozing with friends and all the fuckers from the enormo MH Frontliner convention that flew in from all over the US was awesome too. AND to top it off... we got to sign "The Wall", as in... Bill Graham's you-gotta-be-hella-extra-cool-invite-only-by-the-manager-of-the-office-to-sign-the-wall "wall". Dude!!?
Machine Head own the Bay Area. Amazing...
And last but definitely not least, we can't forget LA, if not for the sheer chaos that it was onstage. The sold-out crowd was retardedly retarded in the very best sense of the word. Biggest LA show to date, and they (and us) were gloriously wasted and so ready to be loud and just nuts. Stage-diving mania by everyone in Throwdown and Sanctity, Scott Ian jammed Davidian with us on my guitar, Brandon from Bleeding Through sang the 2nd verse, Angela sang the end, like, 50 people sang the chorus, and just a sick energy from the crowd that night. And I'm not blowin' shit out of proportion, check out video evidence of the chaos below, and some live/backstage photos here.
You need Flash to use this player. |
All in all a really successful run for us, only had 2 real duds on the tour: San Diego, CA and Norfolk, VA. And San Diego was so especially wack, that they are officially fired forever... FIRED!!
The last leg of the Euro run preceded all of the above insanity... Metal Town in Gothenburg Sweden was sick as fuck, and hanging out with so many friends on the side of the stage watching Slayer (who ruled that night!), in a country 5,000 miles away from home was really just fuckin' rad. Roskilde killed... duh! *cough* Supporting Korn in eastern-Europe-some-where-or-other and getting a shout from Jonathan Davis was killer; weird, but really cool. Weird 'cause after years of seeing him not really talk live, hearing him talk onstage let alone give a shout out to, uh... me, for... well... helping break them in Europe... it was... cool. Cool isn't even the right word, the respect was awesome.
But man, after that was The Show. Metallica at Wembley Stadium. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!? DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!?!?!? Such an honor. Handpicked. Last minute. To be honest, we thought it might be a bit rough just because we were thrown on so late in the game, our fans might not know about it in time, etc. But oh my god dude. Let me preface this and start by saying that, straight up, the first 3 songs were literally the sloppiest we'd played on the entire Blackening run. Jesus?! Guitar cutting out, broken strings, tech hands me my guitar wildly out of tune, Phil's wireless goes out... it was like, NOW?! Were gonna have all these problems NOW??!! Christ al-fuckin'-mighty! But you know what...it didn't matter, the crowd went friggin' APESHIT! The circle pit for Imperium (which Monte Conner says is the new Davidian) was... just... oh my fuckin' GOD! We FINALLY pulled it together for Halo and Davidian, and from Halo on...the world just fell into place...everything got easy. Didn't know it at the time but Hetfield watched us... from Halo on... whew! Check out that Imperium pit here.
Mastodon ruled, as always. But Metallica, man, Metallica... dude... untouchable that night. I've seen a couple bad shows from them recently, but man, they walked on fucking water that night. What a vibe. Setlist: Impeccable. Between-song banter: Hysterical. The crowd sing-a-long to the "la-da-da-da" part, from the lone post-Black-album song they played (Memory Remains)... it went on for 2 minutes after the song ended... goose bumps man... fucking... goose bumps. Hetfield hung in the dressing room, told us he's rockin' to The Blackening, "there's some epic shit on there"... my brain pretty much imploded at that point... smoke out of the ears and everything... full-on frizzle fry.
The afterparty was drunken insanity, I gave and received no less than 17 skull bites to Brent from Mastodon, but the highlight of it all, was hanging out with Lars after the afterparty, drinking a small ocean's worth of booze and picking his brain about every detail of the thrash era that I thought I knew about or wanted to know about. With Adam, and a small pow-wow of people, him and I held court for nearly an hour talking about everything from the years he followed Diamond Head around (he was in the rehearsal studio with them when they wrote Am I Evil), following Motorhead around, Dave Mustaine, Napster, Exodus, Baloff, Cliff, what their mindset was when writing MOP, who were their rivals at the time, the first time I saw them, what they thought of Slayer back then... dudes, I was in full-on Metallica history nerd/geek mode, and it RULED 'cause he was spilling all the dirt. We raged on over to some fancy-schmancy hotel his friends were at, where, in between skull bites, WWE wrestling sessions and all of us flashing all of our penises at cars passing by, we talked the pros and cons of cocaine, while he fawned hopelessly over our publicity girl... it was c-r-a-z-y!
