{"id":463878,"date":"2026-06-06T11:14:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/463878\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T11:14:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:14:24","slug":"machine-head-the-story-behind-the-burn-my-eyes-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/463878\/","title":{"rendered":"Machine Head: the story behind the Burn My Eyes album"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI rode my bike through the riots,\u201d Robb Flynn remembers, thinking back to the disorder that spread across San Francisco\u2019s streets in 1992, sparked by the riots in LA, where more than 50 people would be killed and more than 2,000 injured. The unrest had begun after the acquittal of four white police officers charged with beating black motorist Rodney King. \u201cPeople were fighting police, cars were being lit on fire. Police were trying to chase me down, gang bangers were trying to chase me down, it was crazy, but I just had to feel that chaos, soak it in. I was possessed to be there, and a lot of that intensity came out in Machine Head.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve become such a permanent, unquestioned fixture in the metal world that it\u2019s easy to forget the monstrous impact of Machine Head\u2019s first album, Burn My Eyes. Released by Roadrunner Records<\/a> on August 9, 1994, it was hailed as an instant classic and became the label\u2019s biggest-selling debut ever (an accolade it retained until Slipknot<\/a>\u2019s breakthrough in \u201999). With its ground- breaking blend of thuggish grooves, vicious thrash<\/a> and hip hop bravado, not to mention frontman Robb Flynn\u2019s incendiary lyrics, Burn My Eyes did more than most to redefine metal in the 90s. In fact, forging a new path for metal was precisely what Robb had in mind when he formed Machine Head as a side-project, while still a member of Bay Area thrashers Vio-lence.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI love those guys and I loved all the music that we made together, but I was ready for something else in my life,\u201d Robb recalls today. \u201cSo I quit Vio-lence in \u201992. Right around that time, Ministry<\/a> needed a touring guitar player. They were fucking massive at that point, it was the Psalm 69 era. They wanted to hear some stuff and I don\u2019t know why, but I had some chip on my shoulder and didn\u2019t want to send them old music. I wanted to send them new music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n

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Robb had already written a handful of new songs, including Death Church, a slow-burning monster that was purposefully distinct from anything he\u2019d written with Vio-lence or his other former band, Forbidden. With syncopated, grinding riffs redolent of Godflesh and Neurosis, and lyrics that went straight for religion\u2019s jugular, Machine Head already had a strong identity. Meanwhile, Robb needed help to record his audition for Ministry\u2019s touring guitarist role, so he enlisted drummer Chris Kontos, a veteran of the Bay Area hardcore scene with the likes of Attitude Adjustment and Grinch.<\/p>\n

