Machine Head : Adam Duce quitte le groupe.

[Yathin Lizzy]

Le bassiste et avant-dernier membre original du groupe s'en va, en bons termes avec le groupe.

San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD have parted ways with bassist Adam Duce. The split is said to be "amicable," and MACHINE HEAD would like to wish Adam the best with his current and future endeavors. The band will continue on for the time being as a three-piece and has begun the writing process for the follow-up to 2011's "Unto The Locust". A late 2013 release is projected.

In a 2012 interview with Holland's FaceCulture, Duce stated about whether he felt any pressure following up 2007's "The Blackening": "I'm doing this for fun. If it doesn't work out and I don't get to make money doing this anymore, fuck it. If it's not fun, then I don't wanna do it. I don't expect to get rich doing this. I wanna have a good time and I wanna make some good music."

He continued: "I had some issues with [the writing] process [for 'Unto The Locust']. I kind of took myself out of it until it was time to write my bass lines. I wrote a bunch of music, or riffs, that Robb [Flynn, guitar/vocals] didn't have any idea what to do with vocally, and so he didn't wanna use any of that. But more importantly, I wrote lyrics that meant a lot to me and I gave it to him. I've given him page after page after page of lyrics. And it usually comes back that way, [where] he'll use a verse or a part of it or whatever — 'I'm gonna take this part and put it down here.' . . . whatever works for the cadence. But I got kind of burned on putting my soul out on a piece of paper and giving it to him and when I see it next time, there's no remnants of what the original idea was. And I was just like, 'You know what, dude?! I'm not giving you any more fucking lyrics, because I'm fucking sick of looking at this, the way that it fucking turns out.' I said, 'I'll work on it with you at the same time, but I'm not giving you any more lyrics. I'm not giving you pages of lyrics.' He was fucking angry at me for a while, but you know… that's fucking what happens."

Asked if he has ever thought about quitting the band, Adam said: "I've thought about quitting on different occasions, but I mean, Robb's thought about quitting on different occasions as well. Dave [McClain, drums] actually quit the band. I can safely say everybody's thought about quitting at one point or another."

Regarding whether he was happy with the things he could contribute to MACHINE HEAD, Adam said: "Well, I find what's important to me and where is my freedom. 'Cause that is what is important to me — the freedom aspect of it. Because making music is freedom to me. Probably [in] several different ways, because I wasn't allowed to have it while I was actually locked up. And just the freedom to go wherever you want to, the freedom to get yourself out of the way and let the music flow. with my bass lines — that's where I found it. And so when it's me and her [laughs], that's what I do here. That's my freedom."

[Psyko Killer]

Machine Head and bassist Adam Duce have parted ways. The split is amicable, and Machine Head would like to wish Adam the best with his current and future endeavors. The band will continue on for the time being as a three-piece and have begun the writing process for their follow-up to 2011's "Unto The Locust". A late 2013 release is projected.

Putain ça bouge beaucoup en ce moment dans les groupes, mais là ça me fait vraiment chier!

[Balin]

Sacrée surprise. C'était un des membres de départ non?

[mike-polar]

La loose!
Ça va être dur de le remplacer, il complémentait vraiment le chant de Flynn.

[BurningDarkness]

ça fait un bail qu'il ne s'entend plus avec Flynn et que celui-ci compose tout avec le batteur de toute façon...

[ominergy]

Oops d'après les échos de quelques copines qui sont rentrées backstage à l'époque du 2ème album ce mec est un porc, alors tant mieux pour l'image du groupe !

[Yathin Lizzy]

Arf, et elles y allaient pour parler philo tes copines en backstage ?

[Psyko Killer]

Sacrée surprise. C'était un des membres de départ non?

Yes, il ne reste plus que Flynn maintenant!

La bonne nouvelle étant qu'ils prévoient le nouvel album pour cette fin d'année!

[Mr. Gig]

À mon avis il ferait mieux de mettre un terme à Machine Head surtout, et se remettre aux choses sérieuses en reformant VIO-LENCE pour fêter les 25 ans d'"Eternal Nightmare"...

[Balin]

À mon avis il ferait mieux de mettre un terme à Machine Head surtout, et se remettre aux choses sérieuses en reformant VIO-LENCE pour fêter les 25 ans d'"Eternal Nightmare"...

JE DIS OUI MONSIEUR!

[Tony Le Pouilleux]

Arf, et elles y allaient pour parler philo tes copines en backstage ?

