263 November 2014
Machine F*cking head | asking alexandria | slipknot | Motionless in WHite | Marmozets | Hang the B*stard | Sabaton
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PRINTED IN THE UK
NOVEMBER 2014
HEAVY LIES THE CROWN
MACHINE HEAD
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We chat exclusively to General-In-Chief Robb Flynn as the Bay Area bruisers prepare to release what’s shaping up to be one of the most important and acclaimed albums of their career.
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ASKING ALEXANDRIA Asking Alexandria’s Danny Worsnop takes us for a boozy night out in LA, where he’s been living the rock’n’roll dream for the past four years.
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MARMOZETS
ZILTOID
If there’s one band from the UK rock scene setting the world on fire right now, it’s Marmozets. We catch up with the tune-wielding noisecore quintet to find out the secret behind their unstoppable rise to glory.
He’s a caffeine junkie that will happily go to war over bad beans. In this exclusive interview with the most metal alien in the universe, we find out more about the world he comes from and how intergalactic bum-gas really fucking stinks.
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64 sabaton
36 dragonforce
THEY CALL HIM THE GENERAL.
guarantee that’s not the only thing Robb Flynn’s bandmates have called him, but then that’s the risk you take when you spend years sacrificing everything on the altar of a singular, uncompromising vision. It’s staggering to think that 20 years have passed since Burn My Eyes set a new benchmark on heavy. Can Machine Head’s upcoming Bloodstone & Diamonds album live up to those lofty, neck-snapping heights? The jury is out, but from what we’ve heard at time of going to press, there’s cause to be very excited indeed. Surprising, considering it wasn’t long ago that some very public meltdowns threatened to rip the band
apart. For one of the most candid interviews we’ve ever read with one of metal’s most enigmatic frontmen, turn to page 38. And if that doesn’t have you running for shelter, then the return of Ziltoid certainly should. We were honoured to be granted an audience with his supreme galactic unpleasantness before our interviewer was cruelly vaporised. Flip to page 68 to bask in his genius. It’s not all about returning royalty, though – from some thrilling introductions to Marmozets and Hang The Bastard to on-the-road chaos with Sabaton, a trip behind closed doors with Dragonforce’s Herman Li and a fascinating account
of the inspiration behind British underground mavens Winterfylleth, no stone was left unturned in our quest to create the magazine you hold before you. And if you happen to be reading this on our newly revolutionised tablet or phone editions, welcome aboard. Metal’s changed a lot over 40 years, and so has Hammer. One thing that’ll never change is our uncompromising vision for a magazine that’ll bring you the best metal coverage anywhere in the world, whatever the format, guaran-fucking-teed. Thank you for your support, and...
On The iPad Edition…
EDITÖRIn-Chief
’ This month s digital edition ’ is packed with exclusive metal you wont find anywhere else. • ROBB FLYNN ON THE STATE OF METAL IN 2014 • DANNY WORSNOP’S ULTIMATE NIGHT OUT • MARMOZETS TELL US THEIR DREAM TOURS
Get It ON Newsstand for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch
Robb Flynn: throne into the spotlight
“Is it my vision? Yeah, it is. It’s been my vision for 22 years” Machine Head’s Commander-In-Chief reaffirms his status
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Command & Conquer For two maddening decades, Robb Flynn has led Machine Head through chaos and controversy and continues to come out fighting. As we discover, being The General has rarely been simple...
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o one ever said being in a metal band was meant to be easy. You only have to observe the number of bands from the genre’s most recent upsurge from just over a decade ago who are either calling it quits or battling with the law of diminishing returns to realise that achieving longevity and the longterm respect of a fickle world is much, much harder than it looks. And these are undoubtedly strange times for heavy music. Despite an often overwhelming surfeit of great music emerging from the underground and the fringes of the metal mainstream, there are precious few bands that look like hanging around long enough to earn legendary status, and even fewer that sound capable of making albums that’ll be revered for decades. But then, of course, there’s Machine Head. Twenty years on from releasing a debut album that defied the odds and injected much-needed vitality into a metal scene that was relying almost entirely on Pantera to retain any kind of momentum, Robb Flynn and his Bay Area-bred bruisers are still here, still making great music and still giving their fans fistfuls of reasons to give a shit. There will always be naysayers, cynics and haters poised to argue otherwise, but the reality is that Machine Head still matter, perhaps more now than ever before. That said, the last few years have been a little turbulent and arduous for Robb and co. The extraordinary success they enjoyed after the release of 2007’s universally praised The Blackening was never going to be easy to repeat, and although 2011’s Unto The Locust was a worthy follow-up (the tour cycle saw them headlining Bloodstock and Wembley Arena), a widespread perception that Machine Head’s moment of glory has been and gone still hangs in the air as they prepare to
unveil their eighth studio album, Bloodstone & Diamonds. Throw the acrimonious departure of bassist Adam Duce into the mix and, if you were inclined to believe what you hear amid the sneering blather of the internet, the tough road to longevity and legend seems even tougher and more hazardous than ever. But as with so much of our popular discourse these days, the incessant snark-fest of the online world only tells one, predictably idiotic side of the story. Speak to Robb Flynn directly, as we are always happy to do, and it soon becomes apparent that not only are Machine Head coming back stronger, harder and brighter than ever in 2014, but that they are also beginning to exhibit an air of invincibility.
before that and it’s safe to say that he can see a backlash coming long before the thought has even entered the heads of Machine Head’s fiercest critics. Similarly, when asked about that much-heralded debut show at Wembley back in December 2011 – a gig that was far from sold out and somewhat spoiled by an undeniably peculiar decision to book Bring Me The Horizon as main support – Robb simply smiles serenely and shrugs once again. “Even just driving in there, we were like, ‘Oh, so this what the parking garage for... [shouts] WEMBLEY ARENA looks like! This is what the dressing room at... [shouts] WEMBLEY ARENA looks like!’ You know? Ha ha! We were so excited. It was our biggest show to date. There could’ve been 700 people there, but if those people were going out of their minds, it was a success. To me, the number has never been relevant. I’ve played shows to 110,000 people that were the biggest duds ever. And then when we played to 400 people in Nottingham recently, it was like a religious experience, and you feel so high and so amazing that it makes life worth living. So the show at Wembley was awesome. It was killer, it was a fun time, people went crazy. We couldn’t ask for anything more.”