What a night!!!!!!!
Stumbled back to the hotel at 6AM, was on a plane by 11AM, and 12 hours later, I was changing diapers with my 2 kids who couldn't really give 2 shits about what I just did. I wasn't Robb Flynn of Machine Head anymore, I was just Dada, and Dada needed to "change my poopy pants", and "take out the garbage", and "go to the store 'cause we're out of formula"... and so on, and so on, and so on.
Life has a way of checking you. Yesterday I was supporting Metallica, today I'm changing a record 5 (five!) poopy diapers in 1 day.
And you know what... I like it like that.
-Flynn
The Black Tyranny - 10.12.07 - The Warfield, San Francisco, CA.
|
Hey, hey, hey, fuckers.
Just checkin' in from a hotel in Hamburg, recovering from what was the mother of all after-parties last night... good GOD!? More on that later. It's actually been pretty nice over here in Europe for a change, it's been a little rainy here and there but for the most part it's been warm and sunny, which is a nice change. Usually Euro festival season involves rain jackets and parkas.
Of the shows we've done so far, the first one in Luxembourg was sick as all hell, Switzerland was seriously fuckin' retardo, but it was the insane mayhem of Rock Am Ring and Rock Am Park that have been the rowdiest German festivals we've done in a LONG fuckin' while... maybe even the craziest. SOOOOOO much better than last time we played Rock Am Ring and Rock Am Park. Better weather, WAY better crowd, and it definitely seemed like the fact that it was kind of a "metal" stage made a huge difference in bringing together a united front. It was great bumping into friends we hadn’t seen in a while. Belgium was fuckin' rad and it seemed like they actually got crazier as the show went on, Randy from LoG gave us a sweet "Let freedom ring with a shotgun blast!" that night, it was fuckin' killer.
But dudes and dudettes... it is the mighty, MIGHTY Glasgow, Scotland that once again raises the fucking bar to unparalleled heights... HOLY... FUCKING... CRAP!!!??? The good people of Glasgow are most certainly and genuinely out of their collective minds, my GOD! Frankly, it was like a friggin' religious experience. It was so fucking HOT in there, yet the sing-a-longs were unreal, and the circle pit during Davidian was just inhuman. Hands down the best circle pit so far (we didn't even have to ask 'em for it!), and I have my doubts as to whether it will be beat by anyone else on this run. It was great seeing the LoG dudes (Willie Adler was CRUNK) and the Chimaira dudes again, had a blast partying with them. Chimaira were especially cool to see since we hadn’t seen those boys in way too long, and they fuckin brought it!!!
Belfast was in-fucking-sane, and was nearly as crazy as Glasgow, unbelievably... those fuckers are ballistic! We ended up having to swap places with our co-headliners Killswitch at the last minute, they closed the show so that we wouldn't miss the ferry to Donington, but holy shit... seriously Belfast, you were fan-fucking-tastic!
But Donington, DUDE, Donington!!!!!! Goddamn!!!!!! It was out of this fucking world!!! We have never gotten a response so rapturous. It was unreal. The jumping, the clapping, the thrashing, the singing, at least 10 circle pits during Davidian (!!!!)... it was easily one of the single greatest shows this band has ever played. WOW!!! Did a radio interview with the mighty Bruce Dickenson of (Download headliner) Iron Fucking Maiden after the show and he declared us "band of the weekend"... and the weekend wasn't even over??!! He then proceeded to tell me how his son and all his mates listen to nothing but "The Blackening" and how sick of listening to "The Blackening" he is, but that he had to give it up to us, he said we had written a phenomenal record that every 16 year-old kid was listening to, and then, went back into how crushing our show just was. My brain basically imploded at that point... literally... it short-circuited... and I spent the rest of the interview having flashbacks to being 14 years-old staring at the Number Of The Beast album for hours on end. Jesus!?
Check the 5K Kerrang! review (click here).
