ROADRUNNER has issued the following:
Epiphone guitars and Metal Hammer recently launched a contest for Machine Head fans to design a paint job for Robb Flynn‘s signature Love/Death baritone Flying V guitar. Three finalists will receive a signed guitar from Robb, and the winner will have his design created, and played by Robb onstage – and in the video below, the man himself announces the finalists and the winner!
ROADRUNNER has issued the following:
Machine Head were one of the headliners at the four-day Bloodstock Open Air Festival in the UK this weekend, playing a 90-minute set on Saturday, August 10. And in case you couldn’t get there, you can watch the whole thing now, below.
Machine Head‘s latest album, Unto the Locust, is available everywhere now; grab a copy from the Roadrunner webstore!
EMI has set an October 8 European release date for the 40th-anniversary edition of DEEP PURPLE‘s classic 1972 album, “Machine Head”. This five-disc special edition will be accompanied with a fully illustrated 60-page hardback booklet, housed in a luxury box.
Contents include:
* CD1: “Machine Head” original album 2012 remaster
* CD2: 1997 remix by DEEP PURPLE bassist Roger Glover
* CD3: Original album Quad SQ stereo (2012 remaster)
* CD4: “In Concert ’72” – 2012 Mix (recorded live at Paris Theatre, London on March 9, 1972)
* DVD: 2012 high-resolution remaster and surround mix
Booklet features:
* Detailed essays from original bassist Roger Glover and Mojo magazine editor Phil Alexander.
* Quotations from DEEP PURPLE fans Mikael Åkerfeldt, Luke Morley, Sebastian Vettel, Eddie Jordan, Brian Tatler, Janick Gers and Peter Hook.
* An interview with famed photographer Didi Zill, whose photos of the legendary recording sessions in Switzerland illustrate the booklet.
Source: Blabbermouth
“Darkness Within”, the new video from San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD, can be seen HERE (courtesy of Loudwire). The clip was filmed in the Czech Republic between May 4 and May 9. The song comes off the band’s new album, “Unto The Locust”, which sold more than 17,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 22 on The Billboard 200 chart — putting MACHINE HEAD in the Top 25 for the first time in the band’s 17-year history.
Regarding the making of the “Darkness Within” video, MACHINE HEAD guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn said, “The first time I visited Prague was on the ‘Burn My Eyes’ tour cycle in 1994 as support to SLAYER. I’ll never forget the city. I was blown away, I’d never seen anything like it before or since. The baroque and gothic architecture, the religious symbolism everywhere, the Charles Bridge, St. Vitus’s cathedral, but also the Eastern Block feel it still carried, it was one of the most unique and beautiful cities I’d ever seen and still is.
“And yet, it had a dark underbelly to it that ran through her streets. Heroin use was open and rampant back then, and having dabbled in that, and having had friends who did more than dabble, I was all too aware of it. But there was something about that that charmed me. That there could be that dark side within such a beautiful, religious place. I said right there and then, ‘I want to do a video here someday.’
“When our label, Roadrunner Records, approached us about shooting a video for ‘Darkness Within’, I already had a lofty concept. It tied in perfectly with the fact that we were hitting Prague opening for METALLICA, so I wrote a pretty fucked up treatment for the video, and then refined it over the next two days, sent it to the band, and they loved it.
“I got sent a bunch of video by other bands to look at directors, and honestly, I fuckin’ HATE most videos nowadays, especially metal bands’ videos. They’re boring, thoughtless and pointless. Dudes in a warehouse playing. But there have been two bands in particular who have always impressed me with their videos. RAMMSTEIN and BEHEMOTH. RAMMSTEIN, with their insanely creative, movie-like, performance-less videos. They’ve been pushing the video concept for years, from the bizarro-world of ‘Sonne’, to the stark sadness of ‘Ohne Dich’, or the flat-out controversial awesomeness of ‘Pussy’. These dudes know how to make people care about a video. It’s art.
“And BEHEMOTH, too, they continue to make videos that blow me away. ‘At Left Hand Ov God’ was huge, but ‘Lucifer’, man, ‘Lucifer’, it was a game changer. I remember seeing ‘Lucifer’ for the first time, we were just about done editing the ‘Locust’ video (which we were very happy with), we had one scene left to shoot, fly in and it was done. I took a break and stumbled on ‘Lucifer’, loaded it up and watched it with my video director Mike Sloat, it blew my head off. I looked at Mike and said, ‘That is the future of videos, in one fell swoop, Nergal just changed why bands make videos.’ It was dark and beautiful, weird and cool, erotic and evil, and totally fucked.
