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Sharon den Adel laughs a lot as she speaks. She makes for entertaining company and seems to exude both a calm, confident air and an overwhelmingly positive attitude. She looks to be on the verge of tears, however, as she recalls the UK tour that was her worst ever moment in Within Temptation, the band she co-founded with her high school sweetheart, husband-to-be, songwriting partner and guitarist Robert Westerholt.

The pair had been the beating heart of the band since its inception in 1996, but the pressures of burgeoning success and combining a simultaneous romantic and working relationship had simply become too much. It was 2007, and their fourth album, The Heart Of Everything, had propelled them to worldwide success. It debuted at No.1 in the Netherlands, making it their second album to top the charts in their homeland, but they had also broken into the US Billboard charts for the first time.

The record was widely seen as a pinnacle of symphonic metal, and it paved the way for a major world tour. Behind the scenes, though, things had reached an impasse.

“We had America done, and then a European tour, and it was terrible,” Sharon recalls. “The tour wasn’t terrible, we had a lot of success, but [Robert and I] were not in a good place together. Eventually we broke up and we still had to go through England. And that was the worst tour ever, because we had already split up and still had to do it. It was agony, but I think the audience loved it, because I never had so much passion as at that time. I was just screaming it all out!”

The period nearly saw the end of Within Temptation, but the pair decided there was a lot worth salvaging, in both musical and personal terms. They set about redefining how they could work and live together, and the band continued to cement their ongoing position as one of Europe’s most successful metal bands.

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Worldwide arena tours and chart-topping albums seemed a long way away when the members of Within Temptation first got together in the small town of Waddinxveen in South Holland. Sharon was a grunge kid who was singing in a band project in school. Schoolmate Robert Westerholt, meanwhile, had a series of ‘proper’ bands, and Sharon was happy to jump in when the singer of one of them skipped one too many sessions.

After morphing through a few more versions, Within Temptation were born, and they quickly began work on their 1997 debut album, Enter. As well as Sharon’s soaring vocals, the album made use of Robert’s gruff death metal growls and heavy doom riffs. The symphonic elements were yet to crystalise, but there was a darkly lustrous sweep that owed more than a little to the arch goth-metal of Paradise Lost’s aptly titled Gothic. The band embarked on a brief tour of the Netherlands, and their fifth ever gig was at Dynamo Open Air, which at the time was one of Europe’s biggest festivals.

“It was the most amazing moment at that point in my life, but it was also the most scary, because I had no clue how anything worked. We were still figuring things out and we were playing for 10,000 people in a tent,” Sharon recalls today. “Our record label was great at promoting us, and when we came to the festival there wasn’t a wall that didn’t have my face on it. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, I see myself a thousand times. But there were 10,000 people going, ‘Who the heck are this band and why is everybody talking about them?’”

Even so, playing in a metal band in the Netherlands in the late 90s was more a calling than a career plan. The likes of Pestilence and The Gathering had enjoyed limited international success, but it did not look like a fast track to fame and fortune, and in the band’s early days Sharon also worked at a fashion company. As a child she had dreamed of being a designer, but practicalities funnelled her into the management side – until Within Temptation gave her the chance to combine two of her greatest passions.

“When we started with this very epic sound, I felt like, ‘This is my chance.’ I always felt like it fit the music. If you make epic-sounding music, you need an epic dress as well,” Sharon says. She remains heavily involved in the band’s strong visual presentation to this day, even if she had to nudge her bandmates at certain points along the way. “We started in pirate blouses,” she says. “And one of them I made myself for Robert. Actually, it was one of the pieces that I had to deliver to get my degree.”

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Their second album, 2000’s Mother Earth, was a watershed moment for Within Temptation and the nascent symphonic metal scene in general. The sweeping Ice Queen single became a surprise hit, and the band found themselves rising stars in Europe.

2004 follow-up The Silent Force continued the band’s ascent as they further explored grandiose elements. Over in Finland, Nightwish were doing something not too dissimilar, but Sharon insists there was no rivalry between the two bands.

“It was in the minds of journalists and it was rivalry that they created,” she shrugs. Sharon would later duet with original Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen on Within Temptation track Paradise (What About Us?), and Tarja joined the Dutch band as a special guest on parts of last year’s Bleed Out tour.

“Our paths didn’t cross for a long while, which is strange, because there were so few women in metal back then,” Sharon says. “It would have been nice to have someone like her to confide in. It is sometimes tough to be on the road with only men.”

