“I rode my bike through the riots,” Robb Flynn remembers, thinking back to the disorder that spread across San Francisco’s 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. “People 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.”
They’ve become such a permanent, unquestioned fixture in the metal world that it’s easy to forget the monstrous impact of Machine Head’s first album, Burn My Eyes. Released by Roadrunner Records on August 9, 1994, it was hailed as an instant classic and became the label’s biggest-selling debut ever (an accolade it retained until Slipknot’s breakthrough in ’99). With its ground- breaking blend of thuggish grooves, vicious thrash and hip hop bravado, not to mention frontman Robb Flynn’s 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.
