Roadrunner Records

This is the long awaited and speculated upon collaboration between Opeth guitarist Michael Akerfeldt and Porcupine Tree frontman and solo artist Steven Wilson, and considering the history, it hàs been a long time coming.

Machine Head is an American trash metal band from Oakland, California (Bay area). The band was formed in 1992, and was founded by Adam Duce and Robb Flynn. The band came to life when Flynn felt musically unfulfilled in previous band Vio-lence and requested to start a side project. When his request was denied, he left the band and formed Machine Head in 1992 with Adam Duce, Logan Mader and Tony Constanza.

9 years after they give us their First live album, the Machine head posse is ready to deliver the good once again with this very fine encore that was named: ‘Machine Fucking Head Live’. The content on these 2 silver disc where digitally captured for all of us during the UK-leg of their massive tour in support of their latest effort ‘Unto The Locust’. Everybody that saw Robb Flynn and his crew during that tour knows that Machine Head has made an incredible progression when it come to playing live.

Down, who still play their typical mix of sludge metal and classic rock, prefer to take their time. The band started already back in 1991, but The Purple is only their fourth album to date. The difficulty in judging this album is that I started to like it after quite some effort to dig and try to find interesting elements In the beginning it sounded rather typical and my initial impression was that few things were going on.

When I listened to this album, I couldn’t shake of the impression that this band, or it’s music, has certain similarities with what a band like Fall Out Boy brings.  Do they take themselves seriously, or is it their intention to put some humor in their music? The music of Royal Republic can best be described as hard rock with a good dose of punk thrown in, but brought in a rather radio- friendly way.