[BLCKME]

le mec devait vraiment en avoir marre d'entendre AWEEEESOME et on l'comprend

[ominergy]

Arf, et elles y allaient pour parler philo tes copines en backstage ?

Elles étaient jeunes et......attirées par Flynn (oui je sais ont peut faire des jeux de mots avec ce que je viens d'écrire).

[mike-polar]

Le bassiste et avant-dernier membre original du groupe s'en va, en bons termes avec le groupe.

Pas si bon les termes si on en croit Robb Flynn. Il a été viré vu que ça faisait un moment qu'il ne branlait plus rien.

2-11-13
As much as I do not want to write this journal, I promised you I’d write them “at least once a week”. Good, bad, happy or sad… so this is what has to be done.

2-11-13.
That is the date we fired Adam Duce. That is the day that I had to tell Adam that after 21 years of being in a band together, I just couldn’t take it anymore.

That is the day I said “My hope is that this can be amicable.”
The words sounded like someone else had spoken them.
It was like being outside of my body watching someone else deliver these painful words.
But, it was me saying it.
And we all said it.

We had our say sitting in our jam room in Oakland. Dave [McClain, drums] said it. Joseph (our manager) said it. Phil [Demmel, guitars] said it. We all said that we couldn’t take being in a band with him anymore. That if this didn’t happen, we were going to break up the band.
It was hard. One of the hardest moments of my life.
It was also a long time coming.
We may have fired Adam on 2-11-13, but Adam quit Machine Head well over a decade ago. He just never bothered to tell anyone… but we all knew it.
Contrary to popular belief, being in a band is tough. Really fucking tough. It’s the toughest sonofabitch you’ll ever come across in your life and it will beat the living shit out of you 80% of the time. Many times it feels like one big rollercoaster, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. There are wins and losses seemingly every single day. Being in a band is one of life’s strangest gambles.
But when you do win, when you win that 20%, well… it truly is salvation. It’s what makes eating the other 80% of that shit-sandwich bearable. It’s where “those” stories come from. It can be the best job you’ll ever have and unquestionably one of the hardest you’ll ever have. But until you’ve done it for 20+ years, you have no clue. Until you’ve held a band together for 20+ years, you really don’t know jack shit about it.
You think you do.
You don’t.
A band is a dysfunctional family. A brotherhood, a family business, and a renaissance-era-court. You’re room-mates in studio-apartment-on-wheels for years-at-a-time, 24-hours-a-day. Plus you’re in the pressure cooker of the spotlight, every move analyzed, read into, or attacked. Everybody wants something from you, everybody wants to be your friend, everybody loves you, everybody can do so-much-better-for-you-than-the-people-you-have-now. Some people try and turn you against each other, and everyone wants to take credit for your success.
Often time you’re enemies. At odds and fighting about something, but “pretending” everything is “fine” onstage.
But it isn’t…
You just wear a mask that looks like it’s fine, and after 20 years, we know that mask so well, it slides on way too fuckin’ easy.
Adam hasn’t been happy in this band for a long time. But how do you leave? To a guy like Adam everything is either winning or losing. A stunning victory or the ultimate failure. There was no in-between. And while that sounds great for a TV show or an interview-sound-bite, or even a John Wayne movie that wraps up in 90 minutes… life just isn’t like that.
And life certainly isn’t like that for a band like Machine Head. A band who operate in the upper-middle-tier. For us, there are no stunning victories, only respectable wins. No ultimate failures, just better-luck-next-times. We carved a niche, we OWN that niche, but it’s still just a niche. Nothing wrong with that.
No matter how un-happy or fed up he got, quitting the band would be seen as “losing” or a “failure”. Truth be told, he was sick of it. Sick of touring, sick of recording, sick of practicing, sick of looking at album artwork, sick of being-on-a-team-but-never-getting-the-ball, sick of yearning-for-the-honeymoon-to-resume when 20 years deep it never does. Sick of never quite hitting the big-time, sick of carving the niche… sick of caring.
I don’t blame him. It’s hard to keep the passion.

But he just wouldn’t quit.

