Machine Head’s Robb Flynn Slams Metal Presence at Grammys

According to Machine Head’s Robb Flynn, metal music is alive and well, though you might not know it from the Grammys.

While speaking with Full Metal Jackie on her weekend radio show, the Machine Head vocalist was sharing his appreciation for the talent that is currently on display in metal’s modern era when he went off on a sidebar tangent about his past experience with the Grammys.

Flynn shared his experience watching the amazing brand of talent taking the stage at last year’s Milwaukee Metal Fest, commenting, “I genuinely believe that there’s going to be a time when we look back on this era of metal and even the previous era of thrash metal and extreme metal, and we’re going to have the same reverence for it that we have with the jazz, the Miles Davises and the jazz musicians of 50 years ago. Because there is so much talent in metal right now, and it really is not appreciated by the music industry.”

It was then that he detoured to talking about the Grammys and metal being in the mainstream conversation. “I’m talking about the respect. We’re not in that building,” he commented before elaborating about his past experience attending the award show only to see the Best Metal Performance award presented in a separate building and webcast through the Grammy website only.

“I walked in there, I was like, wow we’re off in this whole [other building]. It’s nowhere near the main area. Like they wouldn’t broadcast it on TV, only on the Internet. And I was offended, man. I was really insulted by it. That’s kind of hung with me,” said Flynn, who adds, “All of this was going through my head as I was watching all of these amazing bands just a few months ago and I think it all the time. It’s not about win, it’s about we deserve that respect and we deserve recognition.”

Flynn continues to carry the flag for metal and he and Machine Head have just recently issued their new Atoned album. Within the chat with Jackie, the singer talks about the restrictions he placed upon himself making the new record and why they were necessary, the evolution of Machine Head’s current lineup and what it was like bringing three other name bands together for one of the album’s biggest collaborations.

The singer also shares what he feels is the most rewarding period in the band’s history and he gives his aforementioned assessment on the current state of metal.

Check out more of the chat below.

Robb, it feels like the process of making this album brought you great joy. You presented yourself with some songwriting challenges and it feels like it provided you a welcome change of pace. Is that a correct assessment? And what song off the new album gave you the greatest satisfaction seeing its journey from inception to conclusion?

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I put some pretty strict parameters around the new record cause our last record Of Kingdom and Crown was such a huge moment for us. It was a total renaissance for the band. It just really put us just into the stratosphere and it was awesome to be in that position.

We were headlining Hellfest, we’re headlining festivals, headlining tours and drawing more people than we’ve ever drawn. So with this record, I’ve been fortunate enough to be in this position a few times where I’ve got a record that is extremely beloved by our fans and by the press that just really is a game changer.

I’ve learned that everybody wants you to just make a copy of that record, right, because it did so good. But you really got to take a hard turn away from it and just distance yourself from it so that that record can stand on its own.

So with this new record, I’m not a big believer in kind of talking about where you should go. Should it be the heaviest should it be the fastest? That never pans out. You just got take you where it takes you. But I did want to put some structure around it.

The last record opened with a 10 minute long song and it had some long songs for Machine Head. So with this album, nothing can be longer than four minutes. That was a hard, fast rule.

The next thing is I’m a huge Slayer fan and to me, one of the most under appreciated elements of Slayer is their use of key changes. They have key changes galore all throughout every song. The changes set up the way the chorus comes back in or set up the way the verse comes in.

So I said to myself, I want every song to have a key change somewhere in the song that’s totally outside of the normal chord progression that you would expect the song to go. The bridge in the verse and the chorus, wherever. But then it had that.

And then the last thing was that the last chorus had to be different from the first chorus. So maybe the drums drop out, maybe the guitars drop out. That’s where the key change happens. But something had to be different that set it apart and made it sound different than the first chorus.

And so going into it with those things, it just became about trimming the fat. Everything became about just trim it down, trim it down, trim it down. We ended up with 10 songs, 2 instrumentals, 41 minutes – the shortest Machine Head album in history. And it really just feels so strong and compact and really good. I”m so very excited to share it with the world.

Machine Head, “Bonescraper”

Robb, much of this album was written during your relentless tour schedule in different parts of the world. Foo Fighters famously did a record inspired by our particular cities and their musical atmosphere. And I’m not saying this is that. But how much does location and surroundings factor into the music? Is there a song in this record that has a feeling for you of the place that it was birthed?

Sure. The song “Not Long for this World.” I was flying from South America to Mexico City, but I had a layover in Houston, Texas, and when I landed, I was like, “Man, I am really sick. I need to go get tested right now, because I think I have Covid. So I went into the airport pharmacy or whatever and I tested positive.