The Metal Hammer(ed) Awards were equally mindblowing, aside from the fact that the sold out Koko Club chanted “Machine Fucking Head” every 5 minutes for 3 hours non-stop - they actually chanted when other bands won too, to the point where the Awards people had to ask us to tell our fans to stop "Machine Fucking Head-ing" people off the stage, to which of course Dave McClain promptly replied, "Hell fuckin’ no we're not!" It was fucking insane. We won Album of the Year, and yours truly won a Golden God, or as I joked, a Golden Sod Award. I drew a "Z" on it (Godz) and brought the guys up to share the award with me, as I was a bit uncomfortable without them. We then played a 3-song set that was as intense as any show we've done; one dude was chanting for a chug-a-lug, so I brought him onstage to chug with me, we did a ridiculous chug-a-lug, then Jamey Jasta (who hosted, and is a killer fuckin' host!) gave him some Jager to chug, the kid did a fucking sick stage dive, and we proceeded to reduce what was once a fairly dignified awards ceremony to a kegger party... WOO-HOO, job well done!!!
Seriously, to the Head-Cases who came out for Machine Head on this run, you are THE most passionate, die hard, incredible, insane, intense, loyal, un-fucking-believable motherfuckers on the entire planet earth!!! Lots of bands say they have the best fans in the whole world, but Machine Head actually DOES!!!
AND... just added to the Believe It Or Not file, during the awards ceremony, Mr. Kerry King came up to me, and Kerry and I finally... FINALLY... squashed the beef. Yes indeedy, the Metal Hammer Awards: Bringing knuckleheads together since 2002... EEEEEeeeeeeeee! And I'm not gonna front, it was a very cool moment... we even gave each other man-hugs and shit - you know, lots of patting, and hard squeezes. Respect.
Here’s some pics from RaR/RaP, Download, MHA, etc:
We announced The Black Crusade Tour which will be happening in the U.K./Europe come November, really fuckin' stoked about that, it's gonna be massive. We're going to be hitting the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Australia too, all in the next 6 months. Hoping to try and get in a Mexico show or 2 also, just cause we've heard from a few bands that it's fuckin' SICK down there.
So yeah man, shit is going pretty fucking incredible for The Head at the moment, although it hasn’t all been swell. This tour does hold one very grievous moment for me personally.
My dog Jozi died a few days ago. Jozi had been a huge part our lives for 13 years, she was like our first kid. She did everything with us, and she was a great dog, man... she really was one of a kind. She was a Pit Bull, but she was the chillest Pit I’ve ever been around. She was great around the kids, great around people, just a happy fuckin' dog, man. She had gotten a cancerous lump about the size of a golf ball on her left buttock about 6 months ago, so we had it removed, and they said they got it all, but it started coming back recently. About 5 days ago she stopped eating, wouldn't move, and by the end of the night she was peeing and pooping uncontrollably. My wife Genevra took her to the Vet, they did an ultrasound on her, and found an apple-sized tumor in her stomach attached to her spleen and her intestines. It was malignant, it was leaking crap, and her bloodstream had become septic. We frantically looked into everything...
There was nothing we could do.
We made the decision to put her to sleep at the house (rather than the Vet) the next day, but 4 hours after she left the hospital she took a turn for the worse, and my wife had to have the doctor come that night. I had said my goodbyes to her earlier over the phone while she was semi-coherent, and was mentally preparing for the next day, but stupidly turned off my fuckin' phone, and never got the call that things had taken a turn for the worse. It sucked.
It happened so fast... 2 days... and she was gone.
Enough.
Here is to my Dog of Dogs, my real dog.
Rest in peace, Pooperdoop.
|
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What in the hell is crack-a-latin', fuckers?!
I write to you from the beautiful city of Cleveland, Ohio in the United States of muthafuckin' America. We have been out with the Heaven and Hell and Megadeth guys now for almost 3 weeks, and man, what can I say... it's pretty unbelievable. Huge dressing rooms, killer catering, every enormo-bottle of Grey Goose vodka the venue can muster up, huge stages, killer lights, killer monitors, killer sound... and, we're on tour with Black Sabbath and Megadeth... life is fuckin' good man.
It's crazy, we've been having a blast on this tour. Tony Iommi walks by, "you enjoying the tour?"... Dio pops into the dressing room with expensive wine and talks sports... Vinnie Appice gives you a few beers... Geezer cracks a joke at his assistant's expense... it's like being in some alternate universe.
The H&H camp have been amazing, treating us really well, a lot of respect, lots of love from the crew. They've made us feel very welcome. Even when they're kinda mad at us for all of our drunken friends they still give us the benefit of the doubt. The other night after the Texas show, we had so many fuckin' people in our dressing room partying and raging that they literally had security form a line between our dressing room and theirs, because every time one of 'em would walk out of their dressing room, one of our dumbass friends would beeline toward them - zombie like - "Rooooooooooonnnnnniie!... Bleargh!!" They're really cool about it though, their people said "can you and all your drunk friends please just go to the green room and party?" We're like "uhh... okay".
