Report

An Evening With Machine Head, World's Heaviest Band (It's Science), In Baltimore, MD

Machine Head is the heaviest metal band in the world.

You’re probably already spitting your beer all over your computer screen.

Let me explain. We’ve all heard the complaints of modern production woes, the trendy obsession with blinding speed and out-tech-ing each other, and the resultant dearth of memorable songwriting. Chances are you’ve done quite a bit of this complaining yourself. I know I have.

I know what brutal death metal is; and black metal, and grindcore, and so on. I know how “extreme” metal can get, and I’m a fan of tons of that stuff. I’m a metal journalist. It’s my job to know these things.

There are several reasons, each having to do with the merits of each individual instrument and the man playing it, for Machine Head’s status as Heaviest Metal Band in the World. To go with the most obvious reason, I will tell you right now that no one, and I mean NO ONE, comes close to touching Mr. Robert Flynn in terms of absolute, raw, uncut vocal intensity. Two decades and eight albums deep into Machine Head’s career, he has become a monster.

Guttural death growls, atonal black metal shrieks, I’ve heard it all. I love a great deal of it. But you know what? Little of it shocks or scares me anymore. Precious few bands of the elite-approved, underground, “extreme” variety actually provoke a sense of DANGER in me. Robb Flynn does.

The secret is passion. Unbridled, burning passion, rage, and all-around emotion. Flynn’s voice, at its harshest, is the sound of a man threatening to rip your head off and meaning it. At its softest, it’s the sound of a grieving mourner at a funeral, choking his way through a moving hymn. These two poles, and everything between, are part and parcel of the same experience: pure emotion, and pure intensity.

The guitars and rhythm section follow suit. For all the band’s stylistic evolution and musical expansion over the years, the core ingredient of bone-crushing groove remains unchanged. Whether the band is veering into thrashy or sludgy territory, it doesn’t matter: you can truly BANG YOUR HEAD to this stuff. Machine Head's riffing whips up a kind of aural stigmata, wherein you almost feel the brutal pain of a sledgehammer impacting your body.

All of this translates directly to the live setting. Machine Head are a live band at heart (and many bands of the technical sort are decidedly not). They’ve always sounded that way on record, because their music is MEANT to be experienced in concert. Think of that word’s other meaning: union, harmony. In this case, a bonding between artist and fan. A collective sharing of passion, rage, euphoria, lamentation. EMOTION.

The two-hour performance at Baltimore Soundstage on January 28, 2015, was no exception. Touring without support following the release of “Bloodstone & Diamonds” in November was a brilliant move, a generous offering to the fans, and a fitting mea culpa for the cancelled package tour earlier in the fall. It was, and is, also the only way to fully and truly experience the borderline religious intensity Machine Head bring live.

To this day, they’ve still put on the most daunting performances, and incited the most colossal and intimidating crowd reactions, I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot). On the co-headlining “Black Tyranny” tour with Arch Enemy in fall 2007, I was nearly crushed by the sheer force of the crowd against the stage barrier. On the “Eighth Plague” tour in early 2012, I witnessed security guards drag a limp, unconscious man from the circle pit. He was big, at least three hundred pounds, but he’d been knocked out.

Not stunned, not dazed. KNOCKED THE FUCK OUT.

From my vantage point on January 28, 2015, nothing of that sort occurred, but what I did witness was a tremendous cyclone of unstoppable energy rushing in an endless loop between the four men onstage and the rest of us.

Since I consider “Bloodstone & Diamonds” something of a companion piece to 2004’s “Through The Ashes Of Empires,” I found it fitting that the band opened the show with the lead track off the latter, “Imperium.” That song, upon release, signified a major crossroads: a re-embracing of the past, simultaneous with a fresh new beginning. Busting it out live over a decade later, after a crucial lineup change, made its defiant cry of resolve and independence all the more poignant.

It was also nice to hear “Bite The Bullet,” also off “Ashes.” Though it’s the second album track, it’s been out of live rotation for quite a while, and could be considered a rather deep cut. So could “Now I Lay Thee Down,” once a staple of touring for 2007’s “The Blackening,” but rarely played since.

“From This Day,” now there’s a bone of contention. And also a bit of a deep cut, considering Machine Head have conspicuously avoided it for so long (embarrassment, perhaps?). A single off 1999’s “The Burning Red,” the music video, crammed with wiggercore attire, spiky hair, and a LOT of pointing, is notorious among fans for showcasing the band’s then-attempt at exploiting the nü-metal craze of the era. Here, however, Flynn did a deft job at adapting the rapped verses to something equally rhythmic but far more melodic. An impressive feat, making “From This Day” palatable to a modern audience of metalheads (seriously, get a load of that video), but he did it. It fit right into the groove metal onslaught seamlessly.