I’m like, “Oh, my God.” I gotta just get off the plane. I had a few days to get there before the festival. We were supporting Guns N Roses in Mexico City at a killer festival. So I was like, I’ll just kick it in Houston, and I’ll just hang out.

I like Houston a lot. It’s one of my favorite cities to play in Texas. But I’m sick. I’m alone. The rest of my guys went on to Mexico, and I’m just gonna walk around. I just walked around the city a lot. it’s a pretty gnarly vibe. Like there’s homeless people everywhere but killer food and I was right kind of in the downtown where all the music is and the clubs and I was just catching the vibe and I had my guitars with me and I would just come back every night from walking around and I would just play guitar and just write stuff.

I wrote a really big chunk of the song “Not Long for this World” in Houston. And then bizarrely like I wrote the other chunk of the song in Asheville, North Carolina. Does it have a different vibes because? Totally different vibe. Because that’s all like hippie granola ville, right?

We had actually booked studio time and were just like, hey, like we got a day off so let’s just go in and record some stuff. We just jammed around. Reece [Scruggs], my guitar player just brought some killer riffs and we just kind of fine tuned these little bits and pieces.

What an absolute crusher “Unbound” is off this record. There’s a little bit of everything from pit stirring moments to big swinging grooves on this song. I know that there’ve been lineup changes in recent years, but there’s also been a lot of touring with the group. As it stands now, how great is it to hear Reece and Jared [McEachern] locked in like this? And where does this sit amongst the grooviest moments of you with the band?

It’s a pretty grooving record. There’s some hard ass. Can I say ass?

Yes, you can.

There’s some hard ass grooves on this record. My guitar player has been with us for three years. Matt’s been with me for seven, Jared’s been me for 11 years at this point. So it’s like a lifetime for a band.

I think that the fact that, you know, Jared’s from Virginia, Reece is from Virginia, like, we kind of get this like southern groove going when we start playing. It’s awesome because it’s a different swing than the way some people swing. And it feels killer, man, and I love it.

I really feel like we’ve got a record that’s got a lot of layers. I’m really stoked because I have about four collaborators that I work with and they kind of handle all like the keyboards and the piano stuff that I can hear and I play on guitar and I just say, “Hey, turn this into this sound or whatever.”

I’m fortunate enough to work with Jordan [Fish] from Bring Me the Horizon. He’s been a decade long collaborator of mine. I started working with him on the Bloodstone and Diamonds record. And on this record I said, “Hey, I really want you to be part of every song and even if you don’t end up on any of the songs, I just want you to be able to collaborate with me and try some stuff and see where it goes.”

And it turned out really, really cool having him be a part of it because he really just brought this depth and this dimension that I don’t think we’ve had before in a couple songs. But to hear it all throughout an album just really ties the album together more so. Yeah, I’m very stoked.

Machine Head, “Unbound”

Robb, “Not Long for This World” provides a rarity in Machine Head’s history in that there are all clean vocals. I get that sometimes the song needs what the song needs. But now having opened that door, do you see this as more of an option for the band moving forward or was this more specific to one particular song?

It just worked out that way.

You didn’t put that much thought into it.

I didn’t. I tried writing heavy vocals to it because I was just like, “Oh my God, I gotta put like a Machine Head roar or whatever into there.” But it just felt weird and so I’m just rolling with it.

I’m not a big believer in planning where you’re gonna go with a record. You can talk about it all you want to, but the music just takes you where it takes you. Keith Richards has a pretty famous quote where he’s just like, “We’re a vessel and the music’s just leading us where we are.” And I totally believe that.

Has it always been that way for you? And it still continues?

It really has. You never know where it’s gonna go and you just kind of go with it and see where it takes you. In this particular case, with the clean vocals on “Not Long for this World,” it really was just having all clean vocals and Jared and I are harmonizing the whole time and It just felt right. I was like, “Let’s just leave it. It sounds great. The song’s killer.”

It’s one of the more sad songs on the record, so it’s kind of this depressing, sad song. And it didn’t need this other element because that other element’s all over the other songs.

Robb, I know he’s worked with you on several records now, but you were just talking about former Bring Me the Horizon keyboard is Jordan Fish. He’s got more of a hand in the Unatoned album this time out. What has it meant to see that relationship evolve and bring another creative perspective with a bit of a different background into the mix at this stage in the band’s career?

I’ve worked with him for 10 years now, so it doesn’t feel like a new collaboration. It might sound like a new collaboration to people, but we’re four albums deep with him. I just feel like he’s part of the team at this point.

