With the Meaningful Albums Series, I want to share why and how an album made an impact on me in my life. This time I am going to talk about Machine Head's second album 'The More Things Change...' which is an utterly fitting title.
First encounter:
At the beginning of the 2000s, I was living in Alkmaar with my mom and her new husband. I was getting a bit bored with nu-metal and I wanted to know what other metal genres were out there.
So every Monday night between 00:00 and 01:00 I watched Wet & Wild a show on TMF (a Dutch MTV rip-off), where they showed music videos of metal bands. One night I tuned in and they showed a live concert by Machine Head. I had never heard of them, but I saw this band's insane energy and rage. And I felt the same. They jumped and headbanged all over the place and so was I, in the living room while my parents slept.
The next day I went to the city to buy their music, and the only album they had was 'The Burning Red'. Back home I listened to it and I liked it, but it was not the band I heard on TV. It was a light version of Machine Head band and I was a tiny bit disappointed.
But a few days later I found and bought 'The More Things Change...' and I was literally blown away by the fierceness and the fury. This seemed like a completely different band. Robb Flynn sounded like a beast rattling in a cage and at the end of the final song he destroyed it. The next week on Wet & Wild, they showed the clip of 'Take My Scars'. In that clip, Robb Flynn had a buzz-cut and that made me love this band even more. My mom always used to 'cut' my hair with a trimmer and I did not like that at all, I wanted to let my hair grow. But my mom can be very persuasive and so I let her do her thing and I always sat there sulking in the chair. But after I saw that metalheads can also have short hair, I asked my mom every month if she could cut it.
The most vivid memory of this album:
My sister did not move to Alkmaar with us, she stayed with my father in Leiden. But we all hoped that she eventually would come to live with us. So we build a bed for her in a room upstairs, and I listened to 'The More Things Change...' in that room a lot. I think because I secretly missed her and I was worried about her. We all were. We heard that she was kicked out of high school because she skipped class and was placed in a truant project, which she skipped as well. Haha.
But, sadly, she slowly became more resentful towards my mom because my dad was talking shit about her all the time. She did not want to work (she always said 'I don't want to be a pawn of society') and was always home and so was my dad after he lost his job as a construction worker.
My mom tried to 'save' her by calling child protection and begin lawsuits but that had the opposite effect. She thought my sister was better off with her in Alkmaar. But my sister did not think so. She eventually wrote a letter saying she would not ever come to Alkmaar. It broke my mother and a few days later my stepdad and I disassembled the bed.
Favorite songs and why:
'Take My Scars'
Just the build-up in the intro to the scream is still enough for me to get goosebumps. The line 'I found a better way to break the walls' represented my dive into this music genre. I found a way to deal with my anger and that was by listening to this music and get completely lost in it.
'Down To None':
Just plain and simple, bow down to no one. In my case it meant, I do not bow down to the manipulations of my father or the people that try to put me in a socially acceptable frame. I wore baggy jeans, an army jacket with patches on it, band shirts, and I laughed at everyone who wore normal clothes. I wanted to say 'I am me, I am special, I do not belong anywhere and I am fine with that'.
'Blood Of The Zodiac':
This song is to me, a play. In it, a blind son loses his father to suicide and he tries to negotiate with an angel to get him back. The angel tells him that his father is not in his sight, which means he is in hell. When he asks why, the angel touches his forehead and he sees the life his father had, which was not a happy one. Emotionally drained, the son falls to his knees. The angel looks at him and opens his hand. Two eyes lay in his hand. The son puts the eyes in their sockets and he sees fire and brimstone. He was already in hell and the angel is his father who turned into a demon. He tries to kill him with a flaming sword but the son deflects the sword with a diamond-shaped shield. The demon tells his son that he tried to kill him when he was a baby, to get back to his ex-wife for divorcing him. The son survived but lost both his eyes. The son grabs a long piece of sharp rock and drives it through the heart of the demon.
What it meant to me:
It meant that some people make decisions that you know are not the right ones. But no matter how many arguments you have, they are still going to follow their own mind or heart. The only way to learn from mistakes is making them.
Stay tuned for Meaningful Albums Part IV where I am diving into my memories while listening to 'Burn My Eyes'.
Tracklist:
Ten Ton Hammer
Take My Scars
Struck A Nerve
Down To None
The Frontlines
Spine
Bay Of Pigs
Violate
Blistering
Blood Of The Zodiac