If this isn’t a good start to the day we don’t know what is! Californian metal favourites Machine Head have just announced their return to the UK for a series of five very special club shows. The venues are places that only hold a few hundred people each, much much smaller than the theatres and occasionally arenas that Machine Head are used to playing in when they cross over to this side of the Atlantic. Beginning in Nottingham, the tour will also visit Edinburgh, Newcastle and Norwich before finishing off in Brighton.
Their frontman, the one and only Robb Flynn, explains the decision making process around playing shows much smaller than they’re used to:
“In keeping with the intimate club tour-vibe we are doing in the USA this summer, for our first time ever, we decided to blow off 90% of all Euro summer festivals, and hit the nooks and crannies of the UK and Europe as well. We will be doing no major cities in any territories throughout Europe and the UK for this first leg of 2014. No London, no Berlin, etc, and instead focusing on the die-hard Machine Head fans that who don’t often get the chance to see us because the travel is too far or too costly to get the big cities. I remember when we were out with Metallica doing festivals a few years ago, we played in a small out-of-the-way city in Denmark called Aarhus. We’d never played there let alone, ever even heard of the fucking place. We were all a bit grumbly before the show, and you know what? It ended up being one of the most fun shows we’ve ever done. Doing shows like this, it creates an energy, it creates a bond, something unbreakable, and it is really fucking fun. It’s Machine Head without all the big production, the bells and whistles, stripped down and raw. What will be really cool is that in the UK, we’ve never done a club tour, it happened so fast for us there that other than a handful of epically insane, wildly drunken Ten Ton Hammer club shows, we’ve only played bigger halls, so we are really looking forward to giving our fans something special there. Plus, we’ve been hearing from our Scottish fans for decades that we need to get to Edinburgh!!! So finally, 21 years into our existence, we’re coming and we’re ready to fucking plunder Scotland!!!!”
Full confirmation of the tour dates can be found below:
Machine Head UK Summer 2014 Club Tour Dates
Tue 29th Jul – NOTTINGHAM – Rescue Rooms
Thu 31st Jul – EDINBURGH – Liquid Rooms
Sat 2nd Aug – NEWCASTLE – University
Sun 3rd Aug – NORWICH – Waterfront
Mon 4th Aug – BRIGHTON – Concorde
Tickets will be on sale this Friday (11th of April) from 9am. Pricing information is still TBC. Machine Head are also releasing a very special vinyl as part of Record Store Day (participating locations can be found at https://www.recordstoreday.co.uk/participating-stores/). The band are releasing a demo version of a brand new song, Killers & Kings, on 10′ vinyl that comes in either red or blue and with multiple sleeve designs. On the B-side of the vinyl you’ll find two cover songs – Our Darkest Days’ and ‘Bleeding’ which are by the Californian hardcore band Ignite. So if you’re a vinyl collector and a Machine Head hardcore fan (a head case as Robb Flynn likes to call you) – you better get hunting. Further updates from Machine Head including news of their new album due this Summer via Nuclear Blast Entertainment will follow whenever we get it.
