Gig date: 5th November 2019
For 25 years, Burn My Eyes has been one of my favourite albums and news of a 25th Anniversary tour with the original line up was met with great excitement. On the night the venue (the O2 Academy) was packed full and the atmosphere was electric – with Machine Head sticking to their recent tour format and playing for just over 2.5 hours (with a few breaks of course). The band were on good form and for the first phase took us through their vast range of songs covering every album except Burn My Eyes, which no doubt could have gone on for longer had they not needed to get to the main event – the play through of the Burn My Eyes album.
The crowd was already hyped, but launching into Davidian took it to another level and the place erupted. I was engrossed in this, with one song after another just blowing me away. As they got to the end, the band referenced a few of their influences from the early days, playing covers of Slayer’s “Raining Blood” and Mercyful Fate’s “Evil” (with Rob also reporting that they had found out that the Mercyful Fate bassist, Timi Hansen had sadly passed away the day before, crediting the band as being one of their biggest influences) before finishing off with a fantastic rendition of Block.
I’ve been a Machine Head fan for 25 years and seen them play live many times, but this was one of the stand out gigs – the band was on fire (both version of it – with the original line up only playing Burn My Eyes, while current band line up played the other stuff). With changed line up, it will be interesting to see what direction the band goes in the future, however regardless of what the future brings this was a tremendous way to close out a decade!
Enjoy a sample