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Machine Head\u2019s pre-Burn My Eyes line-up: (from left) Dave Costanza, Logan Mader, Robb Flynn and Adam Duce (Image credit: Press)<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of Chris\u2019s bands had a rehearsal place in Oakland, three blocks from where the stabbing incident happened at the gas station [as documented in Machine Head\u2019s Triple Beam, from 2018\u2019s Catharsis<\/a> album]. So going into this neighbourhood, we were bringing guns, we had hoodies up, just trying to be super-incognito and it was tense! But we got in there and Chris had this high- tech boombox so we could record in stereo, and we just sat and jammed. It was exciting! As far as I was concerned, that was it. Chris was in bands that were doing stuff\u2026 I was at ground zero\u2026 I\u2019m hoping to tour with Ministry\u2026 so there was no talk of him joining the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As Robb notes with a wry smile, the call from Ministry never came. Instead, Robb powered ahead with his new band. Completed by bassist Adam Duce, guitarist Logan Mader and drummer Tony Costanza, with whom Robb wrote several songs that would end up on Burn My Eyes, the first Machine Head line-up set about establishing themselves as a ferocious new force in the Bay Area and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cTony got us our first gig in Las Vegas, a club show,\u201d Robb recalls. \u201cWe went down to Vegas, played to 40 people and then got wasted! Ha ha! After that, we had a couple of things under our belts and right about that time Joey [Huston] became our manager and that\u2019s when things really started happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If Machine Head\u2019s demo hadn\u2019t been enough to convince Al Jourgensen, it certainly grabbed the attention of Roadrunner Records, who signed the band in 1993 before even having seen them play live. With the likes of Fear Factory<\/a>, Sepultura, Obituary and Type O Negative on their books, Roadrunner were the perfect home for Robb\u2019s epoch-wrenching take on the metal blueprint: all the band needed was a debut album worthy of their burgeoning reputation. With Tony Costanza departing and Chris Kontos returning, this time on a permanent basis, Machine Head were ready to deliver the goods on tape. Recorded at Berkeley\u2019s Fantasy Studios, and produced by legendary metal guru Colin Richardson, Burn My Eyes\u2019 ultra-modern metal anthems perfectly encapsulated both Robb\u2019s intense focus and the self-inflicted chaos of the young band\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a crazy, intense time. We\u2019d go in and record every day,\u201d says Robb. \u201cThe guys were all smoking weed. I was sober because I was so fucking focused on getting shit right. But Chris tells this story about how we smoked so much weed that we set off the fire alarms and almost killed everybody with the Halon gas that was going to be released. It sucks all of the oxygen out! Ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years on, few fans would dispute the enduring power of songs like Davidian<\/a>, Block and Blood For Blood. With enough old-school bite to keep the thrash contingent happy and vast quantities of contemporary punch and invention, Burn My Eyes made a decent fist of uniting the tribes. The album\u2019s impact was immediate, particularly in the UK and Europe, but until those sales figures rolled in, Robb remained unsure whether the band had a bright future.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe didn\u2019t think we were going to conquer the world,\u201d he shrugs. \u201cWe knew the shit we were playing was super-aggressive and was never going to fly on the radio. I wasn\u2019t sitting there thinking, \u2018Oh this is going to set the world on fire!\u2019 I just remember trying to make it as heavy, intense, pissed-off, experimental and wild as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Machine Head – Davidian [OFFICIAL VIDEO] – YouTube
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Was he conscious of his sound being genuinely new and groundbreaking? Machine Head got tagged with the Pantera\/\u2018groove metal\u2019 thing, but they never really sounded like that…<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that\u2019s something that got stuck with us because Pantera were popular at the time. Did we like Pantera? Of course. I\u2019m not gonna say that they weren\u2019t an influence. When we were making Burn My Eyes, I was all about Dimebag\u2019s guitar tone, it was the sickest shit ever! But musically we were coming from a different place. We were coming from Metallica<\/a> and Slayer, we were coming from Neurosis, we were coming from hardcore and rap. It was just this confluence of music and passion and drive, in a really intense time in our lives, and it became this crazy mishmash of music that really shouldn\u2019t have worked. No one realised it was possible. But we did it and it went on to change stuff. It\u2019s nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Machine Head\u2019s music was an unstoppable force, Robb Flynn\u2019s identity as a lyricist was established with similar vigour on Burn My Eyes.<\/p>\n

Remorselessly furious but literate and inventive, he wrote about the bloody Waco Siege of 1993 in legendary opener Davidian. David Koresh, leader of religious cult the Branch Davidians, was holed up in his compound in Texas when a stand-off started between him and the government, who wanted to arrest him on charges of illegal firearms and explosives. Fifty-one days into the siege, he and almost 80 followers died in a fire following an FBI assault. The FBI maintain they did not start the fires.<\/p>\n

Robb wrote about the riots in LA in 1992 in twisted interlude Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies and album closer Block. Meanwhile, other songs took pointed jabs at religion and political corruption, while slow-burner I\u2019m Your God Now tackled the horrors of drug addiction.<\/p>\n

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Machine live in 1994 (Image credit: Mick Hutson\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

Three decades on, it all seems disturbingly relevant to mankind\u2019s current state of disarray. When Robb expressed doubts about the lyrics to Davidian (\u2018Let freedom ring with a shotgun blast!\u2019) after the mass shooting in Vegas in October 2017, it emphasised the edgy, subversive power that Machine Head were wielding back in those early days: this was music born of chaos and rage. No compromise, no fucks given.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel proud of what I was able to say in those songs,\u201d Robb states. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say it\u2019s political, but songs like Davidian and Block were documenting all the crazy shit that was going on. Until then, there was a lot of fantasy stuff in metal and I couldn\u2019t connect with it. Rap and punk rock were still about the streets and protest and anger. Anger, whether it was right or wrong, just spraying it everywhere, is definitely what was getting me off.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it turned out, a lot of people shared Robb\u2019s proclivity for fury. Within a matter of months, Machine Head were being talked about as heavyweights, and following a major European tour as main support to Slayer, the band were soon back as headliners. The rest, as they say, is history \u2013 albeit history with a shitload of ups, downs and unexpected detours.<\/p>\n

Today, Robb is a very different man from the incensed, snotty hooligan who bellowed those Burn My Eyes classics. But despite being older and wiser, there lingers a sense that if a riot breaks out any time soon, Robb will be on his bike and into the fray before you can say \u2018fuck it all\u2019. This autumn, Oakland\u2019s premier riot-starters ride again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about what would\u2019ve happened if I had got the Ministry gig,\u201d chuckles Robb. \u201cMachine Head may never have fucking happened. Life is so crazy like that. Burn My Eyes could\u2019ve been our only chance, so we had to come out swinging and swinging harder than any motherfucker out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 323. <\/p>\n

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