Machine Head’s Robb Flynn Slams Lou Reed, Speaks On Bands Past “Stinkers”
It’s a safe bet that Machine Head vocalist/guitarist Robb Flynn won’t be caught jamming “Lulu” anytime soon. He recently had a rather blunt opinion on Metallica and Lou Reed‘s 2011 collaborative effort, along with some humility regarding his bands own attempts at branching out.
An exceprt from a recent interview conducted by Metal Shrine reads as follows:
“…I didn’t even get it. If those guys need to do that stuff to get their ya yas out, that’s cool and I respect them, but eeehhh… was Lemmy not available? Was fucking Iggy Pop not available? (laughs) I think there are so many people that might’ve been a better choice. I don’t know the dude, but maybe he’s the most charismatic guy in the world, I don’t know.
I fucking can’t stand Lou Reed. I don’t like his solo career and I don’t like Velvet Underground, so I don’t know much about it other than “Walk on the wild side”. Do I see myself… yeah, I mean we write plenty of songs that aren’t necessarily what Machine Head would be.
I love The Cure so I write a bunch of mellow stuff that’s like super gothy and… gay. (laughs) But I think it’s cool. You jam for a while and you come up with all kinds of shit. The thing that’s great about Machine Head is that it’s a pretty wide canvas we get to paint on.
We’re not afraid to try any idea, at least just to try it and see where it goes, because you never know where it’s gonna go, so we’re stupidly fearless in the sense that we’ll just try an idea and most of the time if that idea isn’t working within about a week or two we’re pretty good at figuring it out. In the past we may not have figured it out.
Lord knows we’ve got a couple of stinkers in our catalog, but I think overall, if you look at… we’re seven albums deep and we have a huge career and we’ve managed to transcend and maintain a level and just slowly keep on growing. Never really even going down, which is amazing. I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve been able to kinda get a vision and keep it.
We’ve never had a “Lulu” and we’ve never even had like a Blaze Bayley moment, you know what I mean? (laughs) Where it’s like “What is going on?”. We’ve always been able to do it and if you look at the breadth of our music overall, it’s pretty pioneering and pretty consistent and that’s what I’m very proud of.
I mean there’s a core Machine Head sound, but we never want a record to sound like the previous record and I think maybe sometime we almost ran too far away from what we had just done. I think we we’re better at it now more than ever and just going ‘Yeah, let’s try this way and see what’s over here.’”
COMMENTS
Wasn’t Rob on the metal show with Lars when Lars explained how LuLu came about? He should know
I don’t know, there was a couple albums by these dudes that made me think “What’s going on?”…. specifically their nu metalish albums
supercharger ring a bell? I mean its a “core” sound, but they tried to jump on that nu-metal train so hard…they just couldn’t pull it off.
why does he even care so much??
…boo this man. LuLu was a pretty awful record, but I think Reed’s solo material and The Velvet Underground’s catalog speak for themselves. I still listen to Loaded on a fairly regular basis.
Word son, ‘Loaded’ is a classic album. Easily required listening in my book.
I love Machine Head except for Burning Red and Supercharger and I don’t like Lulu, but GODDAMN Flynn sounded like an ignorant asshole in that article.
Perhaps he needs to re-evaluate his own Aesthetics of Hate.
Other than those 2 nu-metal albums, I live Machine FUCKING Head! Oh wait, did that sound gay… er, I mean “young athletic men?”
Burning red was the shit… ‘exhale the vile’ and ‘devil w the kings card’ are very good tracks from MH…
Seriously. Anyone who can actually lie to themselves and say that Burning Red was a bad album needs to pull their head out of their ass. Even Supercharger, as far as albums go, was good. Their weakest? Yes. But it was still good.
The Burning Red was a solid album, It was just Machine Head trying to appeal to a more mainstream audience, I have said it before but just because a band tries to appeal to a mainstream audience doesn’t mean their cutting back on their musicianship or what makes them a musician.
I will join in on the love train for ‘The Burning Red’. Excellent record period. “The Blood, The Sweat, The Tears’” makes me bang my fucking head against a wall to this very day. I like the guitar tone on the record as well.
