In a new interview with “Good Company,” Former MACHINE HEAD and current VIO-LENCE guitarist Phil Demmel says that “Bastards,” the folk-driven, political song which appears on MACHINE HEAD‘s latest album Catharsis, would have been better suited for a Robb Flynn solo project.
Demmel said that “Bastards” was a song that “only Robb wanted on the record. It was such a fight,” he said. “He put it up on YouTube with him [singing and playing guitar]. I wish it would have been a Robb Flynn solo project, but that’s kind of what this band is now.”
Demmel went on to say that “Catharsis” — and album that he previously said he hates — was more about representing Flynn‘s vision of MACHINE HEAD, with minimal involvement from the rest of the group.
“I think there was a direction [Robb] wanted to go in,” he said. “In the very early stages, I had a song me and Dave [McClain, drums] were working on, and it was kind of a thrash song. And Robb came in and he was, like, ‘Nah, we’re not gonna play fast on this record.’ I got the sense that [it was] definitely something that we [were] not gonna do.”
Phil announced his exit from MACHINE HEAD in October, explaining at the time that he wanted “to step away and do something else musically.” Phil, who first played with MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn in VIO-LENCE in the late 1980s and early 1990s, went on to complete the Flynn-fronted act’s “Freaks & Zeroes Tour” last fall before officially leaving the band.
