Lamb Of God were already leading lights of the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal movement by the time they released their fourth album, 2006’s Sacrament. But as Metal Hammer caught up with frontman Randy Blythe on that year’s Unholy Alliance tour, they were turning away from the political towards something more personal.
It’s 9pm on TuesdayDecember 6, 2005, and Hammer is sandwiched between 1,800 drunken men (and a few women) at the cavernous Astoria venue in London. The roars around us are reaching their climax, and chants of “Lamb Of God!” fill every spare inch left in the space. As the lights dim and the intro music begins, we’re expecting fireworks.
But something seems wrong as the notoriously hard working, hard touring, hard playing band kick off their set with the riffing bombast of Laid To Rest. Vocalist Randy Blythe – known for being one of the most outspoken and politically incensed metal frontmen on the planet – is practically reeling. He slurs his words between songs and his dripping fringe seems to veil hazy eyes beneath. Fans share inquisitive looks: this isn’t what we came to see. This band look faint and tired, and within seconds, a lobbed beer can narrowly misses the singer.
“Yeah… I remember that show,” sighs the frontman. “It wasn’t that bad.”
As shitty moments go, that London show wasn’t anything to write home about for Randy Blythe. To him, it appears that one fumbled evening on stage is nothing compared to the frustrations and pain he and his band have accumulated over the past two years. For some time that resentment had nowhere to go, but now, all of the anger and exhaustion have come to a head for new album Sacrament. Unlike the political tirades of previous releases, Lamb Of God have instead turned inwards to exorcise the demons that have plagued their minds and lives for the past 24 months. From the sound of things, it seems that years of travelling and days of screaming have drilled this band into the ground. The London show, it appears, was just one step on a trail of hardships.
It’s 11 days since Lamb Of God last had a rest. It’s July 2006, some nine months after that Astoria gig, and the band are six and a half weeks into the US leg of the Unholy Alliance tour with Slayer and In Flames, and Randy (plus Mark Morton on guitar, John Campbell on bass and brothers Will and Chris Adler on guitar and drums respectively) has only just begun his new gigging schedule to promote their upcoming release. After one more US date, the band are due to start their own set of shows, then go to Japan… then to Australia… and then arrive in the UK in November for Unholy Alliance part two.
“Sure, we’re known for being a pretty hard touring band,” says the frontman with an air of genuine modesty. “We’ve been treated like a machine.”
It is this frustration at their own fatigue and their label’s mismanagement of their schedule – along with relationship problems, alcoholism, depression and more – that has prompted the lyrical and musical rage of ‘Sacrament’. Past releases were savagely brutal in their open attack on the US government, but the band now have more than enough anger at their own daily frustrations to fuel the 11 tracks and more. The lyrics spit the kind of rage that far outweighs your typical soapbox rant.
“No matter how many times you say ‘Fuck Bush, you suck’, he’s still there,” shrugs the singer. “We’ve been saying that right back to the days when we first started, and it’s time to take some time for us now.”
The life of a band on the road might seem as far removed from a nightmare as anyone can imagine, given what rock’n’roll has to offer. But for a group who have been doing this as long as Lamb Of God (their original collective, Burn The Priest, formed way back in 1990), the same routine near on every day, can start to take its toll.
From the very beginning, Lamb Of God’s members have been touring addicts. Racking up worldwide dates with Mastodon, Killswitch Engage and Children Of Bodom, as well as shows on Ozzfest and headlining 2005’s Sounds Of The Underground, they are regarded as one of the most hardworking metal bands on the planet. But as the soul-searching lyrics on ‘Sacrament’ suggest, all work and no play makes Randy – and Lamb Of God – angry and exhausted.
“It’s been fucking ridiculous,” sighs the frontman. “We’ve just done 11 dates with no break, and the other night we played in Arizona and it was 121 degrees. No one should have to play in that heat. It was terrible. It’s so bad for your throat.”
