The Aquarian
05/13/09, 10:58 AM
Lamb of God Interview (http://www.theaquarian.com/aq/2009/05/08/interview-with-randy-blythe-of-lamb-of-god/)
It’s a dreary day in a tour bus, parked near some projects and a Salvation Army in Kansas City. Inside, Randy Blythe sits, waiting to play a sold out show that evening, bored out of his skull.
“One of the bands on the tour, Municipal Waste, their van broke down, so we got three of them on our bus with us,” Blythe explains. “We’re getting ready to watch a Nick Nolte movie, The Deep, that’s pretty exciting. That’s about it. It’s raining, and there’s really absolutely nothing going on.”
It may seem unglamorous for a band that’s in the running for best selling metal album of 2009, but the Virginia-based metal band have been relatively modest about their success over the years, commonly citing hard work. Their latest album, Wrath, released in February, has performed in an economy that can’t sell cars or employ their own veterans, and Lamb Of God have been on the road, touring and promoting the hell out of it.
But there’s a more to Blythe and Lamb Of God than their well-constructed image of five guys performing brutal technical metal complemented by surprisingly comprehensible growls, beating a record into the heads of Americans and beyond. Surely, no man, no matter how metal, is an island, and Blythe reveals some of the depth and influence behind songs on Wrath as well as some personal interests beyond the 1977 Nick Nolte classic.
How is the tour going so far?
It’s going well. Lot of sold out shows, big turnouts, good crowds. The standard. It’s a metal show.
Is it like getting on a bike for you now, is this normal? It’s 15 years, almost.
Yeah, almost 15 years for us. It’s a job. It’s a cool job, but that’s what it is. There’s really no surprises. I don’t have anything wacky or any new revelations to reveal. It’s a fucking metal show.
Well, hopefully we’ll keep this interview nice and boring. I’ll be good, I’ll keep you to fifteen minutes, let you get back to doing whatever you’re doing.
Cool, cool. (laughs)
Sacrament sold about 65,000 copies in the first week four years ago when, relatively, the record industry was healthy. Wrath has beaten that number with even less people buying records in the middle of a recession. Is that a validating feeling?
To me, it’s a testament to the loyalty of metal fans, you know. It’s a testament to the hard work we’ve put in over the years on the road. As far as looking for validation from numbers and all that stuff, I don’t really care. Some of the guys are like, ‘Oh, we charted number two!’ I think that’s pretty cool and all only because we beat out a Disney band. I don’t really care about sales.
But as I said, it is a testament to the loyalty of metal fans, they actually give a fuck about their bands and buy records and so forth. With the economy the way it is and the fact that the industry is in such a slump, it’s pretty cool I suppose.
Well, for an artist who is already established to be doing better than what you were doing right now is bizarre.
Yeah, it’s sad (laughs), you know, that that’s a cool thing. You’re supposed to do better than what you did before. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? You don’t want to do worse than you did before. If you do I suppose it’s time to hang it up and go home.
Lyrically, you’ve always worked with a lot of moral grey area, and ‘Contractor’ is the song that sticks out to me in that respect.
I have these weird things, these tics I like to go off on, little tangents I become very interested in. For a while, during the writing of this record, I became interested in mercenaries, historically, back to the 1700s even. I started researching them, not thinking that it would turn into a song, but it was just something I was interested in. Particularly when I got to the ‘60s and ‘70s in Africa, there were a lot of mercenary actions there. And I realize that now looking at the situation in the Middle East where we have mercenaries still, but they aren’t the traditional romantic image of these small groups of dudes who are hired and go out and do a dirty job for money. It’s corporate now, with companies like Blackwater and so forth. It interested me a lot, the fact that killing someone else for money, much like everything else, has stepped from being a private gig to a corporate gig.
Being a contract killer is a corporate gig now, and that struck me as kind of ironic. Mercenaries have always had this persona of being these outsiders, but you can go online now and they [Blackwater] list their training courses and so forth, and you can become a corporate killer, and the employer is the United States government. There are dudes over there doing jobs that the government, up until now, didn’t want to be held accountable. But if they’re using privatized military corporations they can be like, ‘Oh, this is a civilian contractor. They don’t have to follow the rules of engagement.’ Some of that made it into the news, some of those cowboy antics over in the Middle East. It fascinates me. And that song is written from the view of a contractor over there in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. It was a lot of fun to write.
There’s a couple of levels there, especially that many of the contractors are veterans who are getting paid twice as much as the guys who are working directly from the government.
