By Ben Richardson
Thirteen years have passed since Oakland metal stalwarts Machine Head promised to “let freedom ring with a shotgun blast” on their album Burn My Eyes, and it now appears that frontperson Robb Flynn and company should consider cramming new casings into the figurative chamber. The band’s ongoing Black Tyranny tour – which stops at the Warfield on Friday, Oct. 12 – has been marred by a pair of bizarre last-minute venue changes, both prompted by the inscrutable and unexpected objections of international media conglomerate the Walt Disney Company.
Disney owns the land under the Anaheim and Orlando branches of the House of Blues chain, venues that were slated to host Machine Head and support acts Arch Enemy, Throwdown, and Sanctity during stops on September’s national tour. Two days before the long-since-booked concert in Anaheim, the show was abruptly moved to a different venue by concert promoter and House of Blues parent company LiveNation, which cited pressure from the landowning behemoth as the reason for the switch.
Machine Head claimed on their Web site that Disney objected to the “violent imagery, undesirable fans, and inflammatory lyrics” associated with the band. According to an interview conducted with the Los Angeles Times, Flynn also suspects that the group’s “anti-war and anti-administration lyrics” had an effect on Disney’s decision.