You can't really blame our drunk-ass friends though, it's not often that you see Tony Iommi standing 20 feet away from you. I can totally relate, Christ, it took me a week and a half just to muster up the balls to say "hi". I never get starstruck, I mean, I NEVER get starstruck, but man, I don't know what it is... I see Iommi and there's so many things I want to say, and then I think, "nooo... I don't want to say any of that!". I have to do it before the tour's over though, I'll kick myself for the rest of my life if I don't.
And man... they sound un-fucking-believable too, Holy Diver!!!! Dio's voice is unreal!!! The band sounds great, they've got a really loose feel to their songs, lots of jamming, extended parts; which I was surprised about, I assumed they'd be strict about staying true to the records but there's a lot of improv onstage, it's bad-ass to watch.
Megadeth dudes are super fuckin' cool, the Drover brothers pester us wildly with all kinds of insane metal trivia, but they're great dudes. Those fools know their Bay Area thrash!!! James LoMenzo is a solid as fuck bass player, and Dave Mustaine, what can I say... the metal world would not be the same without him, he's such a larger than life character... but you know, he's surprisingly friendly and social. They're fuckin' rockin' it too. Killer set-list... I forgot how many of those songs are just SO good, and Glen Drover is nailing the leads HARD YO!!!
A lot of tour highlights so far, the banners have been kick ass, thanks you guys!!! Bay Area show - DAAAAAAAAANG!!!! It was pretty fuckin' sick, biggest and baddest turn out for The Head so far, fools were ROCKIN' OUT! Huge merch night for us. Albuquerque was really good, and was also a HUGE merch night for us. Chicago... OH FUCK!? Minneapolis... holy shit!! Dallas...?! ...YEAH, even the usually-docile Dallas crowd rocked out. Hung out with Vinnie Paul, Rita and Co. and had a blast, good LORD did the booze flow... we all had a few really cool moments together, kinda heavy now that I think about it.
Just watched an advance of the movie "Get Thrashed", it's a really fuckin' cool movie, done very, very well, it's a really cool ride down memory lane. A couple of inaccuracies here and there, particularly about the Bay Area scene and - even though he had some really cool shit to say - waaaaaay too much Katon De Pena from Hirax (?!), but overall man, 2 thumbs way, WAY up! Good shit!!!
Definitely looking forward to hitting the UK and Europe in a few weeks... cannot wait, seriously, cannot WAIT to get over there, it's gonna be fuckin HUGE, holy crap!!! Supporting Maiden in Rome... holy crap!!! Download and Rock Am Ring... holy crap!!! Metal Hammer Awards... holy DIVER!!! Let the vodka warm our bitter hearts and explode our souls with heavy metal fury and reckless abandon!
Thrash 'Til Death, fuckers!!
-Flynn
|
The world loves that “Bay Area Crunch”...GOD DAMN!!!!
I mean, fuckin’ WOW!!!
HOW 'BOUT IT?!?! The Head are the 1st Bay Area "metal" band in the top ANYTHING in probably the last 10 friggin' years, let alone the top 12, 20, 30, 50 of the music charts across the world?!?! Howa-bout-it... The Bay is back on the map!
#54 on the U.S. Billboard charts...?! That’s the highest U.S. charting we've ever had by a long shot, and about 30% more sales than almost every other MH record released in the US including BME, TMTC, SC and TTAOE. Everywhere else in the world, "The Blackening" was hands-down our biggest 1st-week seller EVER... in the HISTORY of the band!!
And to have the biggest 1st-week sales / highest chartings in the history of the friggin' band... in every country throughout the world... with no video being aired... no "single" at radio... on our 6th friggin' album... which opens with a friggin' 10 1/2 minute song?!?! Well, dear Head-Cases, life is pretty fuckin' sweet! And supposedly the record industry is in a slump?! Shiiiiit, all things considered, things in Machine Head-land are goin' pretty fuckin’ good man. Head-Cases, you motherfuckers went out there and made a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE statement to the world... seriously... I’m not gonna get too brainiac on it, whatever it is...WHAT - EVER it is...YOU - KICK - FUCKING - ASS!!!
And don’t stop now!! Keep spreading the word!!
