Last Sunday I saw the concert of Machine Head for the first time in my home country, the Czech Republic. I live in Brno and the show was in Prague, which is for me only the third nearest capital (after Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia). With this show, I have seen this band five times within one decade, each time in a different country. My feelings about this band evolved through the time and here is how I remember it.
It was in my teenage, high-shool years in 1995, when my brother was lent a tape of the first MH album Burn My Eyes. It was pretty good and heavy music which I liked at that time a lot. It was a masterpiece all around but one track was exceptional for me: I'm Your God Now. The reason was very simple: When you copied an album of greater length than 45 minutes on a 90--minute long cassette, there is a pretty big chance that one song will start at one side but wouldn't fit there entirely. Thus it had to be recorded for the second time on the other side (or somewhere else). This was the case of I'm Your God Now. For that reason I had to listen to the opening bass line and the introductory calm part multiple times. The song gets heavier throughout the time and culminates in the end to an absolute explosion. This got under my skin so that every time I heard it, the energy flowing through and out of my body was so devastating that when it came to the final part of the song, I never knew whether I was going to bang my head against the table or against the wall. However, luckily I had always overcome it without any damage of my body, though I was a little afraid what would happen if I was given a chance to see the band and hear this track live. That's why I rather didn't seek these opportunities.
As time went by and other albums were released, I still liked BME a lot. However, the 7th album Unto the Locust was according to my feelings probably the one which had surpassed the debut (while the 5th album Through the Ashes of Empires was about to equalize it). In 2012 when I spent fall in the New York City, I finally decided to visit a MH gig, no matter what I used to be afraid of. It was rescheduled from late October to December due to the hurricane Sandy. Thus I had the tickets for a long time in advance and I was eager as hell for the show. To prepare myself, I listened over and over almost the whole discography. The only exception was the album Blackening which I didn't have in its entirety and those lengthy songs didn't really fit my taste (I just felt that Machine Head can do perfect songs even without lasting 10 minutes.) In New York, it was the last gig of a very weird tour half of which had to be cancelled or rescheduled for various reasons. We, the spectators, were lucky that the band had actually made it to the hall, though with a delay due to some car accident. Anyway, the band got on the stage and started the show. Imperium was one of the starters and two more Locust songs were added. Great! The moshpit got so wild that I lost my 22-years-old watch which I almost never took off my wrist. Now it was a sacrifice to my first direct experience with this band. However, the band then played three long songs of Blackening and that was it. WTF? After six songs it was over! I was pissed. OK, at least to memorize this – for me unforgettable – night, I bought a T-shirt. It was a rare edition for that tour with all those cancelled gigs scratched out. I was so happy that I had it that a couple of days later when I was going back to Europe I put it in the hand baggage and lost it when leaving the airplane board. That concluded my first live experience with Machine Head, which, by coincidence, was the last show with Adam Duce on bass.
In 2013 Jared MacEachern took the bass and I had a chance to see the new lineup right that year on Heavy MTL festival in Montreal, Canada. Unfortunately the assigned time for the show was not much longer than in NYC the other day, the show also did not differ much and my feelings were about the same: great music but the choice of the songs was way from being satisfactory. For some time I stopped to pay attention to other occasions of seeing MH live to avoid further disappointments.
However, in 2015, after the release of Bloodstone & Diamonds I got a new chance to see MH, and in a new form of a concert. This time the show took place in Bratislava and it was called An Evening with Machine Head. With no support, just one band. That was my first chance to hear more than that handful of songs. And it really happened, the show covered all the albums through the whole band's history. What an amazing show! That was the way I wanted this band to perform. Everything from the past had been forgiven.
In 2019, changes in the lineup shook the band, since Phil Demel and Dave McClain left the band. It was after the album Catharsis, which was a disappointment for a large part of the audience, and I didn't really become its fan either. Anyway, when MH went on the tour for celebrating 25 years of BME album, I bought a ticket to the concert in Vienna for me and my brother to recollect good all days of the 90's. When the second leg of the tour was announced, we were also reconsidering whether to change the plan for a trip to Prague next spring, but finally we decided not to. (This later proved to be very good decision!) The show in Vienna was something I have never experienced before and after, so far. There was, again, just one band, but with two lineups, intersecting only in lead vocal and guitar of Robb Flynn and the bass and backing vocal by Jarod. After maybe two and a half hours of pure heavy fucking metal which was pumped into us by the first quartet, there was a little break, the lineup changed to an original one which recorded the first album in the 90's. Then the real celebration of Burn My Eyes started and lasted for more than another hour. The Gasometer hall was about to explode under heavy tones of this second load of the show. And in its late part it finally came down to me: the bass line of I'm Your God Now started. After three hours of pogoing, moshing, circling and wall-of-deathing all I got the energy for was to surf the crowd during the highly expected culminating part of the song. I don't think it could have been any better. And to show that the band still have energy to share, they extended the performance by several covers of Slayer, Megadeth and other classical thrash bands. I left the hall with several guitar picks, a drumstick and a feeling that I might have just experienced the best concert in my life. For that reason, I was reconsidering wheter to enjoy this badass show for the second time in Prague. Then the pandemia of covid-19 changed everything, though, and caused the whole second leg of the tour to be cancelled. We were really lucky to choose Vienna.
Since then, every week we could have enjoyed live shows by Robb and Jarod on Facebook. And as soon as the situation allowed it, a new tour in 2022 started, this time co-headlined with Amon Amarth. It actually became the first opportunity for me to see Machine Head in my home country, the Czech Republic. The country where the video for Darkness Within was filmed. However, the concert audience didn't seem to appreciate it fully. Maybe the song Pearls Before the Swine shoud have been included in the setlist instead... Nevertheless, the concert, which was opened by the track Become the Firestorm from the new album Of Kingdom and Crown, was awesome and the moshpit was as great as in all previous shows. Only since the first show in 2012 I have been taking my watch off my wrist before enetering the moshpit. The gig itself was great again, with many special fire effects and confetti explosion in the end. The atmosphere was awesome but I felt like there not that many true Machine Fucking Head diehard fans as in the previous venues. Maybe that was just my feeling. After that show I realized, this my 5th seen show of Machine Head, each time in a different country. With the exception of my family members, I don't think I have seen anyone in more countries than Robb Flynn. Thus, see you next time. In Poland, Germany, …? I hope the story does not end here... :)