“It was inspiring, not in the sense that I wanted to make a video that looked like ‘Lucifer’, I didn’t, but in the way that it became so crystal clear that the former restrictions and guidelines that bands used to have placed on them from MTV no longer applied. There is no reason for a metal band to make a video for MTV anymore. They don’t play videos, and if they do, it won’t be metal.
“‘Headbangers Ball’ is on MTV2.com!? I love Jose [Mangin], and the interviews are great, but who goes there to watch their video playlist when you can go to YouTube and watch exactly what you want in an instant? Music videos are for the Internet, Vimeo, and YouTube… or in the case of RAMMSTEIN‘s ‘Pussy’, YouPorn! You’re free to go as crazy, or artful, or weird, or provocative as you want. There is NO REASON for a band to stand in a warehouse and play their instruments. Those days are gone. They’re not coming back.
“So with that mindset, at 3 a.m. on a jet-lagged, sleepless morning, I had a burst of inspiration and I wrote a treatment that made a crazy, warped, poetic, epic, dark story that’s partially attached to the lyrics, but also adds a visual meant more to evoke images, to disturb, to arouse vague, uncomfortable feelings, primal feelings. We shot it over six days in Prague with a great company called Meija Productions, I co-directed it along with Milan Basel and Jorge Nunez. It was shot in three locations: downtown Prague, a small village called Krashov (which means ‘fadeless’), an awesome rock bar in Prague run by a great dude named Jakob called Mighty Bar, and briefly at the infamous Bone Church in Korta Huna.
“The scenes in front of and inside St. Vitus cathedral were shot on location; we actually snuck into St Vitus at 6:30 a.m. to shoot the scenes and got kicked out by a very angry, eerily calm priest, who walked up to us with unblinking eyes locked, and said four words that chilled me to the bone: ‘You must leave now.’ My director of photography protested, and in the same intensely calm voice, the priest stared into our souls and repeated, ‘You must leave now.’
“I was fuckin’ outta there!
“The rest was shot in a small village about five hours outside of Prague where myself and our man-of-many-hats Pando stayed with me in what we called ‘the Russian bunker,’ a hotel (really a converted farm house) that was straight out of post-World War II Russia; no heater, woodburning stove, but it was homey with a friendly non-English-speaking staff. The church we filmed in had been abandoned for about 100 years, but still had German plaques from when the Germans still controlled that part of the Czech Republic. It was fucking cold!! Three days in a row we shot 20-hour days, getting three hours of sleep, wake up and repeat. I talked some locals (an all-girl horse-breeding team) into hiring their horses to us, and they rode them nearly four miles to where we were, and they were bad-ass horses, much like the ladies who rented them.
“The rest of the guys came in a few days later, and did a great job, Dave [McClain, drums] nearly got thrown from his horse, and then later it tried to kick him! Adam [Duce, bass], in particular, rode really well. Their crew was great, and we all became quite fond of the make-up artist. The rest of the cast were hired by the directors and they froze along with us and they did a fantastic job, though none of them spoke a single word of English. It was strange, fun and vastly huge undertaking, and I am certain the Head Cases of the world will love it! SO proud of the end result.”
“Darkness Within” performance footage:
Source: Blabbermouth.net
PitCam.TV conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn of San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD at this year’s edition of the With Full Force festival, which was held June 29 – July 1 at Flugplatz Roitzschjora in Löbnitz, Germany (near Leipzig). You can now watch the chat below.
When asked about the recent Roadrunner Records “restructuring” under parent label Warner Music Group, which resulted in roughly 36 staff members worldwide being let go and several regional offices being closed, Flynn said, “It’s a shame, man. It’s a fucking shame. Considering that these are, like, the premier people in their field… I mean, when it comes to metal, there was no one better. They were profitable, which almost no label in this day and age can say. The thing that was most bizarre was that Warner had all of their rock and metal bands going through Roadrunner [in Europe] ’cause [Warner] didn’t know what to do. So it’s kind of like, ‘Why would you [close the Roadrunner offices in those territories]?’ But they did it.”
He continued, “We’re still trying to see how it is; we’re trying to get a feel for what’s going on. We’re in between labels right now — the last record was the [final one under our most recent contract with] Roadrunner, so we’re actually in a pretty unique position, because we’ve got a lot of different choices that we can go with right now, and the world is, basically, our oyster. It’s a rad position to be in. Eight years ago, we got turned down by 35 labels, and now every label on the planet wants to sign us. [laughs] So it’s pretty awesome. So we’re gonna play it out. Roadrunner‘s still got a lot of people that we know and love there — especially in America, they’ve got a real strong… the core people that are there are huge MACHINE HEAD supporters. We’re gonna check it out and we may very well end up on Roadrunner. We just need to make sure that it’s the right thing and that they get what we’re doing, because we’re not a pop band, we’re not some mainstream artist. I mean, we’re the biggest underground metal band, I guess, there is.”