A notable tour that didn’t feature men only was the band’s first trip to the US, where they played alongside Lacuna Coil, The Gathering, In This Moment, Stolen Babies and Kylesa on a tour dubbed The Hottest Chicks In Metal Tour 2007.

“I didn’t know it was the Hottest Chicks tour until I was on the airplane going over to America,” Sharon says. “I found it hilarious. It’s just a way to sell the tour, of course, and I understand where it comes from, but there would never be The Hottest Men In Metal Tour.”

That tour was in support of 2007’s The Heart Of Everything, which saw the band hit the pinnacle of their pure symphonic metal era. The US leg saw them playing small clubs, but their profile was growing, and in Europe they were selling out theatres and appearing at major festivals such as France’s Hellfest, Austria’s Nova Rock and Download in the UK. They were now major stars, but they were never really a band for rock star shenanigans.

“We had the occasional private jet moment,” says Sharon with a laugh. “I remember playing the Desert Rock festival in Dubai, and all the bands were picked up in these huge Hummers in different colours. We were treated like royalty. You can enjoy it, but you have to realise it’s not real life. It will ruin you in the end if you buy into it.”

Despite the growing success, they avoided many of the temptations of the road. Where some bands have drug dealers on speed dial, Within Temptation would travel with their racquets and would occasionally employ a professional tennis coach to come out to them. The fact that Sharon and Robert had welcomed their first child together also helped keep them grounded, but added to the pressures on the couple, which came to a head on the tour for Heart Of Everything and their subsequent, if ultimately temporary, split.

“It was something that was bound to happen, I guess, because we’ve been school sweethearts since we were 18. You grow up and you’re in a different place, a different person,” Sharon sighs. “We just grew apart because you do everything together. You write together, you perform together, you have a family together. And I do not suggest anyone does that. You need to have space on your own to develop, but also to have something different to talk about with your partner.”

There followed several months of soul-searching that Sharon describes as “the heaviest and the darkest period of us being together”. The song In And Out of Love that Sharon recorded with Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren was a reflection on the process, and her first real inkling that she might want to do something outside Within Temptation.

Eventually though, Sharon and Robert got back together and looked at new ways of working within the band. “He said, ‘I can’t be in the band anymore if you want to have a relationship’, and I said, ‘I think that’s a good thing, because we’re like two captains on the boat and we are killing each other in front of everyone else,’” Sharon recalls. “We had an Eastern European tour and we went without him. I said, ‘You have to take care of Luna, our baby, and I’m going to go on tour and we’ll figure it out when I come back.”

When Sharon returned, they spent a few months figuring out how to make their relationship work. “We were actually dating again a little bit, going out together again,” she says. “That was a starting point.”

The long-term solution involved Robert stepping back from touring completely to look after their expanding family, while remaining a pivotal songwriter. “He does one-off things with us, but he doesn’t miss really being on tour with us,” says Sharon. “He’s more the composer and he enjoys enjoying the show from afar.”

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Having taken the symphonic elements as far as they could on The Heart Of Everything, and the spectacular orchestra-accompanied Black Symphony show and live album, Within Temptation entered a more experimental phase. 2011’s The Unforgiving was a concept album with related short films and comic books that embraced their 80s musical influences.

2014’s Hydra was a many-headed beast packed with musical twists and guest appearances, the most surprising of which was And We Run featuring rapper Xzibit.

“I think we were testing ourselves through this whole time,” Sharon nods. “It was that whole arc of wanting to try different things and to move on as a band. Just struggling to find our new identity a little bit. The Xzibit song drew some negativity but we loved it, and I still think it’s a great song. I’ve always also liked the combination of rock and rap together, right from Aerosmith with Run DMC.”

The cycle spun on, and at the end of another world tour supporting Hydra, the whole band found themselves burned out. The singer in particular found it difficult to return to Within Temptation and experienced crippling writer’s block.

“I didn’t feel it anymore, perhaps also because of things that were happening in my personal life,” she says. “My dad was diagnosed with cancer and I felt the need to be at home a lot. At the same time, I needed to make a different kind of music, because I was in a different kind of emotional world.”

The outcome was a solo project dubbed My Indigo, which resulted in an album of the same name. It was released, Sharon says, on the day of her dad’s funeral. It was a more vulnerable and introspective work that also helped to unblock the creative channels, ultimately leading to new Within Temptation music in 2019’s industrial-tinged Resist and their most recent album, 2023’s Bleed Out. The latter could be seen as the band’s most political release yet, written against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the title track dealing with the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by Iran’s ‘morality’ police.