I will also jump on here. If you take “Desire To Fire” and “From This Day” off of The Burning Red, you have yourself a pretty solid metal record. That’s one cool intro, 4 great songs and 5 good songs, ill take those odds. Supercharger wasn’t that great, but i still really dug “Crashing Around You” and “Deafening Silence” was a pretty awesome song…shit the actual track “Supercharger” i remember being pretty fucking heavy, maybe ill go listen to that to remember for sure.
By stinkers, he does mean “American High”, right? Atrocious.
That track is truly machine Head at their worst. Supercharger was a piece of shit and that track sat on top of the turd. I don’t care about the nu-metal sound on the albums however, I do have an issue with the spiked blond hair and yellow lensed glasses that Rob used to wear during that period.
‘American High’ is MHs low point for sure… Specifically that song… Even as a stupid ass 17 year old, I knew they’d regret that one… There is some shit that rips on that record for sure though… One of the tracks towards the end (‘trepination’) is a hidden fucking gem
So, you’re more concerned with a band’s fashion sense than their musical output? That says more about you than it does the band.
I hated Supercharger, by the way.
my god, i still remember the first time i heard the yodel thing in the beginning…. sheer horror….
I’m with you. Even when I was in high school, the setting this song is penned after, I felt this song was cheesy as hell. However, the eponymous “Supercharger” is a fucking ripper of a song. “Crashing Around You” is decent for what it is too.
im still rather fond of bulldozer as well.
Supercharger was a huge pile of shit. The timing of Hellalive couldn’t have been worse for the fans. I want a legit live album NOW, not after fucking Supercharger.
Nu-metal advocates keeping the slouch guitar alive.
Maybe the world is ready for Shuvel or Endo to return.
I’d rather listen to Sacred Reich.
Not a Lou Reed diehard, but I’ve always liked the album “new York”, and the subsequent tour for it was the bomb.
Burning Red and Super Charger had about an albums worth of good songs between the two. Some enjoyable stuff, it just wasn’t really Machine Head.
american high was pretty bad but supercharger and the burning red are both great albums. trepanation is fucking amazing as is a good handful of songs from both those albums
I like Machine Head. Hell, I like The Burning Red and there’s a song on Supercharger that’s pretty good. But here’s the thing… to deny Robb Flynn and the rest of the band are scene-jumping trendwhores is just to kid yourself. They follow the trends. Everything except Burn My Eyes is a perfect yardstick for what’s “hot” in the heavy music scene at the time of release. Now I don’t care, because I think the music’s awesome. But this guy’s ego astounds me.
Lulu is a steaming pile of shit. But I applaud Metallica for obviously doing what they wanted and giving no fucks whatsoever. There’s no way they thought that thing would sell shit or be remotely popular. But they did it anyway because they wanted to. Balls.
agree if i could be big enough to write an album with a guy i looked up to and not give a fuck i would…hell if i could be a metal band and smoke out with willie nelson and record id do it….dime bag did it with allen cole do it up!
The Blackening
The More Things Change
Unto the Locust
Burn My Eyes
Through the Ashes of Empires
The Burning Red
Supershitter
(I’ll prob get serious shit for this)
-the burning red
-burn my eyes
-the more things change
-the blackening
-ashes
-supercharger
-locust (need some more time w it)
Honestly, Unto The Locust got a lot of hype when it came out, and I dug the hell out of it at the time. But so far it hasn’t had anywhere near the staying power The Blackening did. I listened to that shit literally for months on end… found something new every time. Locust isn’t like that. I don’t know if the band’s changed or I have. It’s a good record, it just doesn’t blow me away.
As for your list, I’d rearrange a couple things, but The Burning Red is my favorite Machine Head album, too. People talk a lot of shit, but it was a well done record. Some of the experiments failed and the band’s “image” associated with that period in their history is laughable. But the music is honest and powerful.
Burning red came out when I was 15… It was a few months before I started coming to this site… That record and theprp was two of the many awesome things in my life at that time that really made me proud to like this type of music… Needless to say, I still rock em’ both… Fuck my short novel, and more importantly, FUCK YOU… Haha… Good times
I like them all except for Supercharger (but I never really properly gave that one serious playing time). The Burning Red was played non-stop for awhile when it first came out, but that style of music they displayed on that and Supercharger is just almost 180º opposite of what I listen to these days.
Hey fahck you, too, buddeh.
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