Reece Scruggs

Reece Scruggs is the guitarist joining Machine Head's line-up from 2026, in the most recent rebuilding led by Robb Flynn. His arrival continues a pattern that has marked the band for over a decade: successive changes on guitar and in the rhythm section, with Flynn as the only permanent element and the one responsible for reconfiguring the group in each cycle. The role requires moving between quite distinct sonic phases. Machine Head's repertoire runs from the groove metal of Burn My Eyes (1994) — mid-tempo riffs built on rhythmic displacement — to the long, elaborate compositions of The Blackening (2007), by way of the recent material. Reproducing that arc live means commanding vocabularies the band developed at different moments of its history. He comes from Havok, the American thrash metal band, a path that places him in the same technical lineage Flynn came from — the thrash scene that produced Machine Head in the early 1990s.