“We knew the blackening would overshadow whatever we did” Unto The Locust had a lot to live up to
“We knew we couldn’t top what happened after The Blackening,” he says with a wry smile. “I jammed with [Machine Head drummer] Dave McClain as we started writing Unto The Locust and we said, ‘It doesn’t matter what we write at this point! If we can get on an equal footing and have a record that can just stand next to The Blackening then we’ve done our job.’ No matter what, everything was going to be overshadowed by The Blackening. It was album of the decade and album of the year and all these crazy accolades. We tried not to let it get to us. We just made a record that felt good and I believe time has shown that those songs are good. Darkness Within and Locust are huge songs for us. People go fucking bananas for them.” Robb shrugs and smiles. He’s been doing this for a long time now. Twenty-two years with Machine Head and a good few years kicking up dust in various Bay Area thrash metal bands : Dom w o r d so h n M c L a w s o n Murtr : J ie Pics
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hatting with Robb – and he does love a chat, bless him – it’s obvious that despite yet more ups and downs over the last few years, things could hardly be more positive or exciting in the Machine Head camp right now. The band’s recent run of intimate gigs in the US and Europe were an unequivocal triumph that plainly thrilled the band more than they could ever have hoped. As you will soon discover, Bloodstone & Diamonds is yet another monstrous and life-affirming slab of utterly distinctive and subtly inventive heaviness. New boy Jared MacEachern has clearly slotted into his new role
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ORANGE GOBLIN Orange Goblin are back after facing the most challenging years of their career and staking their claim in British metal history. This time it’s...
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funny thing happened to Orange Goblin on their way to oblivion. In 2012, after 18 years together, they released a last-gasp album, the ironically titled A Eulogy For The Damned. The band had spent nearly two decades in the trenches, plying their wooly, wide-legged stoner-doom jams far and wide, always returning to London after a few weeks or months to labour at day jobs and dream big rock’n’roll dreams that never quite came true. They were middle-aged, bedraggled, at the end of their collective ropes. And then the album came out, and all hell broke loose. It ranked third in Hammer’s end-of-year poll, and the metal world at large was just as enthusiastic. It breathed new life into the creaky ol’ Goblin machine, propelling them to dash their civilian lives completely and hit the road with renewed vigour. The tours got longer, and the crowds got bigger. They headlined Bloodstock’s second stage and packed the place out. And the madness never ended. Two years later, and they’re about to unloose the crucial follow-up, a toothsome beast called Back From The Abyss. And as Goblin mainman Ben Ward tells Hammer, that abyss is exactly what you think it is. “Oh yeah, it’s about the last couple of years,” he says. “It’s about being on the road for so long, which can be very trying at times. But also, we saw going professional with the band as going into the unknown. So the album was a reference to that, getting back from the abyss. The album is kind of like a statement to say we’re still here, and that we’re ready to rock again.” ‘Going professional’ is the dream of self-respecting metal bands, and one that seemed far-fetched for Goblin just a few years ago. So when the chance arose, the band was forced to weigh their options carefully. “It was a very tough decision because we’re no spring chickens,” Ben laughs. “We’re all in our 40s, we’ve all got mortgages and children to support and wives to look after, as well. So, we had to weigh all the pros and cons. But we have very supportive wives and girlfriends who agreed to hold down the fort while we went away for months on end. They kind of pushed us into it, to a certain extent. It was a massive decision for everyone involved, really, but looking back, it’s been alright so far.”
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It’s not only been alright; it’s been a remarkable reversal of fortune, especially when you consider that Eulogy For The Damned wasn’t just Orange Goblin’s seventh album. It was also, very nearly, their last. “If the album wasn’t a success, I think we probably would’ve ended it,” admits Ben. “The band had been a hobby for so long. But it wasn’t just that album. In 2011, we did a tour with Gates Of Slumber and Naam, and the response we got from the US fans gave us a such a boost that we had to rethink our future. We thought, ‘There are people out there who think a lot of Orange Goblin. Maybe we’re doing something right.’ The success of the album confirmed what we thought, and made us not only keep going, but to decide to do it full-time.”
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oming after the huge success of Eulogy, Back From The Abyss is the most high-profile album Goblin have ever done. Sonically, it’s a blazer, accessible but lethal, a caveman’s club to the skull from start to finish. Lyrically, it seems ripped from Goblin’s diary over the past few years. While there are plenty of tributes to Satan and a few Lovecraftian creepouts, songs like Ubermensch and The Devil’s Whip address the band’s seemingly endless touring cycle and their leap into full-time rock’n’roll professionals. It sounds like it was written on the road. You can practically smell the diesel fumes. And originally, that was entirely the idea. “We had every intention of writing the songs on the road, but with us it never turns out that way,”
ORANGE GOBLIN
w or d s : K en M c I n t y re . P i c t u re s : J ake O w en s .
“If the last album wasn’t a success, we probably would have ended it” Ben ward on what could have been
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