Sharon also travelled to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, to film a video for standalone single A Fool’s Parade featuring Ukrainian artist Alex Yarmak. “I felt it was pretty safe,” she recalls. “We had a few air alerts while there, and I did get a bit of a scare, because it was a MiG apparently, and I was told they can have supersonic bombs that can destroy a specific area in a few seconds. So, OK, we’re going down to the metro station now [to shelter].”

For Sharon it was a profound experience, and another notable chapter in what has been an extraordinary career – and one that’s certainly not over yet. “Next year we’ll have been in existence for 30 years,” she muses. “I don’t know how or even if we’ll celebrate it, because mostly we never look back. We want to do a new album with new ideas again. That’s the drug that we need, and it’s all about looking forwards.”

Within Temptation play Download and Wacken festivals this summer.

Paul Travers has spent the best part of three decades writing about punk rock, heavy metal, and every associated sub-genre for the UK’s biggest rock magazines, including Kerrang! and Metal Hammer. 

Just across the bridge from Oakland, California, Robb Flynn from Machine Head is climbing through a hole cut into a chain-link fence. He’s at the sprawling former Naval Air Station in Alameda, decommissioned nearly 30 years ago, and he scrambles onto the rock embankment that separates the ocean from a disused airfield and a marsh. He’s also moving fast, a heavy metal lifer in black marching toward the San Francisco skyline on the horizon, with hardly a look back.

The longstanding leader, singer and guitarist of Machine Head is also trespassing today. The discarded military base is largely open to public exploration, with miles of buildings boarded up and abandoned to graffiti and broken windows. It also happens to be prime waterfront real estate, and several airplane hangars have been revitalised as breweries and wineries, where Robb will be soon enough.

But for the moment, he’s taking a stroll far past a fence meant to keep civilians out. Metal Hammer is along for the ride on this impromptu tour of the Bay Area, the beloved once and forever home to the veteran musician. And several minutes later, a private security car rolls up to the hole in the metal perimeter and waves us back.

After returning to the fence, Robb walks over to the black security SUV and looks inside with a thumbs up. “Are we good?” The female guard doesn’t seem especially concerned, but says of the marsh, “If you fall, we’re not going to find you.”

Hours earlier, we’re in the private studio he calls Robb’s Jam Room, a spot he’s had for the last seven years, created in the old meat packing district adjacent to Jack London Square. Dressed in layers of black denim, his black beard full and streaked with grey, Robb lifts up the baritone Flying V guitar in his hands, chipped and scratched from 15 years of recording and road work, and says proudly, “This is my main Flying V. It’s just beat to shit and been fricking dropped a hundred times and had beer and vodka poured all over it.”

Nailed to the blood-red wall behind him are banners commemorating 30 years of the band’s history, from Burn My Eyes to The Blackening to Of Kingdom And Crown. Down the hall is Shark Bite Studios, where Machine Head recorded some of those records along with parts of the new album, Unatoned.

Produced by Robb and Zack Ohren, it was recorded between July 2023 and December 2024, and played by the returning line-up of bassist Jared MacEachern and drummer Matt Alston, and is the first to feature the band’s newest member, former Havok guitarist Reece Scruggs.

“He’s done, like, 200 shows with us, so it doesn’t feel new,” Robb says. “He brought some killer riffs.”

Above the front door is a painting of Dimebag Darrell, a onetime drinking buddy and touring partner, depicted raising his guitar and accompanied by text recreating the Pantera song-title, Strength Beyond Strength. He smiles and says, “We toured for three and a half months together. I had a lot of whiskey with Dimebag.”

The studio gets more use now than ever, with a livestreaming show performed weekly (when Machine Head aren’t on tour) direct from Robb’s Jam Room. His Electric Happy Hour started during the pandemic, as a way for Robb to keep connected to fans during a time of crisis and an especially dark and uncertain period for the music world, transmitting metal and good cheer initially through his iPhone.

“I never thought I’d go down a route like this in my life,” he says, “but I was climbing the walls during the pandemic.”

More significant to him personally is that the studio is here in Oakland. This is the city of his birth, and he’s bounced around the Bay Area ever since, spending his first years growing up in San Lorenzo.

“It keeps you humble, that’s for sure, ’cause it’s still a pretty rough-and-tumble town,” he explains. “People think like, ‘Oh, it’s California.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it’s Oakland.’”

To demonstrate, Robb leads Metal Hammer into his SUV to begin the tour of his hometown, to point out some of the Oakland spots that mean something to him, past and present. First we pass a boarded-up music venue called The Metro, the site of many birthday celebration shows.

