Machine Head

Emerging from the West Coast, Machine Head carved a defining place in the New Wave of American Heavy Metal during the mid-1990s through their abrupt, punishing riffs and seismic grooves. The quartet’s ferocious yet expansive approach, fusing thrash, groove, and nu-metal textures, produced landmark modern metal releases such as Burn My Eyes (1994), The Burning Red (1999), Through the Ashes of Empires (2003), and The Blackening (2007). Fronted by vocalist, guitarist, and sole enduring member Robb Flynn, the band delivered its tenth studio album, Of Kingdom and Crown, in 2022.

Machine Head coalesced in 1991 around ex-Vio-Lence guitarist Robert Flynn and bassist Adam Duce. With guitarist Logan Mader and drummer Tony Costanza completing the lineup, their independent ethos, ferocious performances, and persistent promotion secured a long-term contract with Roadrunner Records that lasted until 2005. Their ferocious debut, Burn My Eyes, arrived in 1994 after Costanza’s exit and the arrival of drummer Chris Kontos; it fused the muscular contemporary force of Pantera and Alice in Chains with the raw volatility of classic thrash acts like Death Angel and Slayer, rapidly building an enormous European audience. The album surpassed 500,000 copies sold and launched an extensive international tour spanning nearly two years.

Dave McClain replaced Kontos for 1997’s The More Things Change…, an effort that merged velocity and progressive metal into intricate, disorienting arrangements. Exhaustive touring and the band’s high-pressure lifestyle prompted Mader’s departure in 1998; Ahrue Luster stepped in on guitar, yet the members confronted their struggles on The Burning Red, which yielded the hit single “From This Day,” their first commercial single and video. Supercharger followed in 2001, then the live set Hellalive and the widely praised Through the Ashes of Empires in 2003, the latter featuring new guitarist Phil Demmel (ex-Vio-Lence) after Luster’s exit. The concert video Elegies appeared in 2005, succeeded by the seminal The Blackening in 2007.

Late in 2010, Machine Head reconvened at Green Day’s Jingletown Studios to record a new album. Self-produced by Flynn, the seventh studio release, Unto the Locust, surfaced in 2011. The following year brought the live album Machine F**king Head Live!, after which the group maintained an intensive touring schedule across North America and Europe.

Duce exited in February 2013, leaving Flynn as the sole original member. Following auditions, Jared MacEachern, previously of Sanctify, joined as bassist. The band returned to the studio in February 2014, extending the heightened intensity of the prior two studio records, and issued Bloodstone & Diamonds in November. Catharsis, the ninth studio album, emerged in early 2018, produced by Flynn and recorded, mixed, and co-produced by Zack Ohren (Fallujah, All Shall Perish). Demmel and McClain departed later that year; Logan Mader and Chris Kontos returned temporarily to fill the roles, reuniting most of the Burn My Eyes lineup. A 25th-anniversary tour of that album ensued, along with a full live-in-studio re-recording. Original drummer Tony Costanza died on August 4, 2020, at age 52. In 2022 the band released its ambitious tenth studio album, Of Kingdom and Crown, a concept work loosely drawn from the Japanese anime series Attack on Titan; the 13-track set was tracked at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, California, with producer Zack Ohren.