Yeah, and it’s also a statement on how our government takes care of our veterans, which is fairly fucked up. I’m not in any way or shape a pacifist and I don’t believe we should exist without a military, I believe that a military is necessary in today’s world. I think it’s fucked that these guys are trained to go over there and when they’re done—all these ads you see on tv, ‘Army: Be All You Can Be’—I’ve talked to a lot of veterans and it’s a bitch getting their VA benefits and stuff. It’s a bitch making a living.
With the economy the way it is, you aren’t automatically guaranteed a job. Naturally, for some of these guys who have been over there and seen action, the logical thing to do to make money is to go back there and get paid from a private corporation. I think that says something about the way our government takes care of its veterans which is pretty sad in and of itself.
It doesn’t really seem like a political song in that sense, but it does speak to a greater sociological problem that is a little different than your normal focus, personal rage, moral and religious aspects. It just seemed to be an idiosyncratic personal interest.
I think very much so. I kind of became just obsessed with mercenaries and I am kind of an idiosyncratic type of person, all sorts of weird shit. My band and my wife are like, ‘Oh, there goes Randy again, now he’s interested in elephants or something. He’ll get really into that for a while.’ I guess on this record I was trying to paint with perhaps a little broader brush than I had before. Maybe a little more encompassing worldview, not strictly this narrow aspect of politics, this narrow aspect of myself, but kind of bring things together. Because I believe the world is in bad shape right now.
Is there anything that you’re researching now?
I’m interested in the idea, it’s kind of a catchphrase now, of sustainable architecture, sustainable living and stuff. There’s a neat book I got recently called Toolbox For Sustainable City Living. It comes from not just an economic or ecological perspective but also from a moral perspective. Small sustainable communities within cities, particularly lower income neighborhoods. It’s an idea of ‘Okay, I don’t think the whole world is going to go green and we need to redesign everything with permaculture buildings and all this shit, we need to work with what we have right now.’ It’s an interesting book, it addresses a lot of that stuff. It was written by dudes from Austin called the Rhizome Collective [Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew]. I would recommend checking it out.
That’s a good point about the green movement and how it affects lower income populations. There’s a saying that the people who are most interested in environmentalism, organic foods and sustainability are people who never had to worry about their shopping bill.
Absolutely. This book is pretty realistic, I believe, of what I’ve read of it so far, in looking at people particularly in urban areas of what they can do to sustain themselves. It’s pretty cool. But I think you’re right. The average health-conscious, tofu-eating, Whole Foods-shopping person normally makes a good amount of money, enough so that they don’t have to worry about actually sustaining themselves.
And there’s no Whole Foods by the projects and Salvation Army you’re near right now.
Exactly. This book addresses it from a different viewpoint.
Regarding the writing process, as I recall, with Lamb Of God, it was always instruments laid down first, vocals second. Has that changed?
Nope. I think really that’s every band. You lay down instruments first. I don’t think anybody does a cappella versions of songs and then works under them. I’m not a guitar player. Mark [Morton, guitar] writes some lyrics with his guitar parts because he’s able to do that. I write away from the band, since I’m not capable of producing a riff if you paid me. So I write separately and then we come in and put it together.
Do you ever want to change that paradigm? The band originally started as an instrumental act, and I’m never going to get the idea that Lamb Of God is going to write three disc epic prog albums or anything like that, but does the idea of trying to change things or get out of your element in the process appeal to you?
For me, you know, watching them write a record is a very painful process. Let’s get that straight first of all. They like it when I come around to the practice space while they’re writing, and I’ll sit there outside and I’ll listen to them play the same riff for two hours with a sixteenth note variation. At the end, they’ll say ‘What do you think?’ and I’ll say, ‘I don’t fucking know, it all sounds the same to me.’ They’re changing things in such a subtly nuanced way that it’s almost impossible for me to pick up. Especially when you’ve been hammered with it again and again and again. They’re pretty meticulous. Sometimes if there’s a major question like a riff or progression of where something’s going to go, I’ll certainly give my opinion. But most of the time it’s me sitting there watching the paint peel while they play the same riff for two hours over and over again. That’s just the nature of the beast.
So unless the dudes in the band shifted their work mode into a manner in which I felt that I could understand what they’re doing…. I don’t know. As it is, I like writing alone. I enjoy being alone while I write. I don’t want to write around those dudes. I see them enough, you know. That’s when stuff comes out of my head. I don’t like being around anyone while I write. They do their thing together, creatively, and I do my thing separately.