So always has “Bulldozer,” one of the thrashier, stronger moments on what’s usually regarded as the band’s weakest album, 2001’s “Supercharger.” There’s a lesson here: at a Machine Head show, it matters not what album from what era is being played; the urgent passion is the Great Equalizer. Everything flows together.

Flynn & Co. spent only a perfunctory fifteen minutes (total) on Machine Head’s mid-‘90s roots with the live crowd-pleaser “Ten Ton Hammer” and the obligatory classics “Davidian” and “Old” (and even reversing their normal order in the setlist; for once, “Davidian” was not the finale). A decade ago, 1994 debut “Burn My Eyes” and 1997’s “The More Things Change” were still widely considered the band’s definitive showings, but it seems the recent “epic” era - “The Blackening” in particular - has supplanted those early efforts in the hearts of fans everywhere.

Appropriately, it was that era that received the most attention. “Beautiful Mourning,” “Aesthetics Of Hate,” “Halo” (the latter closed the show, right on the heels of “Old”), all have become live staples. So have “Locust” and “This Is The End,” off 2011’s “Unto The Locust.” The European influences that crept in on “Ashes” and developed thereafter - twin guitar harmonies, intricately constructed lightning-ride solos, an increased sense of grandeur - are now an expected Machine Head trait, and couldn’t be possible without Flynn’s partnership with lead guitarist Phil Demmel.

“Bloodstone & Diamonds” somewhat belongs to the “epic” era while simultaneously revisiting the past and pushing boundaries into the future, and the first two singles “Now We Die” and “Killers & Kings” came as no surprise, but the eight-minute dirge “Sail Into The Black” was something very special. Only on an “evening with Machine Head” can one expect such a slow, brooding excursion, so consider yourself lucky for catching it on this tour. We also can’t be certain they’ll continue to play “Game Over,” clocking in at nearly seven minutes.

“Game Over” is raw, heart-on-the-sleeve, personal stuff. Not that Machine Head has ever shied away from that, but the subject of the bitter and heartbroken lyrics is achingly obvious: former bassist Adam Duce. He tried taking the band to court after being fired, and it’s clear Robb feels the split as acutely as the pain of a divorce.

On a brighter note, replacement Jared MacEachern has formed an impressive live (and studio) chemistry with drummer Dave McClain, and the new rhythm section has lost none of the patented groove. It certainly helped that he can sing the backing vocals that Duce once handled; weirdly enough, on 2007’s “Black Tyranny” tour - his former band Sanctity was opening - I saw him fill in for the temporarily absent Duce. Now he’s in the varsity.

Let’s be honest: Robb Flynn is not a modest man. However, in a way, he’s earned the right to a little arrogance, for, as the saying goes, “his heart’s in the right place.” In an evening filled with numerous addresses, all of them extolling the very real, electrified bond between band and crowd, one proved the pivotal “keynote speech.”

This has become a routine for him over the last three years, strapping on an acoustic and plucking four somber notes repeatedly, waxing philosophical before kicking off the haunting “Darkness Within.” Each rendition of this speech is a tad different, but the gist is always the same: you chose to come here tonight and watch four MUSICIANS playing REAL MUSIC. The stuff that brings us together, the stuff that gets us through the day, the stuff that elevates our lives.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some variation of “If we weren’t up here playing, we’d be out there watching with you,” and it’s tempting to roll your eyes, but every time Flynn says it (and he’s said it many times), damned if it isn’t compelling. Tonight was more convincing than ever.

That’s part of the essence of Machine Head, another element that helps make them the Heaviest Metal Band in the World: charisma. Power. Authority. Gravitas. When Robb Flynn says something, people listen. It always provokes an emotional reaction (admittedly, sometimes vehement disagreement, but whatever). When Dave McClain, never one for soulless technical wankery, attacks his drums, people don’t just hear them - they EXPERIENCE them.

When Mr. Flynn bellows, “Headbang, motherfucker” to the rhythm of “Ten Ton Hammer,” or shamelessly invokes the spirit of nü-metal with “Jump! Jump! Jump!” during the bounciest sections of “Aesthetics Of Hate” and “Old,” or commands the crowd to form the largest circle pit possible at the start of “Killers & Kings”… you’d better believe people listen.

This, and a lot more, all went down in Baltimore last Wednesday night, and will continue across North America all the way into March. “For some reason, people never ‘got’ us in D.C.,” Flynn remarked, “And it took us a while to make it here. When we finally did, we wondered why we weren’t playing here the whole time.”

The omission of Washington, D.C. from the tour schedule confirms this as a genuine statement.