Interview Steve Smyth (face to face)

Hi Steve. Thanks for your time. So, this European tour with Overkill has just started… And it has begun in France. It’s the first time you get to play in this country with One Machine, isn’t it?

Yeah, we kicked up in Lyon. This is just the third night on this tour. It feels good… before that, we actually did two headliner shows in Italy and it felt good. We did 70 minute sets in front of very nice crowds who were waiting for us to get there so it was totally worth doing it and it was a good warm up to this tour as well. So yeah, it’s great, we’re really excited.

You’ve been in the music business for quite a while but One Machine is a young band, you haven’t had the opportunity to tour very much yet, have you?

Yeah, we started touring right away actually, even two weeks before the first record was released. We did a festival in Denmark… That was when Mikkel Sandager and Tomas Koefoed were still in the band. Then Mikkel decided this wasn’t for him and we had another festival a bit later so Jamie came out with the idea of putting Chris (Hawkins) to fill in so we checked him out…

By the way, how did you find him?

Well, he used to be a guitar student of Jamie’s. Jamie is a teacher at a music college in Bristol. Chris had started a degree for guitar but moved over to vocals… which is obviously his stronger suit. He still plays the guitar but he really excels at singing. So Jamie knew about him and also knew he had finished school so we were able to contact him and asked him to do a couple of demos and he sounded fine. So we brought him in to jam with us and worked out a few things within three weeks time… he’s a fast learner, he went out and did it.

Had you foreseen that Mikkel would leave the band before he did it or was it a total surprise?

Yes, to be honest, there were signs… there were things with his family and stuff he needed to work out. He was going through some hard personal things… so that’s what he had to do, he was not really available.

You had other line-up changes between the first and the second album…

Yeah, Tomas left for pretty much the same reasons. Rafael (Saini, the drummer), actually, personality wise, it didn’t really fit, it didn’t completely work out… he also had another gig but we didn’t really know about it at the beginning. At the time, we were trying to book stuff for touring and Rafael was slowing down the process and we didn’t know why… and all of a sudden, he told us he had this gig with Iced Earth, so he left. So Michele Sanna stepped in and recorded “The Final Cull” with us… and unfortunately things didn’t really work with him either, in terms of personality. But now we have Matt who’s touring with us.

Yes, I just met him and recognized his face, he actually played in the video you made for the song "Forewarning", right?

Yeah, exactly. That’s him. He’s been pretty much with us since we started touring for this album, back in August. We also have Stefano with us. I knew him before, he played with the band Savage Messiah and when things got a little bit confused with Tomas who told us he wouldn’t be able to do things due to his family commitments, I was keeping in touch with Stefano and I turned out to him to see if he was available. I didn’t know he was leaving Savage Messiah at the time so things turned out beautifully. Since then, it has worked out really well, I had the feeling it would. He’s a great guy, he’s a great player and he’s a team player too. Chris is definitely motivated as well; we’re all on the same page.

As much as I respect Sandager, I really think Chris Hawkins is a better fit to One Machine. He did a great job on “The Final Cull”…

Yes, definitely. He seems to be the right voice for this band. When I went to work with him on this record last year, I had some ideas for the melodies and even before I told him about them, he came up with the same sort of stuff! I was like “What is this? Telepathy?” (laughs) Because I was thinking practically the same thing… and what he had was actually better. There’s a few things we worked on, I let him work with the concept that I had about the future, the digital age taking over everything, virtual reality… It is subtle but it is happening.

Hence the video for “Forewarning”…

Yeah, yeah, exactly! It might look a little cheesy but we did our best to represent that type of thing (laughs).

And I suppose that’s why you chose the track “Computer God” by Black Sabbath to cover as a bonus track, because of the lyrics that fit the concept of your album…

Yes, exactly! We had nine songs for the album and I thought I’d really like to do that song because it is a good fit. It’s such a good song and it was foreshadowing at the time it was written, twenty-four years ago. And yes, I thought it would be a perfect fit, it completes the album beautifully. And you can only get it on the CD, not on iTunes, Spotify or whatever…

I really felt the band made tremendous progress from the first to the second record. It was still very technical, thrashy and diverse but more focused and accessible at the same time…

Yes, there’s a bit more balance there, I think. When we wrote together, basically Chris and I went away for a couple of days and worked on melodies. We worked on them and developed them into something that we could eventually take to the other guys. So we didn’t really do demos like we did for the first record. And I also purposely left a small handful of these songs unfinished so we could get to the studio together and finished those songs. So there are two reasons why I think this is a very different record… because of the band contribution factor, it’s really more us playing together, working on arrangements, that type of thing. And we did it live. I wanted to do a record live because back in the 90s, when I was with Vicious Rumors, that’s what we did and it worked. It was cool, all the tracks were done live and I really enjoyed that… also because it’s exactly what you’re gonna get when you see a band perform live.