“It was painted all black on the inside, and stayed open until dawn serving alcohol after hours,” Robb says with a grin from behind the wheel. “Very sad when it went away. It was such a good vibe.”

Then there’s the Merchant’s Saloon, with hand-painted anchors and stars by the door. In the window is a sticker reading ‘Fuck Off’ and another with a ‘No Nazis’ symbol.

“This is probably the best bar in all of Oakland,” Robb nods knowingly. “It’s been here since 1916. It’s a legit dive bar. It’s got a latrine that goes around the bar, so people could pee at the bar and it would drain out into the street. That’s how OG it is. Jared and I go there quite a bit.”

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Born in Oakland in 1967, Robb grew up on these streets and all over the Bay Area, a region known for decades of vibrant music scenes, including an early explosion of thrash. It was a metal revolution defined by Exodus, Testament and, ultimately, a young band of expats from LA called Metallica.

After growing up with the sounds of Van Halen and AC/DC in his ears, Robb’s discovery of thrash was a revelation: “I was crazy about it instantly.”

It was a life-altering time he pays tribute to on the new album’s first song, Atomic Revelations, with a sound that he calls a “love letter” to his hometown with a speedy blast of “pure Bay Area thrash metal”, and lyrics obsessed with the open-ended danger to future generations from nuclear waste.

He quickly had real dreams of making his own noise onstage, but he was a committed fan as well, a euphoric teenage commando of the circle-pit and stagedives, regularly coming home with injuries. One night at an early Slayer show, he was up front as usual, and the packed crowd began to fall over, leaning hard to the left, when another dude’s elbow pressed against his ribs. “In slow motion, my rib goes pop!” he remembers. “Oh my God, I was in so much fucking pain.”

But he wasn’t about to leave. He was already hammered, and when Slayer came on, he raged for the next 45 minutes. Then he paid for it with a month of painful healing of his broken bone.

The journey from fan to creator didn’t take long. In 1985, while in high school, he co-founded a thrash band called Inquisitor, soon to be renamed Forbidden Evil (and later shortened to Forbidden after Robb’s exit in 1987). Then there was Vio-lence, with future Machine Head guitarist Phil Demmel.

Robb began Machine Head while living in Fremont, which was 60 miles away from the clubs in San Francisco and Oakland, so the locals threw keg parties in backyards and living rooms. The main difference from a full-on thrash show in the city was that many in the crowd were older, and craving covers of classic hard rock.

“We’re out there playing Black Magic by Slayer and A Lesson In Violence by Exodus and Whiplash by Metallica, and they don’t know any of these songs because this is underground music,” Robb remembers. “They’re like, ‘Hey, man, play some Zeppelin!’ So they might want to kick your ass because you’re not playing Black Sabbath. And then you go to the thrash clubs, and if you weren’t fast enough or heavy enough, they’d kick your ass for not being thrash.”

Even so, at the keggers, Machine Head mixed the covers with thrash originals, and got some local momentum, moving up to church halls and community centres. Then the band finally made it to Ruthie’s Inn, the notorious thrash nightclub in Berkeley.

It was their first legitimate club gig, as one of four bands opening for Metal Church. Robb was just 18 and the band were hardly paid anything. It didn’t matter. “About three songs in, a circle-pit broke out,” Robb says, recalling their very first performance there. “I was like, ‘OK, we did it.’ We knew that we were heavy enough and fast enough. It was like the stamp of approval. It was a big moment for us.”

By the early 90s, the young rock fanatic was also working in catering backstage for legendary concert promoter Bill Graham Presents, giving him a front row seat to the music business.

“Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots came up, and I gave him a plate of enchiladas and a Machine Head demo,” Robb recalls. “He was super-annoyed, which I totally get now. I was just hustling and grinding but it was good. I dealt drugs for a while.”

He now figures he attended about 100 shows a year of all kinds. He saw Soundgarden on Louder Than Love, Alice In Chains play to just a few dozen people on their first album, Nirvana in the early days of Nevermind. He remembers witnessing locals Green Day play to 500 people in the nightclub Berkeley Square before Dookie was released, plus multiple shows by Metallica, Motörhead and many other “really killer, amazing moments”.

By then, the Bay Area thrash scene was on its way out. Grunge was coming in, and so was the hard funk of Primus, Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “The bottom of everything drops out at some point. It was killer for a good seven years. It was insane. And then a new style came along,” he says.

Even Metallica had evolved with The Black Album, and as a fan and fellow artist, Robb fully approved. “They were this band from the Bay Area that had this incredible phenomenon of an album, and then it changed into something cool,” he smiles. “It wasn’t thrash anymore. It was just something else.”