On a different note, for the "collectors" out there, I was recently made aware of a couple of misprints on the 1st pressing of "The Blackening". On the U.S., International, and 'bonus' versions there is a small glitch on the cover, where somehow the 2 "squiggles" on either side of the album title "gained" a white patch under the bottom 'lip' of each squiggle... apparently a fuck-up by the film separator. All other art (stickers, shirts, posters, ads) have the correct art (if you wanna compare) and all future editions will have the correct cover art. In addition, but limited to just the U.S. version, a mastering credit didn't appear because of timing issues / art deadlines before that final mastering happened (done by the king Eddy Schreyer). All other international formats were able to include the correct mastering credit, however, so this will only need to be corrected for future pressings of the U.S. disc. All little shit no doubt, but cool stuff in case any of you are interested in that kinda stuff. As a collector dork myself, I can relate.
Aesthetics video shoot turned out sweet, very "community" heavy in theme, just a real raw, rugged, street video, very stoked to see the final edit.
LOG tour is over... fuckin' crazy... tour went by SO fast, I can't believe it's been 8 weeks!!! It was amazing, we couldn't have asked to have been on a better tour to set up what will no doubt be an incredible run for us. A loud ass "Cheers Fuckers!" to the Lamb Of God camp and crew, the Trivium's and Gojira's for making this one of the best tours we've EVER been a part of.
Fuck Yeah!!!!!!!
-Flynn
|
Beer drinkin', breath stinkin', sniffin' glue!!!!
Hey, hey, hey, HEY Fuckers!!!!
What the hell is crack-a-latin' my beer-breathed brethren? I myself am doing fan-fucking-tastic, driving to Canada right now after playing an absolutely RAGING show in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Tour is going seriously incredible, pretty much every single night is sold out, and the crowds are fucking sick. I'd love to sit here and name all the great shows but there are really just too many to name. Off the top of my head though, trophies go to Santa Cruz, Fargo (holy shit!), Fresno, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Milwaukee (oh my GOD!!??) and Edmonton-Canada to name a few... in fact, surprisingly, the only really boring shows were Anaheim and LA.
Been really hitting our stride as a band lately (finally) and have gotten to know the LOG dudes really well. Solid, solid dudes man, really good guys, and considering the success they're having here in America, they're doing a damn good job of keeping their heads on their shoulders. As fans of the band, we've been watching them kill it night after night, and I gotta say, they are pretty much everything that's right with metal. The Trivium dudes have been hanging out a lot too, and they are a great bunch of guys, really cool, funny... I think Corey has a man-crush on Phil, but man, Corey and Matt fucking SHRED on guitar, wow!!!! Seriously... REALLY fuckin' good players. Gojira... are simply crushing!! They are just such a good fucking band. And live, they somehow manage to get heavier??!!! I listen to them just about every night and they never cease to impress me; there's at least one point every night during their set where I just go "Fuck!?... that's sick!?" We couldn't ask to be on a better tour right now.
Gotta couple of new developments going on in the camp. We have decided that we will not be releasing the video for Now I Lay Thee Down as the 1st video off of The Blackening, the main reasoning being that we want to come out with a harder track for the 1st video. We came out with Davidian off of BME, we came with Ten Ton Hammer off of TMTC, we came with Imperium off of TTAOE... and we feel we need to come out swinging with The Blackening. It felt weird coming with a more melodic track as the 1st video, so us and Roadrunner spoke and thankfully they agreed, so we will be shooting another video. We would LOVE to shoot a proper video for the opening track "Clenching The Fists Of Dissent", but we are completely conundrummed about how to shorten our 10-minute-and-34-second megalithic opener down to 5 minutes without having to remove entire sections at a time, or worse, edit them down to 20 second pieces (but hey, any suggestions are welcome). So, our most likely candidate is Aesthetics Of Hate, and we may shoot it as early as this week. It's unfortunate that we won't have a video to coincide with the release, especially since in Europe the video market is much stronger than in America, but if that's the only hiccup we encounter for this album's release, then we're WAY ahead of the "hiccups" we had with the last one.
Super stoked to be going out on the Heaven and Hell tour in America; for those of you living under a rock, that's Black Sabbath with the mighty Ronnie James Dio on vocals, who recorded some of the best songs in all of metal. Megadeth is also on the bill which is fuckin' killer, those two bands are the reason there's a Machine Head, and we are honored to be a part of it. This is gonna be all about paying homage to The Masters.