Playing sets of up to an hour in length each night, Randy’s voice has been put through a meatgrinder. The singer even claims that whilst recording the new album, producer Machine pushed him so hard that he was throwing up. As one of the most important and recognisable elements of Lamb Of God’s brutal style, Blythe doesn’t feel his health is being taken seriously.
“The record label don’t understand. I’m not like a guitar, you can’t change my strings, you can’t do anything,” he growls. “It’s just shout, shout, shout. My voice is wrecked.”
The singer is in fact so worried about physical deterioration that the infamously hard-boozing partier has recently given up drinking.
“It’s been 15 days,” he smiles. “I just wasn’t happy with it any more, what it was doing to me.”
What happened? Was there a day when you woke up and your hangover was just so bad that you thought, ‘fuck this’?
“Yep, that’s pretty much it,” he says. “You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head. I dunno how long I’ll keep it up for. A good long while at least.”
For Randy Blythe, time on the road is getting harder to endure on every level he can think of. Sure, he and his band mates still enjoy those brief moments under the lights, but the hours before and after is where the strain is starting to show. It is in those moments that Blythe’s thoughts turn to the ones he’s left behind.
“The lowest point of it all is the being away from home,” sighs the singer. “Being away from home and away from my wife. There are times where I am away from her for a few months at a time.”
How do you keep the relationship going?
“We have cell phones and Blackberries,” explains Randy. “I have got myself a video camera that attaches to my Macintosh and she has one too so that we can see each other. We try and do that whenever we have a good enough internet connection.”
A marriage glued together with minutes of conversation grabbed when and where you can must be tough. Especially if there are kids involved.
“Well, I don’t have kids at home yet,” sighs the frontman. “I guess we’ll probably wait until I’ve finished touring.”
To Blythe, putting a family on hold for the sake of heavy metal is a massive sacrifice. And it angers him and the rest of his band that while they are busting their guts on stage each night, making the arduous treks across the world and keeping their long-term life plans on hold, their own label acts like Lamb Of God don’t even exist.
“We have people at our label in the UK, and they aren’t doing anything for us,” reveals the singer.
What do you mean? Hell, Lamb Of God are already big in the UK.
“It’s total bullshit,” says Randy. “The last time that we were in the UK there was no press. I had to set up an interview with you guys at Metal Hammer directly, and it’s like, ‘you know what, fuck this’. They just don’t know what to do with us,” he shrugs. “They have no idea what we do.”
From first to last breath, Sacrament reeks of the sweat and toil of a group that’s clearly incensed by its circumstances. It’s 46 minutes of prime Lamb Of God anger, all gritted teeth and cathartic, head-pounding rage – a sonic wall-punch. Though past releases were heavy to the most extreme and vulgar degrees, the confessionals injected into their latest release take Lamb Of God’s intensity into uncharted territories.
“It deals with depression, girlfriends, substance abuse – all that stuff,” says the singer. “We exorcised some demons on this record and we’ve written some pretty dark stuff.”
First single from the album – and the track that has been previewed on numerous websites since June – is the Pantera-heavy, Southern metal explosion known as ‘Redneck’. The accompanying video has Lamb Of God rock up and trash a kid’s birthday party; it portrays the band as wild party-boys. The inspiration behind the song, however, is slightly more sinister.
“According to Mark [who wrote the lyrics to that song], it’s about people in the music business who get a little too big for their britches,” he smiles. “They have a bit of a rock star complex.”
Who has riled you the most?
“Ha ha,” he smirks. “The song could be about anyone, but as a good journalist, you want me to dish dirt, right?”
Yep.
“Well, people are welcome to try and guess who it’s about,” he says, sounding playful. “I’ll just say to them, ‘it’s about your mom.’”
It seems that even after all the struggles, Lamb Of God are still ready to battle through. Their stresses may only ease a little from the catharsis of roaring about their ills on stage before an army of adoring fans, but they’re still as fired up as ever. If they’ve survived this far with all these setbacks then there’s no stopping them anytime soon.
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 158, September 2006