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We’re driving past a huge homeless encampment on the streets of East Oakland. It’s an entire village built from scraps of wood, metal and cardboard on a narrow traffic island between opposing lanes of traffic.

“It’s fucking intense,” Robb says. “It’s been like this for so fucking long, I don’t remember when it wasn’t like this.”

Minutes later, Robb parks the SUV, strolls down a sidewalk and stops next to an old Victorian two-storey building. The aged wooden exterior is painted green. This was an early home to Machine Head, where a friend had a marijuana-growing business upstairs and a spot for band rehearsals downstairs.

“We jammed there for a while,” he says, noting that it’s where they wrote songs for Machine Head’s 1994 debut album, Burn My Eyes, including standout cut Davidian. Their A&R guy, Monte Conner, formerly of Roadrunner Records, and now with Nuclear Blast, came out to see them here and was sold on what he heard.

“This area used to be all controlled by gangs. There would be, like, shootouts down the street, and we’d have to run back in and hide for an hour or two and let everything calm down,” Robb says. “It added to the vibe of the record.”

In the mid-90s, Robb cut a very different figure, with hair braided tightly, beard twisted into points, at times in khakis and a black windbreaker, guitarist Logan Mader bouncing high off the stage behind him. This was a metal band already comfortable with hip hop, as their faithful take on Ice-T’s gangsta landmark Colors soon proved.

In the video for Davidian, Robb and the others are shown walking down San Francisco’s streets with a leashed pitbull leading the way. It marked the arrival of Machine Head and their modern blend of metal, with roots in thrash, but with layers of groove metal and more. The music wasn’t only dependably hard, but creatively ambitious, potential that would fully show itself a decade later on career peaks such as The Blackening and Unto The Locust.

In 1999, some followers heard the band veering away from groove metal and into a controversial nu metal sidetrip with The Burning Red, but others heard a searing and merciless self-examination by Robb of his own dark places, a personal story that dealt with harrowing sexual abuse in his youth, cutting his own skin, and later on included an especially intense period of self-destruction (alcohol, ketamine) that immediately preceded the recording.

Robb has been a family man for years now. His eldest son, Zander, is 20, and the youngest, Wyatt, is 18 and about to graduate high school. Neither are musicians, though Zander was credited with being part of a children’s choir back in 2011 on Unto The Locust. But they have embraced other aspects of the life.

When Robb brought them out last year to Hellfest in Clisson, France, where Machine Head were the Friday night headliners, his boys were right up front crowdsurfing. “It was such a moment to watch my youngest coming over the rail, just raging,” the singer recalls with a grin.

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The new Machine Head album follows 2022’s Of Kingdom And Crown, a critical and popular success that hit No.1 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart, and marked a real comeback following the disappointing response to 2018’s nu metal-ish Catharsis. (After that album, longtime drummer Dave McClain and guitarist Phil Demmel quit.)

Of Kingdom… was also the band’s first concept album, set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland as two antiheroes face personal tragedy and hunger for revenge. Robb knew another concept album wasn’t likely to follow.

“I’d been trying for years to do it and I finally got lightning in a bottle,” he says of his feelings of accomplishment after Of Kingdom…. “I’m like, ‘Don’t tempt the gods. You can’t do it two times in a row.’”

Even so, he sensed a theme emerging in some lyrics on what became Unatoned, after witnessing a number of divorces among some of his longtime friends, a trend he found deeply upsetting.

“The pandemic kind of split people apart, and a bunch of people ended up breaking up after really long relationships,” Robb says. “It was very jarring and it was very hard. People want you to take sides and it sucked, because these are longtime friends – decades-long friends.”

One of the songs that came out is the agonised Bonescraper, with crushing guitars, beats and soaring choruses amid the vocal rage, as Robb vents words of frustration and heartbreak: ‘Love is just a loaded gun / Compromise will get you nowhere / Arguments, and pointless warfare / The price of love is the price of heartache / Your tongue a knife pointing every mistake.’

At one point, he shared the album in progress with his good friend Mike Schleibaum, guitarist from Washington, DC melodic death metallers Darkest Hour. “He’s one of the best dudes ever. And when I played it for him, he was like, ‘What the fuck, Robb? You are so pissed! You literally sound like it’s you against the fucking world. You sound like a band on their first record.’”

