Well over a month ago, we reported that Bay Area thrash legends VIO-LENCE were reuniting for just two shows in April at the Metro Operahouse in Oakland, California, and that they might consider more comeback shows and new music.
However, MACHINE HEAD‘s Robb Flynn – who was a member of VIO-LENCE from 1987 to 1992 – will not be part of the band’s reunion, and guitarist Phil Demmel recently talked to Decibel magazine about his absence:
We actually didn’t even approach Robb to do this. He’s always really worked pretty hard to not talk about Vio-lence or include Vio-lence in the past and this is something that, especially fresh off the Machine Head exit – yeah, he wasn’t approached.
This is something we’re doing without him; when we closed Vio-lence back in 2003 when I joined Machine Head, I was actually gonna write a Vio-lence record and shortly after I joined Machine Head, I was told that I couldn’t do that.
So Robb, he played in that last show and even his involvement in that last Vio-lence show back in 2003 was kinda… there are some memories from all of us about him being involved and playing the benefit with Sean [Killian, vocals] that was something special and he got to sing. We will do like we have done before, move on, without him.
Demmel joined MACHINE HEAD in 2003, a decade after the breakup of VIO-LENCE. He left MACHINE HEAD at the end of the group’s fall 2018 North American tour, saying it was “simply time” for him “to step away and do something else musically.”
The resurrected VIO-LENCE features four-fifths of the “Eternal Nightmare” lineup – Demmel, vocalist Sean Killian, bassist Deen Dell and drummer Perry Strickland – while Ray Vegas fills in for Flynn.
