The Download Interviews : Machine Head

Machine Head Interview - page 1 of 4

VF: Adam asks - I've followed Machine Head through the years and heard the gradual change in the music from 'burn me eyes' to 'supercharger'. I still loved you guys but I must admit I thought you were past your best and then you returned with the best album of the year 'through ashes of empire', so what inspired this sudden change which took four albums to go one way but then just a flash to go back?

Chris: Do you want the long story or the short one? I'll give you a bit of both.When you're in a band then there's a whole load of things influencing you and the way that you write music and play your songs. As times goes on you put things out, and sometimes they're great and sometimes they're just good and other times you look back and think you could have done better. With Machine Head we know that a lot of people still rate us for that first album, and looking back we saw that a lot of the changes we'd been through were maybe caused by the way that we'd been portrayed, so this time around we didn't let magazines or TV stations or radio airtime come into play, we just sat down and got back to where we were originally in the beginning - to a point maybe even before Machinehead, to the the reason why perhaps we all started playing music...music that to us was well under the radar of the mainstream...music that was abrhasive...music that when you play it gets your blood boiling. That was the kind of thing that Machine Head was founded on, and maybe over the years we did get away from that, but on this new record we really have tried to recapture that whole feel.

VF: Next one from Steve. "Hey! Firstly, I'm a HUGE Machine Head fan! I love all your albums... ALL!!! I just wanna know... how does the band feel about playing on the same stage with METALLICA at Download!?"

Chris: Well I guess it's a little easier for us than some bands...but then it's easy to get jaded, and we try not to. When you tour a lot you get to play with a lot of bands, and it's awesome that from time to time you get to tick off another notch of having played with some of the greats. We've played with Black Sabbath for instance - which really was an awesome gig. I know speaking for myself that once we've played I'm going to be putting on my fan t-shirt and getting out to see some of these other great bands. It totally turns you back into a little kid!