Machine Head also stretch out in other new ways on Unatoned, including on Not Long For This World, the first Machine Head track to feature all clean vocals amid the slicing riffs. But the biggest leap comes on album closer Scorn, a dramatic ballad with soaring musical and emotional flourishes. He had the help of Jordan Fish, former keyboardist and producer of Bring Me the Horizon, and a regular Flynn collaborator since 2014’s Bloodstone & Diamonds, plus co-producer Zack Ohren, to make it happen. Another frequent collaborator, Joel Wanasek, helped Robb translate to piano song ideas originally sketched out on guitar.

“For the last 15 years now, I’ve wanted to write a Coldplay/ Elton John-style piano ballad, because I’m a total sucker for the Coldplay/Elton John piano ballad,” Robb explains. “And I’ve failed for 15 years. It always turned out super-corny and super-stupid and ridiculous.”

What finally changed was a bit of inspiration that struck during a 3am writing session, as he reflected on the election year unfolding around him in 2024.

“I was writing about how I don’t believe in Trump, but I think the Democrats are a bunch of spineless pussies, and I feel lost in the middle somewhere.”

Machine Head have always been outspoken, challenging listeners with messages on lingering racism in the US and other societal failures, but they have never been an overtly political band, much less a partisan one.

“We’re a band from Oakland. We’re a band from the streets. We’ve sung about the streets, and I tried to avoid taking a political stance one side or the other,” Robb says, before going on to refer to the shanty town we drove past. “East Oakland’s been the same, and it don’t matter who is the fucking president. The ghetto’s been the ghetto and it ain’t changed.”

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Our final stop is Almanac Beer Co., a brewery and tap room built inside a 30,000 square foot former naval hangar in Alameda, with an elegant redwood bar and outdoor beer garden, and room enough for several hundred drinkers. Robb orders a rousing and perfectly timed coffee stout and sits outside.

It’s about 4pm, so the place is mostly empty ahead of the after-work rush hour. As Robb sips his drink and snacks on spicy chicken tenders, the PA overhead plays Seals & Croft’s gentle 70s hit Summer Breeze. Following an especially successful album can be a daunting task, and Robb has been in this situation before, most famously after 2007 tour de force The Blackening.

Metal Hammer named it ‘album of the decade’, and it’s often likened to Metallica’s Master Of Puppets. With that, Machine Head’s metal legacy was secure – but how could anything follow The Blackening and not be overshadowed?

“Look, I’d rather be the guy who wrote The Blackening than the guy who didn’t!” Robb says with a laugh. “But to some degree, it’s a gift and a curse, because you gotta follow up that record. And all anybody does is compare it to that record – that is not an unfair thing to do, it’s just what people do. I learned that you gotta go someplace else. And maybe at first it doesn’t stand apart, but I’m really confident that this record will stand apart and be its own album in the Machine Head catalogue.”

Under his leadership, that attitude has kept Machine Head an essential player through the inevitable ups and downs in sales and chart action, changing tastes, and the abrupt rotation of band members. It’s earned his band an organic following built on respect and loyalty, not passing trends or the sheer cultural domination of thrash heroes like Metallica and Slayer. Machine Head have thrived by willingly stepping into unexpected territory – and through the occasional chain-link fence.

“One of the hardest things to do in a band is to find your own lane, and to stick at it,” Robb concludes over his glass of black stout. “All of my favourite bands were heavily evolving bands – The Beatles, The Cure, even Slayer on those first five albums. Metallica, too. Nothing wrong with playing it safe. But for me, I gotta go someplace else.”

Unatoned is out now via Nuclear Blast. Machine Head headline Rockstadt, Wacken and Bloodstock festivals in August.

Steve Appleford is a Los Angeles music journalist who has also written for Rolling Stone, Revolver and the Los Angeles Times. Over the years he’s interviewed major artists across multiple genres – including Black Sabbath, Slayer, Queens of the Stone Age, System of a Down, KISS, Lemmy, the Who, Neil Young, Beastie Boys, Beyonce, Tom Jones, and a couple of Beatles. 

It’s very likely that Don Airey appears on several of your most treasured albums. The original keyboard kingpin, that’s Don on all the best post-Dio Rainbow albums. That’s Don on Ozzy’s Blizzard Of Ozz. That’s Don on Whitesnake 1987, some albums by Gary Moore, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and, for the past three decades, Deep Purple’s.

As Don says: “I like to keep busy.” So as well as the very long list of sessions he’s done and bands he’s toured with, he makes solo albums. His latest, Pushed To The Edge, is fantastic: deeper than Purple, more moreish than Moore, the glorious spirit of classic Whitesnake and Rainbow fully intact.

First of all, the new album. It’s awesome.

