In an age of rapidly declining album sales, Machine Head is bucking the trend. The band’s latest album, the superb “Unto the Locust,” sold more than 17,000 copies in its first week of release in the United States, entering the Billboard 200 chart at No. 22 and becoming the third consecutive Machine Head album to increase its first week sales by 20 percent over its predecessor. The day before the band left for its first trip to South America since 1995, guitarist Phil Demmel checked in with Live Metal’s Greg Maki to talk about the secrets to their success and more.
LIVE METAL: Congratulations on the success of the new album so far—a big debut on Billboard and the first week sales increasing over the last one. No one’s doing that these days, so what’s your secret?
PHIL DEMMEL: It’s actually been the last three records have all increased. The secret? Man, I don’t know. (laughs) People are liking what we’re doing. I don’t think there’s a secret about that. Ten years ago, the band made a cognizant effort just to write for ourselves and be a metal band. Instead of trying to figure out what people want, just figure out and write what we like. That’s been a formula that’s really connected with the fans and spread our fan base. We’ve been doing good tours; we’re a really good live band, so we kind of connect on that level, as well.
The previous album, “The Blackening,” was a big success, and it kept you out on tour for three years and all over the world. So when you sat down to start working on a follow-up, what was that like at the beginning? Did it feel like there was a lot of pressure on the band to follow that up with something just as good or better?
I think that there’s pressure on every record to do a better record the next time. I felt that on (“Through the Ashes of Empires”), especially. I felt that there was more pressure than anything on “Ashes” because the band had gone unsigned. So for us, if there was gonna be any pressure, it was gonna be on that record. But (this time) we really didn’t feel any. We just locked ourselves in the jam room and wrote the tunes that we liked, and it was that same attitude that came with the first record. It was like, this is what we’re about, this is what we like. If anybody likes it, cool; if not, this is what we’re doing.
Did you go into it intending to have the songs come out as long as they are, or did it just naturally come out that way?
Just like “The Blackening,” we would write and I would be the song-timer. (laughs) As we were writing, it would be like, “Hey, that was 10 and a half minutes.” Even the shorter songs would be like six and a half minutes. That used to be the long song. They don’t feel like 10-minute songs. We give the song what it needs. We tried to take a song like “Wolves” on “The Blackening” and take parts out of it, and it just felt stupid. It was like, why are we doing this? We want this part in, so why are we taking it out? We own that domain. We own that right and reserve that right to refuse service to (laughs) shorter songs for the sake of shorter songs.
At what point during the process did you decide on the album title, and how did that affect anything that came after?
I think the songs were pretty much all written, maybe not completely lyrically. Most of the concepts were already came up with. I created the locust concept, kind of a metaphor about people that come into your life and lie to you and rob you of not just material things, but of other stuff. My sister’s ex-husband came and lived with us, and had us all believing he was a great dude. I thought I had a cool brother, and he preceded to not tell her about a kid that he had before and was paying child support on, and stole $2,000 cash from me and was stealing money out of my mom’s purse. It was like, wow, who are you? Robbed you of your soul, in her case, basically. They’re discovered and they fly off, and then they just latch on to somebody else, and just kind of rob them of their resources, too.
It’s happened in my life; it’s happened in everybody’s life. I’m sure that you have, maybe not that extreme, but somebody who’s kind of done that to you. So I kind of likened it to the locust mentality, and everybody dug it. Me and (vocalist/guitarist) Robb (Flynn) wrote the lyrics to the song. He already had some kind of together, and we collaborated on the idea. There’s a lot of imagery. Him and (drummer) Dave (McClain), even before we had the lyrics assigned to that song, were like, “Man, that’s a cool album concept.” It was about halfway through the recording process, and it gave us a lot to work on imagery-wise.
What is it like between Robb and you working when it comes to the guitars? How do you decide who plays what part?
Well, that’s pretty easy. If it’s not one of my solos or one of my little ambient parts, then Robb plays all the rhythm parts. If I wrote the riffs—like a song like “Be Still and Know” I wrote all the riffs to, but they’re frickin’ hard and he plays ‘em better than I do (laughs). It’s like, “Dude, just go ahead.” There’s just a formula of him playing the rhythms because he’s just better, cleaner, his timing’s better. Him and Dave record Dave’s stuff. They jam out a lot of stuff together. Dave and Robb are down at the studio the most. As far as the leads, I do most of the leads. I guess I’m the main lead player. That doesn’t mean I’m the best lead player, but Robb’s singing and playing rhythm—he does a lot. That’s why I do most of the leads.
And he’s also the producer. What is it like working with him in that capacity?
It’s great. Nobody else should be behind what the sound of Machine Head is but him. He knows what it is. These songs are his vision, and he knows how to transfer that onto—well, it used to be tape (laughs). He offers ideas and suggestions, and he’s willing to try if, “Hey, I have an idea, let’s try it this way,” he’ll try it and listen to it and give everything a chance.
I keep reading that the new album was recorded at Green Day’s studio, which, when reading about Machine Head, that kind of jumps out at you. What was that studio like?
It was great, man. It’s right there in Oakland. It’s maybe 10 minutes from our rehearsal space, so everything’s really close. They were great dudes. Great room, great vibe. They’ve got their own little compound. They’ve got it set up killer. All the guys were great to work with. The crew was excellent. They just created a cool vibe to record in. The lounges are awesome. They have all these old records everywhere, these old pictures of the Ramones, The Beatles, the Sex Pistols. We put up our own Rush and Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. I had my old programs from like 1982 to 1983, the “Piece of Mind” and “Number of the Beast” tour, the World Vengeance tour from Judas Priest, and we put up the program pictures for inspiration. It was awesome. It was a great experience.
For the special edition version of the album, you recorded a couple covers—Priest (“The Sentinel”) and Rush (“Witch Hunt”). Were those nods to your influences?
We had been wanting to do the “Witch Hunt” tune for a while. Dave is a huge Rush fan. I had been from back in the day, and Dave kind of introduced Robb to some of the in-between records. Rush has become a pretty big influence on the band. Dave really geeked out on “Witch Hunt” He doubled his tracks just like Neil Peart did. He played the record in Guitar Center and was hitting the cowbell so he got the cowbells exactly how they were on the record. Playing the Priest tune was awesome. Those are two of the huge bands back in the day that we really looked up to. We covered Iron Maiden before, too. Those were the bands that we really drew inspiration from.
You leave pretty soon to head to South America.
We leave tomorrow, yeah.
Are you looking forward to getting to a new place and playing?
Absolutely. The first time the band’s done an extensive tour—it’s only five shows. They played one show in Argentina in 1995. So 16 years later, we’re going back and playing some more. We’re playing with Sepultura, and what better band to be there with? We’re very excited to get down there and open up this new market.
And then, you’ll head over to Europe after that. What have been your favorite places to play?
I love playing in Portugal. They’re crazy. They’re one of the best crowds. I love playing in Scotland. Same reason. Always treat us well. The U.K. is really good to Machine Head, in general. We’ve had good shows in France, in Germany. But to me, Portugal and Scotland are the two that I know when I’m playing, it’s gonna be insane.
It’s been mentioned a little bit that there is a headlining tour in the works for early next year. Is that right?
Yep. Looking at mid-January to probably mid-February, a headlining run through the States. Still putting that together. Then trying to get back over to Australia and Japan, and then get over to the U.K. for festivals next summer. So we’re looking to fill up 2012 here as soon as we can.
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