To the best of our knowledge, the BME re-release that was supposed to have coincided with the 25th anniversary of Roadrunner Records back in 2005 and was then re-scheduled to be released in Oct 2006, has been back-burnered. And as far as we're concerned, that's a good thing. This is the year of The Blackening, and the time frame to re-release it has passed, not to mention that the idea of re-releasing a 13-year old album that we already celebrated with 2 anniversary shows (3 years ago) makes zero sense to us. We were never excited about re-issuing it to begin with, as it was just gonna have a bunch of b-sides, and wouldn't have been nearly as cool some of the other re-issues that had DVD's and all sorts of cool shit... so, as much as some of you may be bummed, know that it's better this way.
And speaking of which, we have less than 2 weeks 'til The Blackening is released and we're all freaking out about it!! Super jacked-up, nervous, confident, insecure, but most of all optimistic-as-fuck about what the future holds. We wrote a record that went against everything we should be doing after the success of TTAOE. We probably should have written songs more toned-down that would give media outlets a chance to play them; we probably should have written a record that didn't have such edgy subject matter, or as many swear words; we probably should have written a record that fit a little easier into established radio/video formats... but you know what? Fuck that! What we did was write a record that is straight from the heart. We made a record that, as selfish as this sounds, is the record we wanted to hear, but weren't hearing anywhere else. We created a 61-minute piece of art that is supposed to be listened to as a whole, not a single. And it ain't the easiest way we could have done it, sure, but it's the only way we know how TO do it. Kudos and cheers go to the surprising amount of college and major-radio stations (with specialty metal shows) that have had the balls to play the un-edited versions of these songs. Fuck yeah!
But it can't stop there, now is where you, the Head-cases of the world, come in. I said the same thing for our last album, and I'm gonna say it again. We have put forth a record that defies convention, media outlets don't even know where to begin with us, and in America in particular, most of these magazines are either scared of the lyrics, or are still too spineless to actually GET BEHIND the band for a change...
...but that beast must be fed.
We don't get this platform because our record company - or anyone for that matter - thinks it's a good idea to write 10-minute songs criticizing war in the midst of one most controversial, or write 9-minute songs that piss off a multitude of Christian organizations, or write songs that reference suicide, or words like "faggot" and "nigga". No, the only reason we get this platform is because you fuckers have stood by us with an unwavering conviction, because you fuckers have carried us on your goddamn shoulders, and because you fuckers have supported this band through thick and fucking thin.
And we need you to do it again.
On Friday, March 23rd, The Blackening will be released in Germany... on Monday, March 26th, it will be released everywhere else in the world, and on Tuesday, March 27th, it will be released here in North America. If you've already taken the album on a "test drive" and liked what you heard, do everybody involved a solid and go buy the CD! Pick it up at your local record shop, order it online, buy it off iTunes and download it to your iPod, whatever. Add banners to your message board sigs, spread the e-card around... spread the word!!! If you've read any of the glowing reviews that have been pouring in, you know this record is for real... believe the hype. Now we've talked before about how (for reasons that remain beyond our comprehension) the music industry (still) puts way too much stock in 1st-week sales, but it is what it is, so if you believe at all in the notion of supporting the artists you love, then god dammit, right here, and right now, stand by your band!!! If you aren't feeling The Blackening, fair enough brother (or sister), peace be with you, but if you ARE???!!! Pound motherfuckers into oblivion with this shit, buy it the day it comes out, play it for everybody you know, over and over and over again, encourage every friend, acquaintance, and stranger you only kinda know (or don't) to go pick this bad boy up. Seriously... it's time to unleash the wolves...
It is time to UNLEASH THE FUCKING WOLVES!!!!!!!!!!!
>:)<
-Flynn
|
Hey, hey, hey fuckers!
I write to you from the thriving metropolis that is Lubbock, Texas... day off, kickin' it right next to the freeway... woo - hoo.
