Vio-lence has announced they'll reunite for two shows at the Metro in Oakland, California on April 13 and 14. The shows will see Vio-lence play their 1988 record Eternal Nightmare in full, and without ex-guitarist and current Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn. The reason? Vio-lence never asked Flynn.
Vio-lence and now ex-Machine Head guitarist Phil Demmel tells Decibel that Vio-lence never asked Flynn and that the band will "do like we have done before, move on, without him."
Ray Vegas will be playing on guitar. We actually didn’t even approach Robb to do this. He’s always really worked pretty hard to not talk about Vio-lence or include Vio-lence in the past and this is something that, especially fresh off the Machine Head exit—yeah, he wasn’t approached. This is something we’re doing without him; when we closed Vio-lence back in 2003 when I joined Machine Head, I was actually gonna write a Vio-lence record and shortly after I joined Machine Head, I was told that I couldn’t do that. So Robb, he played in that last show and even his involvement in that last Vio-lence show back in 2003 was kinda… there are some memories from all of us about him being involved and playing the benefit with Sean that was something special and he got to sing. We will do like we have done before, move on, without him.
Demmel left Machine Head in 2018 alongside drummer Dave McClain. It's worth noting that Robb Flynn did participate in the 2018 reunion show, which was a benefit for vocalist Sean Killian.