On the topic of how the record industry woes affect the up-and-coming heavy metal artists, Flynn said, “I don’t think any new band is gonna have trouble. I mean, you look at… SUICIDE SILENCE is the perfect example. They came out of nowhere, they got an Internet buzz and they made themselves a hot band. And they made people care. And that’s ultimately all that you have to do. That’s all any band has ever had to do for the history of time. You have to make people care about your music and about your trip and about how you do it. And if you can do that, then the labels will come to you.”
Flynn also stressed that, while the Internet is a great tool for new bands to promote themselves, they will still need the backing of an experienced and established label to get their music out to the masses. “You need money to do stuff, and you need [the labels] to loan you money to do stuff,” he said. “You need them to knock on all of the doors and go, ‘Hey, this is cool,’ or ‘This is not cool.’ You need a staff of people. It’s a lot more involved than most people think. I mean, yeah, you can get a buzz going, and you can probably put out a self-financed demo and do great stuff, but at some point, in order to make the whole thing work on a worldwide level, you need something like that. And [it’s] better to have their money than have to spend your own. [laughs]”
MACHINE HEAD recently announced plans to film a video for the song ‘Darkness Within’ in the Czech Republic. The track comes off the band’s new album, “Unto The Locust”, which sold more than 17,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 22 on The Billboard 200 chart — putting MACHINE HEAD in the Top 25 for the first time in the band’s 17-year history.
Source: Blabbermouth.net
In early June, Gibson conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn of San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD at the Rock Am Ring festival in Nürburgring, Germany. You can now watch the chat below.
Flynn worked closely with Epiphone engineers to create the Epiphone Robb Flynn Love
/Death Baritone Flying V, the first of its kind not only for Epiphone but for the Gibson family of brands as well. Robb has won countless awards including the Metal Hammer Golden Gods award presented in 2007. And just like his music, Robb‘s baritone design brings a totally original sound to metal and hard rock.
“The main reason for having the slightly shorter 27.0″ baritone scale is when you tune down to B, it just makes the low definition really tight, especially for palm muting and chunking,” remarks Flynn. “It opens up the sound a lot.” The guitar comes equipped with string gauges (low to high) .58, .42, .32, unwound .18, .13, and .10 — the same that Robb uses on stage — but can also accept heavier gauges.
The Robb Flynn Love/Death Baritone Flying V features a Mahogany body in the classic Kalamazoo factory “V” style with a Mahogany SlimTaper “D”-profile neck which features a baritone ready 27″ scale. The Ebony fingerboard has a 1.68″ graphite nut for precision tuning and “Love/Death” inlays and 24 medium jumbo frets. The thunderous low end of the Robb Flynn Love/Death Baritone Flying V comes from the combination of an EMG-HA neck pickup and an EMG-81 bridge pickup. The EMG-HA neck pickup is a uniquely designed single-coil pickup inside a humbucker housing which keeps the classic look of a Flying V guitar but with something special under the hood. The EMG-HA debuted in 1974 as the first noiseless single coil pickup and features Alnico magnets for warmth and the widest possible frequency response for great definition and harmonics. It’s also a perfect choice for rhythm when matched with the low tuning of a baritone guitar providing a solid “chunking” bedrock while still showing off all the complex overtones that are part of the baritone experience. The EMG-81 bridge pickup is one of EMG’s most requested pickups and utilizes powerful ceramic magnets and close aperture coils for incredible amounts of low end cut and fluid sustain. The EMG-81, combined with the unique intervals of baritone tuning, will slice through dense mixes and make your baritone leads sound thunderous. The controls are straightforward with a full-size 500K O potentiometer Master Volume control and a 3-way toggle switch.
The Robb Flynn Love/Death Baritone Flying V features Epiphone’s rock solid hardware including Grover locking machine heads for on-stage precision, an Epiphone LockTone Tune-o-matic bridge and StopBar tailpiece, chrome knobs, a standard 1/4″ metal jack plate and Epiphone strap locks.
The Robb Flynn Love/Death Baritone Flying V includes a Custom Hard Case with original artwork by Robb Flynn and Strephon Taylor. The first 250 guitars produced will also receive a hand-signed certificate.
“This guitar isn’t for blues players or jazz players,” says Flynn, “it’s a metal guitar designed specifically for young or modern metal players.”
And as with every Epiphone, the Love/Death Baritone Flying V comes with the peace of mind of our Limited Lifetime Warranty backed by Gibson Musical Instruments’ famous 24/7/365 day Customer Service. Go low and get heavy with the one-of-a-kind Epiphone Robb Flynn Love/Death Baritone Flying V.
Source: Blabbermouth.net
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