We've now got the first 3 dates of the Lamb Of God tour under our belts and I gotta say man, shit is going really, really fuckin' good. The first 17 out of 18 shows are sold out, and we're getting the "Machine Fuckin' Head" chants between every song... we're blown away over and over again by the response we're getting, seriously mind-blowing. All the LOG guys are really cool, had a blast with them last night in Austin. We all went to Billy Milano's bar Headhunter's, across the street from Stubb's where we played... managed to talk the local band Rend into letting us jam on their equipment, and had a wildly fun and hideously horrible jam session. With an insanely drunk Willie Adler and a slightly drunk Chris Adler, a wasted Demmel (on bass) and an equally wasted Flynn (on guitar)... oooooh, it wasn't exactly what you'd call "pretty". We had Phil's tech "Bucket Ass" aka "Short Time" on lead vocals along with Dusty from the LOG camp. The 6 of us proceeded to butcher "Walk", "South Of Heaven", "Seek and Destroy", "Lay It Down" by Ratt *cough* "Iron Man" and numerous other bits and pieces, while consuming an ungodly amount of vodka and Jäger shots and laughing hysterically at our horrible-ness...
Good LORD!!! Too much fun... it really needs to happen again!
Head Cases, give Lamb Of God the utmost respect for having the balls to take The Head out, they deserve it.
Trivium guys are doing well, going over REALLY friggin' good; got to meet the Gojira guys who are some of the nicest guys around, killer band too.
We started out doing a couple of warm-up shows to shake the rust off since we haven't played live since August, and we were only able to squeeze 3 practices in between doing videos, press, and having my 2nd son Wyatt. We booked these 2 shows on short notice thinking / hoping there'd only be a 100 or so people, because we knew we were going to sound like a really bad Machine Head cover-band... then both damn near sell out?! We were like, "dammit, now we have to play good... shit!" Funny. We ended up playing 4 new tunes, and WOW, they went over fucking incredible! Seriously unbelievable! I honestly can't remember new songs going over THIS good... well... ever! Maybe when we debuted "Frontlines" at Dynamo, but even then... it was nothing like this.
Some people have heard the new songs already, as the album leaked a couple of weeks ago (thanks a lot, U.S. journalists!), but if there's a silver lining in that hooptie-assed cloud, it's the fact that people are seriously freaking out over the new shit, totally losing it. It's a bit overwhelming, I must say, but at the same time though, it's vindicating.
CD art is done, turned out really cool. RR actually coughed up for us to have a 16-page booklet, so we're pretty jacked about that! They're so fucking behind this record, man! Been doing press and cover stories galore, just shot an official video for "Now I Lay Thee Down" ("making of" coming soon...) and are strongly considering doing an un-edited straight-to-YouTube video for "Clenching The Fists Of Dissent". Getting ready to go do Headbanger's Ball in March when we roll through NYC. We now have touring plans set up for the next year or so; we wrap up LOG in April, have more U.S. stuff in April / May, doing European festivals come June / July, still working out mid-summer plans for the U.S., and most likely headline our super-enormous mega-package through the UK and Europe in Oct-Dec. WHEW!!
Then probably headline the US in Jan-Mar 08' with an equally enormo-mega-package!! Yeah, no rest for the wicked, right?
Well, I'm off to nurse my hangover, watch a little Caddyshack, and then hit the sack. We can't wait to see all you crazy fuckers on the road, where we and each of our beer-breathed brethren shall drown out the whines of emo kids around the world with vodka and merryment!!!
Shake and Bake!
- Flynn
|
Hey Ya'll!!
Happy New Year to everybody!! Looking forward to getting back on the road and unleashing the new album on everyone! Everything is finally coming together. Artwork and CD booklet getting finalized, mastering is complete and preparations for the Lamb Of God tour are underway!!
I started practicing today by myself and getting in "show shape". I practice a lot on my own but today I started playing like I would if we were doing a show, just basically hitting a lot harder and running through a lot of songs back to back. A good day of practicing, I already feel like I'm in "mid tour" form.
So, about three songs into playing, I feel some blisters start to form. I was going to put some tape around them just to keep them from popping and ripping open but I kept playing on and two songs later I actually got to see two chunks fly off my hand!!! Yes!! I hardly ever get to see them fly off. My lucky day I guess!
Anyway, back to the tour.
I've never seen Gojira before but heard some of their stuff and heard that they're a killer live band.
Of course we already know the Trivium guys really well and have crossed paths a few times. Hmmmm, I see booze in our future!!
I can safely say that Lamb Of God are one of my favorite metal bands. Killer riffs, great musicians and after doing some shows with them and coming out to a few on our own and hanging out with them, I can also say that they're cool people as well. Really looking forward to watching Chris play every night. I see more booze in our future!
That's about it. See ya on the road!!
Dave
|
|