We wanted him to quit. We were hoping he would quit, “guys, my heart isn’t in this anymore, it was a good run, later dayz”. We didn’t want it to come to this…
But he wouldn’t.
I didn’t feel anything as I drove away from the jam room that night. When I awoke the next morning I didn’t feel anything either. I wasn’t “numb,” I still “felt”, was just kinda blank. But three days after the meeting, an argument broke out in the jam room about how conflicted I felt about it. Then I cried.
I cried and cried.
I’ve cried every day since. I’ve been an emotional wreck. I cried writing this. I was sick the day that we announced it (11 days and 2 General Journals after actually doing it), walking around about to vomit for hours.
I met with him for a couple hours last Wednesday, met with him yesterday. It’s civil.
I don’t know what else to say.
I don’t have some inspirational quote to end with here. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you everything is gonna be all right, or that’s it gonna be the same. At this moment I can’t even bring myself to say that it’s going to be better.
Why?
Because it sucks.
It fucking sucks.
It sucks for everyone who tried to save this.
It sucks more than you can imagine…
It’s a horrible relief.

[BurningDarkness]

Le bassiste et avant-dernier membre original du groupe s'en va, en bons termes avec le groupe.

Pas si bon les termes si on en croit Robb Flynn. Il a été viré vu que ça faisait un moment qu'il ne branlait plus rien.

Oui c'est ce que je disais mais là au moins c'est clair.
Dans les interviews à l'époque de la sortie de "Unto the locust", Flynn disait bien que lui et Mc Clain avaient tout composé, avec l'aide de Demmel, mais que Duce ne voulait pas s'y remettre directement après la tournée. Puis vu comment ils s'étaient déjà pris la tête...
Ca n'a pas dû être facile pour Demmel non plus car il avait intégré Machine Head par l'intermédiaire de Duce davantage que par Flynn (malgré leur passé commun)...

[Yathin Lizzy]

À mon avis il ferait mieux de mettre un terme à Machine Head surtout, et se remettre aux choses sérieuses en reformant VIO-LENCE pour fêter les 25 ans d'"Eternal Nightmare"...

Ah oui c'est clair qu'il a plus de chance de gagner du pognon en faisant ça, Robb Flynn !

[mike-polar]

ouais trop, ils pourraient même faire la tête d'affiche du Hellfest le dimanche!

[BLCKME]

dans la valley juste avant manilla road alors

[Mr. Gig]

Non mais je suis bien d'accord là-dessus, en revanche j'aurais franchement du mal à comprendre qu'un fan de Machine Head un tant soit peu ouvert d'esprit ne se soit jamais intéressé à Vio-lence ou Forbidden.

Que ça soit pas sa came je peux tout à fait le comprendre, mais y aurait quand même une partie du public, aussi dérisoire soit-elle, qui doit aimer le Thrash d'époque, non, c'est complètement con ce que je dis ?

[mike-polar]

Pour te répondre en toute sincérité je suis quasiment sûr que la nouvelle vague de fans que le groupe a rameuté surtout depuis "The Blackening" n'en a sûrement jamais entendu parler et ne sont même pas forcément fans de thrash. C'est plutôt Trivium et Suicide Silence qui les excite

Par contre, ceux qui se sont principalement interessés aux débuts du groupe devraient connaître il me semble.

[Yathin Lizzy]

Non mais je suis bien d'accord là-dessus, en revanche j'aurais franchement du mal à comprendre qu'un fan de Machine Head un tant soit peu ouvert d'esprit ne se soit jamais intéressé à Vio-lence ou Forbidden.

Que ça soit pas sa came je peux tout à fait le comprendre, mais y aurait quand même une partie du public, aussi dérisoire soit-elle, qui doit aimer le Thrash d'époque, non, c'est complètement con ce que je dis ?

T'inquiète, j'avais bien compris
Oui oui cette frange de la population est existante mais pas suffisante à mon avis pour que Robb Flynn puisse songer y consacrer de l'énergie.
Après dans le cadre d'un concert souvenir ou quelques fests.... pourquoi pas oui.

[BLCKME]

Vio-lence ou Forbidden...je connais ces groupes mais je ne savais pas qu'ils avaient un rapport avec MH

[Yathin Lizzy]

Pour Forbidden, il a fait partie des débuts du groupe et est crédité sur 3 titres du premier album mais il n'y joue pas.
En revanche pour Vio-Lence il était guitariste et compositeur avec Phil Demmel sur toute la disco.

[Balin]

Vio-lence ou Forbidden...je connais ces groupes mais je ne savais pas qu'ils avaient un rapport avec MH

Les deux gratteux actuels de MH sont les gratteux de Vio-lence. Mais bon je suppose que tu le sais maintenant.

[Yathin Lizzy]

Oui c'est à peu de chose près ce que j'ai dit juste au-dessus....