I’m glad you like it. I did an interview last night, and the guy said to me: “It is a cracking album.” I said, “What? You think it’s a crappy album?”

How do you decide which songs to keep for your solo albums and which to offer to Deep Purple?

The record company wanted another solo album, so I phoned [Purple guitarist] Simon McBride and said: “What are you doing tomorrow?” He said: “Nothing much.” I said: “All right, you’ve got a plane ticket.” We had a few days with [Nazareth vocalist] Carl Sentance, all sitting in a room, then we went in the studio for five days and that’s what came out.

Where did you record it?

There’s a studio outside Cambridge in a place called Harston. It’s run by the son of a very old friend of mine. It’s got a big old analogue desk and he’s a shit-hot engineer. Each day I’d be up at half past five in the morning and work out what we were going to do. We tried to do two tracks a day, then start the third track for the next day, get a little bit of prep in.

Simon told me that at the end of the day that the guys were going out to the car park like: “Phew, we got through that! I wonder what the old boy’s going to give us tomorrow?” Leonard Bernstein said: “What you need for good work is a plan, but not quite enough time to put it into operation.” He was quite right.

Some of the new album sounds like you’re channelling some of the bands you’ve played with. Like They Keep Running, which makes me think of Rainbow.

Yeah, the riff on the chorus is very Blackmoreish. Ritchie could be very off-the-wall. He was great at putting music together, so it kept surprising you. I’ve always been inspired by that. I’d say to the guys: “We’re not hidebound here by length of solos. If you really want to go into one, go into one.” That was the rule, rather than the exception. I was really trying to make an album that was like a gig, like we were playing in a club.

There’s only one song that’s three minutes long, the rest are all over four minutes. So musically it stretched out. And I was trying to make it a bit more symphonic, different movements in different songs. Another thing I tried to do is something The Beatles always did, which is when you get to the end of one number, the next number is in a different key, but it’s kind of related. That’s always fun to do.

And you recorded it old-school, playing together as a band?

We were all in the same room as the drums, but we had the bass amp in one room and the guitar stack in another room. I had a Leslie and a Marshall stack in another compartment. So it really worked. It was a bit cramped, but I think that added to the atmosphere.

Do you have a personal favourite track on the album?

Yeah, I like Out Of Focus. Inspired by Focus, who are one of my all-time favourite bands. Thijs van Leer, what a wonderful musician and organ player. He has been an inspiration to me for years. That’s my little tribute to him, really. There’s an organ solo where I play a bit of Bach, because Thijs was always playing Bach – [1972 Focus song] Sylvia, for example.

And I like The Power To Change. It features our second vocalist, Mitchel Emms, who nobody has heard of, but he was on Strictly Come Dancing for a couple of years, singing in the band there. He was also on The Voice. Mitchel sings with choirs. Last time we talked, he said: “I’m out doing a dance with Ballet Rambert.” I could only imagine.

It’s a very up-sounding record. You sound like you’re really enjoying yourselves.

The band is like a side project I’ve had going for ten years, and we tour every year for three weeks doing clubs in Europe. On a tour bus with a trailer. And nobody ever came off the tour saying: “Oh, I’m glad that’s over.” It would be: “When are we doing this again?”

Will you be touring the solo album this year?

Hopefully. Things have changed now with all the Brexit nonsense. [Financially] it’s quite difficult for a small band to tour if you’re only doing halls and clubs. If you’re a big band, there’s no problem. But there’s reams of paperwork and god-knows what, so we’ll see. I haven’t really toured this band since before lockdown.

Any 2025 plans for Deep Purple?

I only came off the road with Purple on the nineteenth of December. So we’re having a bit of a break. Once the dust has settled down a bit we can look to the future, I should think.

You once told me a fantastic story about a Rainbow show: how Ritchie used to lean back dramatically against his stack while soloing. He’d have roadies on the other side of it holding it up so he didn’t fall over. This particular gig, they didn’t get there in time, so suddenly there he is toppling backwards…

I’ll never forget it. The Sofia Gardens, Cardiff, 1980, on the Down To Earth tour. Ritchie kind of gave me a wave as he was falling backwards and pointed. That was my cue to do a ten-minute keyboard solo.

Pushed To The Edge is out now via earMUSIC

Mick Wall is the UK’s best-known rock writer, author and TV and radio programme maker, and is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books, including definitive, bestselling titles on Led Zeppelin (When Giants Walked the Earth), Metallica (Enter Night), AC/DC (Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be), Black Sabbath (Symptom of the Universe), Lou Reed, The Doors (Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre), Guns N’ Roses and Lemmy. He lives in England.