He’s kind of a genius. He just brings in this killer [mentality]. Sometimes that guy, I’d be like, “Hey, do your ideas and put it on,” and he’d send me like 70 tracks of stuff.

Oh, my gosh, 70 tracks.

Then me and my producer Zach [Ohren] would just go through everything and determine what is what. Sometimes it was just like a hi hat or something or just like a shaker or whatever, but then other times it’s a layers of strings and layers of piano and layers of sub stuff and cool textures.

We didn’t use it for every song. It wasn’t needed for every song. But to me a thrash song doesn’t need stuff like that. It just needs thrash and guitars really loud. Let’s turn those guitars up. But for other moments, it really just brought to life the song.

Robb Flynn from Machine Head is my guest on the show this week. And along with Lemmy, my dog, who’s really falling in love with Robb, we’re talking about the new record.

Robb, in all super groups, scheduling is always one of the biggest factors. How big of an undertaking was it to get in Flames, Lacuna Coil and Unearth on “These Scars Won’t Define Us.” And how excited are you to have this tour to bring it all together?

Getting everybody together was definitely moving mountains, for sure. But it ended up happening and it turned out killer. I wrote this really cool song. I was trying to imagine If we all collaborated on a song, what would it sound like? It’s got to be thrashy. But I wanted it to be melodic because I knew Cristina [Scabbia] from Lacuna Coil has a beautiful voice. So I could have melody in there, have her singing. And even In Flames is a pretty melodic band, too.

So I just felt like I just imagined this thrash song. And I wrote it actually on a plane just in my head. I sat there and I pulled out my iPhone and I just recorded the audio to go, doo, doo, doo.

So you I was gonna ask you if that’s how you record. You think of riffs like in the middle of the night and then bust out your phone and record them all the time.

Yeah, I write probably about half my riffs just in my head and then I record them on my phone and then I go and play them and try and figure out what I sang into my phone. I’ve done that for forever. I can hear everything. Like I hear the drums, I hear the bass, I hear kind of everything.

Then other times, obviously, like a song like “Unbound,” I just wrote that riff jamming in my jam room. And I was like, “Hh, this is good. I love this.” The bendy riff. I’ve done the bendy riffs for a while, but I haven’t done a big bendy riff in a minute. I gotta bring back that back, the old school Machine Head bendy riff.

Oh my gosh, the bendy riff. I love that.

But then we put it out and those guys, everybody came and everybody killed it. Shout out to all the bands that participated in “These Scars Won’t Define Us” because organizing six singers and me and my producer Zach jus trying to figure out where everybody kind of fits in. You want to spotlight everybody. Because everybody did so freaking amazing. And I really feel like we gave everybody a nice kind of spotlight moment. It was cool.

Machine Head With In Flames, Lacuna Coil + Unearth, “These Scars Won’t Define Us”

Robb, we’re now 11 albums deep with Machine Head. You’ve had all of these opportunities to revisit early albums in the catalog and present these epic three hour spanning “An Evening With” Machine Head shows. But now we’re eventually getting back to festivals and playing with other acts again. It’s given you a chance to really hone in on and reflect on what the band is now and what it’s been over history in real time. What would you say has been your most recent rewarding period in this group? Is it present day or, is there another era that set the bar for what you want to experience out of this band?

Wow. That’s a good question. I’m very much a dude who lives in the moment. I don’t look back almost ever. You know what I mean? I don’t listen to my old records. I don’t watch old videos. If anything, I’ve probably seen more of my past videos or interviews or live shows or festival shows, just from scrolling YouTube shorts and something will pop up and then I just scroll past it because I don’t care. It’s not of interest to me.

I did become kind of locally famous when I was pretty young. Like, I was 19, 20 in Vio-Lence and we got a big boost in the Bay Area. But when Machine Head finally came out five years later, I was kind of very famous at an early age and you just get used to that.

If anything, I watch myself and I’m just like, Oh, my God, I hate my voice” or “What was the matter? Like, why did I have that dumb accent? Or what was I doing with my hair?” I just sit there and pick myself apart the whole time.

I’m just constantly a dude who’s living in the moment and living for now and whatever what the past was, it was great or wasn’t great or whatever.

WATCH MORE: Machine Head’s Robb Flynn Goes Ghost Hunting in ‘Paranormal Prison’

So for me, right now is an amazing moment for Machine Head. And I don’t necessarily want to say that I’m satisfied because I don’t feel like I’m satisfied. I still have a ton of things I want to accomplish and I feel that the band needs to do and I want to do because I want to share this vision of my band with the world. And so to me, it’s just always about moving forward.