Have you got any ideas about the direction for the third album or is too soon to tell?

We’re very much focused on touring behind “The Final Cull” right now, though I do have some lyric ideas running through my mind and definitely the riffs for the next one. As for direction, I feel we have laid the direction between the first and second albums, and will most likely be continuing in now cementing the sound of One Machine.

You're from California, right? What made you leave your country and settle for England?

I am from the Bay Area in fact, and it has always been a point of pride to have come from such a musically and historically significant area for all music, let alone metal. I left for a few reasons. One, my wife is British, and we discussed where we would live at the time, and seeing the economy back then go down the toilet like it did, we decided England was the place we would live for a while. Then the crash happened here, and well… 10 years later! Ha ha! The second reason was to work with the quality of metal musicians I know Europe and the UK has, and finding the right chemistry between the people I would choose for the band was the key. It took a while, but we’ve finally got a lineup I’m happy with, and confident in, and will take it forward from here, so long as all are on board and on the same page.

Who are the guitar players/musicians who made you want to become a musician yourself and those you admire the most today?

My earliest influences are Angus Young and Joe Perry, oddly enough, though the music I play is probably further from that than anything. But they made me want to start to play, and from there, Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, classic NWOBHM (Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, etc.), Akira Takasaki and Loudness (the “Disillusion” album is my fave), and Metallica and the “Big 4” came out when I was a kid as well, so all had a definite influence on me. Dio in particular, Vivian Campbell and just the entire Dio band, had a huge influence on me, in the respect that this band was so tight together, played very well off each other, and Dio was a sage in my book. Today, I have admiration for a lot of the younger generation of musicians - Havok is doing very well, Revocation are a solid band, but on the whole, I’m not terribly focused on much new stuff, though I do get a few people telling me to check things out here and there. My focus is on One Machine so much, I don’t really get the chance to hear much else.

You worked with such legendary bands as Testament, Vicious Rumors, Forbidden or Nevermore... Any chance you might work with one of these bands in the future (Nevermore put apart for obvious reasons)? What are your best memories or the achievements you are the most proud of with these bands?

Well, it’s the same thing I tell everybody and anybody who asks: never say never. But right now, I’m very much focused on One Machine, and building this band into as big as it can get in this day and age of the music industry, which is very tough going right now, but we continue on and keep trying to build it as high up as we can right now!

Years ago, I read that Eric Peterson was preparing a third Dragonlord album. Do you know anything about it, will you be part of it?

I’ve heard that as well, but no, I am not part of Dragonlord anymore, and haven’t been since 2005. I left due to constant touring conflicts between Nevermore and Dragonlord, Nevermore’s schedule for “This Godless Endeavor” was for 185 shows over a two-year period, and I had no time to tour outside of this. I had a good time with that band, learned a bit about the darker side of that music, and wrote music for both albums, as well as toured for the "Rapture" album.

What about the instrumental EssenEss Project? Is it still alive?

Ha ha! Well, actually, yes, we are attempting to finish our second album in 10 years this year, wish us luck, we may just get it done and out by 2017 yet!

What's next for One Machine after this European tour?

More touring straight through the end of the year is on the schedule, which will include returning to Europe on a grander scale, as well as North America being on offer for the end of the year, in main support positions. We also have several festivals coming up in the UK this year, including a main support position on the 2nd stage (Sophie Lancaster Stage) of the Bloodstock festival, as well as smaller scale festivals including Thrashersaurus Festival in Norwich, and also Mammoth Fest down in Brighton later in the year, October.

Any message or piece of information… anything you'd like to say, here's your chance:

I’d like to thank all of our fans for their support and patience with us for the last two years in getting over to France! We had such a great time, and look forward to returning a bit later in the year, so merci beaucoup, and please stay tuned for more touring news on any of our social media:

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www.youtube.com/OneMachineTV
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