In 2017, amid his 13-year absence from Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy offered Prog a glimpse of his vast collection of musical memorabilia and shared his passion for King Crimson’s songwriting, Neil Peart’s books and, em, the Bee Gees.

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Where’s home?
I left New York 12 years ago and I’ve been in North Eastern Pennsylvania ever since.

Earliest prog memory?
When I was 14 I went camping with some friends, I was super stoned and I heard the guitar solo to Rush’s Limelight on the radio. I’ve been hooked ever since.

First prog record you bought?
Not long after that I bought both Rush’s Exit… Stage Left and Yessongs. I thought live albums would be good crash courses into their music.

First prog gig?
Rush again, December 1982 at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. It was their Signals tour. Rory Gallagher was supporting.

Favourite piece of technology?
I can’t go anywhere without my iPad, iPod and iPhone. I also carry around some 2TB discs full of music, movies and TV shows.

What are your guilty musical pleasures?
I’m a huge fan of the early Bee Gees albums – Bee Gees 1st and Horizontal are absolutely amazing power pop albums.

What would be your specialist subject on Mastermind?
If there’s one subject I’d be hands-down the king of, it’s The Beatles. I’m a Beatles trivia nut!

Your greatest prog extravagance?
In 1989 I paid a scalper $400 for a ticket to see The Who play Tommy at Radio City Music Hall, New York, and it was worth every cent. To me it’s one of the first concept albums. I wept like a baby at the Overture.

Favourite prog venue?
I’ve played Wembley Arena, Budokan, but Radio City Music Hall is such a classy venue. The one that’s still on my bucket list is the Royal Albert Hall.

Outside of prog, what are you into?
I’m an avid film buff. I have a home theatre and thousands of films from directors like Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, PT Anderson, the Coen Brothers. I track every film I watch on letterboxd.com.

Who’s your prog hero?
I’ll give you one living, one dead: Roger Waters and Frank Zappa.

Are you a collector?
[He escorts Prog through his office – an Aladdin’s cave of thousands of CDs, DVDs, box sets, books, drums, Beatles and Kiss toys, signed vinyl and more.] Yes, I am a collector.

Last prog album you bought?
Hang, from Foxygen. They’re a prog/pop duo that sound like ELO meets Bowie. And the new Nova Collective album – that’s Richard Henshall from Haken and Dan Briggs from Between The Buried And Me.

Last prog gig?
Cruise To The Edge earlier this year was the ultimate prog gig. Haken, Pain Of Salvation and Frost* were all amazing.

Ever had a prog date?
I’ve been with my wife for 27 years and she hates prog! If I’m playing with Avenged Sevenfold she loves it, but Transatlantic? No. I’ve never been able to convert her to the prog side.

Who do you call in the prog community for a good night out?
Damon Fox from Bigelf. We get together and shoot the shit about music and just geek out.

Most important prog song?
God, there’s so many: Heart Of The Sunrise, Firth Of Fifth, Nights In White Satin, but Starless by King Crimson is the quintessential prog epic.

Prog muso you’d like to work with?
My buddy Mikael Åkerfeldt. We talk about it all the time, but we’re both so busy.

Which prog album always gets you in a good mood?
Jellyfish’s second album Spilt Milk is so experimental, like Pet Sounds meets A Night At The Opera. There’s so much depth to it.

The best prog gig you ever saw?
Runner-up is Yes on the Union tour – seeing all eight of them together was incredible. But my favourite gig of all time was Roger Waters doing The Wall, at Madison Square Garden then Philadelphia Stadium. It was the most overwhelming experience: no show could be bigger or better.

What is your all-time favourite prog album cover?
The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request. Just look at it – it’s the proggiest cover ever! Stones fans hate this album but I love every song on it – Citadel, In Another Land…

Pick us a good proggy read.
I love Neil Peart’s books. Ghost Rider: Travels On The Healing Road, about the trip he took after his family passed away, is incredible.

You’re always busy. What are you up to at the moment?
I’m touring with the Neal Morse Band, and have some shows with Shattered Fortress over the summer, with an exclusive date in London on June 28. We’ll be playing Dream Theater’s Twelve-step Suite and other songs. I’m 50 this year, so I’m putting all that to bed…

A music journalist for over 20 years, Grant writes regularly for titles including Prog, Classic Rock and Total Guitar, and his CV also includes stints as a radio producer/presenter and podcast host. His first book, ‘Big Big Train – Between The Lines’, is out now through Kingmaker Publishing.