Robb, you have been through this business. You’ve seen it from when metal was looked at not as the underdog as we are now, but how do you feel about where metal stands in 2025 now as compared to when you were starting out? 

I think it’s in a much better place now. When Machine Head started out, it was almost like metal was kind of on this big downward slope. It wasn’t cool. There was some people flying the flag for sure – Pantera, Sepultura. But it was tough.

I think now that landscape changed mainly because the gatekeepers got pushed out and the magazines kind of didn’t become as important anymore. So much of it’s about the Internet.

I think a lot of bands are much more in control of their own destiny. Bands got smart. People are like, “I don’t want to give away all my publishing and my merchandise. I can just do this myself.” It’s awesome to see.

I think that there’s so many amazing metal bands out there right now. Bands that are kicking ass and drawing tons of people. I was at the Milwaukee Metal Fest. Machine Head headlined with Lamb of God. And I was there for the whole weekend. We were rehearsing. We hadn’t rehearsed for a while, so I was there rehearsing. And then just after rehearsing, I’d go and just watch all the bands.

I remember at one point, I think it was like the second day, and I was watching that band Undeath, and the musicianship of metal bands right now is absolutely jaw dropping. There is so much talent and ridiculous drummers and ridiculous bass players and ridiculous guitar players and just singers who are doing just crazy putting death and brutality into screeches. And then they’re entertaining and charismatic.

I genuinely believe that there’s going to be a time when we look back on this era of metal and even the previous era of thrash metal and extreme metal, and we’re going to have the same reverence for it that we have with the jazz, the Miles Davises and the jazz musicians of 50 years ago. Because there is so much talent in metal right now, and it really is not appreciated by the music industry. It’s not appreciated by the Grammys. The Best Metal Grammy is still in the other building [pre-telecast], and it’s only on the Internet. They don’t get it.

I’m like, “We’re writing our own songs. We’re playing our own instruments. We should be in that main building. We should be in that main building. You should be celebrating the metal musicians of this world in that main building. Right next to the Tate McRae’s, right next to the Chappell Roan’s, right next to the Weeknd’s. Right? Because they ain’t writing their songs.

Nope.

We’re writing our songs. We’re playing our stuff.

We were just talking about the Grammys and just metal in general not being appreciated as a community. Robb was saying what we’re all thinking, we hope that someday that’ll change. Robb, I hope we can live long enough that metal gets the appreciation it deserves in the business side of things. It’s upsetting every year when these award shows happen and I make posts about the nominations and I make posts about the winners, and I’m like, here we go. Here comes the anger. Because, you know, I’m angry, too. I get it, too.

It’s not about the Grammy for me. Just to be super clear, I’m not saying, “Oh, we should win a Grammy” or this or that other thing. I’m talking about the respect. We’re not in that building.

Right.

I’ve been to the Grammys. I got nominated for a Grammy. On The Blackening, we lost a Slayer who actually won the Grammy for the same album the year before, which was a little infuriating. But for this, I was like, that you gave him two Grammys for the same album. Like, what the hell?

Sidebar. But when I walked in there, I was like, wow we’re off in this whole [other building]. It’s nowhere near the main area. Like they wouldn’t broadcast it on TV, only on the Internet. And I was offended, man. I was really insulted by it. That’s kind of hung with me.

All of this was going through my head as I was watching all of these amazing bands just a few months ago and I think it all the time. It’s not about win, it’s about we deserve that respect and we deserve recognition.

Yeah, I totally agree. Like I said, I hope the day comes because it’s not even just metal. It’s rock in general. They do all of the stuff on the Internet and most of the time they’re playing the wrong band’s music when the band’s coming up to pick up the award. Can there be one person in that building that hires a metalhead?

Like Metallica playing when Megadeth accepted or something like that.

Really, dude. Like you can’t play this their song.

There’s literally not one person. When they do the In Memoriam and they do the wrong picture for the wrong name and stuff. Like, how does this happen? Did you not share this with like a team of people to go did we miss anything? I don’t know. There’s no quality control.

It needs to be important to them.

I agree. I agree.

Robb Flynn from Machine Head. Pick up the new record and see this amazing tour with Machine Head in Flames, Lacuna Coil, Unearth. It’s going on through May. Robb, it’s always so great to see you and I’m looking forward to all things to come with you soon.

This was awesome. Thank you so much for having me on.

Thanks to Machine Head’s Robb Flynn for the interview. The Unatoned album is out now. You can stay up to date with Machine Head through their website, Facebook, X, Instagram and Spotify accounts. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie’s weekend radio show here.