MACHINE HEAD Drummer Discusses U.S. Record Label Situation

MACHINE HEAD drummer Dave McClain recently spoke to the U.K.'s Live 4 Metal about the circumstances that led to the group's split with the U.S. branch of Roadrunner Records after releasing five full-length albums through the label (including the live CD, "Hellalive").

"It's weird," McClain explained. "All the different territories of Roadrunner are kind of like their own little label. For the rest of the world, they all wanted us back. They were pretty much all on the same page, but Roadrunner U.S. is kind of a different place. They started trying to break all these bands. When NICKELBACK broke, I think they started getting a lot of bands that were kind of like NICKELBACK or whatever. I think they kind of changed their priorities from where they were before NICKELBACK broke. They wanted to be a different kind of label. At the time, they didn't really feel like our record was what they were into, but once they saw how good it was doing when it came out, of course, they stepped up and said we'd really love to have this record and blah, blah, blah. It was kind of a weird thing. It would have been great 10 months ago [laughs]." Asked if the band have secured a U.S. deal for their new album, McClain said, "Hopefully, we'll be announcing the American deal soon. We'll see what happens. The people that we're talking with right now, at least the main companies, we feel are almost where Roadrunner was a while back, like when we were first with them, like right around the time of 'The More Things Change'. They have the whole marketing thing down to market a record like we've got now, so we should be all right." Read the rest of the interview here.

MACHINE HEAD's fifth studio album, "Through The Ashes Of Empires", has been available in Europe since October.