FEATURING MEMBERS OF MACHINE HEAD, EPICA, NAILS, CLINGING TO THE TREES OF A FOREST FIRE, ARGUS, EVERYTHING WENT BLACK, AND WEAPON

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time twice a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the next group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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Not that art is a competition or anything, but just you so know where I stand as a Machine Head fan and how your own tastes may or may not match up with my own, here are my three favorite pre-Unto the Locust MH releases, in descending order of preference:

• The Blackening
• Burn My Eyes
• Through the Ashes of Empires

So.

Machine Head’s The Blackening was some kind of goddamn masterpiece, an album that rightfully met with near-universal acclaim. And that acclaim wasn’t just hype, or critics and fans being swept up in the moment; the four-and-a-half years since its release haven’t diminished The Blackening‘s power any. There are few, if any, bands on earth that could make something that friggin’ good, and then follow it up with a record of equal, or even greater, quality.

And the bad news is, that Machine Head have not achieved this near-impossible task. Unto the Locust is not as good as The Blackening. But it is as good as Through the Ashes of Empires, and totally worth the nearly half-decade fans have had to wait for it — and that ain’t nuthin’ to sneeze at.

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So, to review the ways in bass players let us down this week:

• Coheed and Cambria’s Michael Todd robbed a pharmacy.
• Nick Oliveri from Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss held his girlfriend hostage in a four-hour standoff with a S.W.A.T. team.
• Jeroen Paul Thessling quit Obscura.

(Photo by Fiaz Farrelly)

Greetings to all you MetalSuckahs from Reno, Nevada where Machine Head are doing a warm-up show before the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival starts in two days. My name’s Phil Demmel, I’ve been playing guitar with these guys for the past nine years and I’m stoked to share with you gear-heads the rig that I’m currently using.

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It seems like every few months now, Blabbermouth has another story about Machine Head’s Phil Demmel passing out on-stage. Demmel, you see, suffers from something called cardiogenic syncope. “Syncope” is just a fancy medical term for fainting, and when it’s cardiogenic, it’s ’cause – you guessed it – the heart isn’t getting enough blood to the brain.

That sounds pretty scary, and watching video of one such incident that took place in Finland over the weekend, it looks pretty scary. But I’m (obviously, and despite the wishes of my mother) not a doctor, and the internet research I’ve been doing doesn’t give me a clear idea of what the condition means for Demmel in the long-term. In any case, we obviously hope the dude is alright. I like to think that it’s not just coincedence that Demmel’s addition to MH marked the start of their artistic renaissance.

-AR

Phil Demmel, who’s been handling guitar duties for Machine Head since ’03, is a real working musician. You could almost excuse him if the success MH have enjoyed over the past two years had gone to his head – the band’s most recent album, The Blackening, was almost universally acclaimed by critics and fans alike, and is most certainly the group’s best work since their debut, Burn My Eyes – but Demmel is clearly interested in little besides making sure that Machine Head is the biggest, best band it can be. The guy just has zero attitude, and it seems as though he’s never even contemplated any potential downsides to being in Machine Head. He just wants to play fuckin’ metal, dude.

But don’t just take our word for it – after the jump, read Demmel’s thoughts on touring as a support act as oppose to being a headliner, the success of The Blackening, and, of course, the all important question of which band on the Rockstar Mayhem Festival would win in an all-out battle royale. Well, okay, maybe not so much that last one.

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