Machine Head is a heavy metal band, formed in 1992 in Oakland, California.
It has been said that Machine Head was one of the heaviest metal music bands to rise during the 1990's. Founded in 1992 by Robert Flynn and Adam Duce, their first album, Burn My Eyes ( 1994), is widely acclaimed to be as pivotal to heavy metal as Slayer's Reign in Blood and Metallica's Master of Puppets. The first song on the album, "Davidian", features the lyric "Let freedom ring / with a shotgun blast". Subsequently the video was banned from MTV.
After Chris Kontos left to work with Testament, the drumming services of Dave McClain were acquired. They then released the followup album, The More Things Change in 1997, after which guitarist Logan Mader unexpectedly left in the spring of 1998. He was to be replaced by Ahrue Luster (Now of Ill Niño) who worked with the band on the third album The Burning Red ( 1999). This album was a sign of a change for Machine Head, the band deciding to experiment more rather than release another album that would be seen as a just a shadow in the footsteps of Burn My Eyes. Robb uses his rapping techniques in this album rather than the growl he used on earlier releases. The song "Devil With The Kings Card" is based on Logan Mader's leaving of the band. Although Burn My Eyes was more influencial as an album to the music scene in general, according to a Blabbermouth.net Report, The Burning Red moved almost as many units in 3 years ( 1999- 2002) as Burn My Eyes did in 8 years ( 1994-2002).
Machine Head released Supercharger in 2001, though the album failed to do well, mostly due to it being released shortly after 9/11. The video for the song "Crashing Around You" was banned by MTV due to its images of collapsing buildings. Once the tour had been completed, Machine Head said their farewells to their record label Roadrunner Records. Ahrue Luster was later kicked out of the band for musical differences and was replaced by Phil Demmel. Since then 2003 and 2004 have been somewhat of a revival for Machine Head, firstly releasing their live album Hellalive in 2003 which was a recording of a Brixton Academy, London set.