Sometimes Mark and I will work on a song together, and that’s a little bit different. We have a really good relationship and we work well together and bounce things off of each other. But as far as all five of us coming together and writing something, it’s enough of a clusterfuck as it is without throwing my dumb ass into the mix. So I don’t see that changing in any way and I don’t really see the need for it to change.
It’s a dreary day in a tour bus, parked near some projects and a Salvation Army in Kansas City. Inside, Randy Blythe sits, waiting to play a sold out show that evening, bored out of his skull.
“One of the bands on the tour, Municipal Waste, their van broke down, so we got three of them on our bus with us,” Blythe explains. “We’re getting ready to watch a Nick Nolte movie, The Deep, that’s pretty exciting. That’s about it. It’s raining, and there’s really absolutely nothing going on.”
It may seem unglamorous for a band that’s in the running for best selling metal album of 2009, but the Virginia-based metal band have been relatively modest about their success over the years, commonly citing hard work. Their latest album, Wrath, released in February, has performed in an economy that can’t sell cars or employ their own veterans, and Lamb Of God have been on the road, touring and promoting the hell out of it.
But there’s a more to Blythe and Lamb Of God than their well-constructed image of five guys performing brutal technical metal complemented by surprisingly comprehensible growls, beating a record into the heads of Americans and beyond. Surely, no man, no matter how metal, is an island, and Blythe reveals some of the depth and influence behind songs on Wrath as well as some personal interests beyond the 1977 Nick Nolte classic.
How is the tour going so far?
It’s going well. Lot of sold out shows, big turnouts, good crowds. The standard. It’s a metal show.
Is it like getting on a bike for you now, is this normal? It’s 15 years, almost.
Yeah, almost 15 years for us. It’s a job. It’s a cool job, but that’s what it is. There’s really no surprises. I don’t have anything wacky or any new revelations to reveal. It’s a fucking metal show.
Well, hopefully we’ll keep this interview nice and boring. I’ll be good, I’ll keep you to fifteen minutes, let you get back to doing whatever you’re doing.
Cool, cool. (laughs)
Sacrament sold about 65,000 copies in the first week four years ago when, relatively, the record industry was healthy. Wrath has beaten that number with even less people buying records in the middle of a recession. Is that a validating feeling?
To me, it’s a testament to the loyalty of metal fans, you know. It’s a testament to the hard work we’ve put in over the years on the road. As far as looking for validation from numbers and all that stuff, I don’t really care. Some of the guys are like, ‘Oh, we charted number two!’ I think that’s pretty cool and all only because we beat out a Disney band. I don’t really care about sales.
But as I said, it is a testament to the loyalty of metal fans, they actually give a fuck about their bands and buy records and so forth. With the economy the way it is and the fact that the industry is in such a slump, it’s pretty cool I suppose.
Well, for an artist who is already established to be doing better than what you were doing right now is bizarre.
Yeah, it’s sad (laughs), you know, that that’s a cool thing. You’re supposed to do better than what you did before. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? You don’t want to do worse than you did before. If you do I suppose it’s time to hang it up and go home.
Lyrically, you’ve always worked with a lot of moral grey area, and ‘Contractor’ is the song that sticks out to me in that respect.
I have these weird things, these tics I like to go off on, little tangents I become very interested in. For a while, during the writing of this record, I became interested in mercenaries, historically, back to the 1700s even. I started researching them, not thinking that it would turn into a song, but it was just something I was interested in. Particularly when I got to the ‘60s and ‘70s in Africa, there were a lot of mercenary actions there. And I realize that now looking at the situation in the Middle East where we have mercenaries still, but they aren’t the traditional romantic image of these small groups of dudes who are hired and go out and do a dirty job for money. It’s corporate now, with companies like Blackwater and so forth. It interested me a lot, the fact that killing someone else for money, much like everything else, has stepped from being a private gig to a corporate gig.
Being a contract killer is a corporate gig now, and that struck me as kind of ironic. Mercenaries have always had this persona of being these outsiders, but you can go online now and they [Blackwater] list their training courses and so forth, and you can become a corporate killer, and the employer is the United States government. There are dudes over there doing jobs that the government, up until now, didn’t want to be held accountable. But if they’re using privatized military corporations they can be like, ‘Oh, this is a civilian contractor. They don’t have to follow the rules of engagement.’ Some of that made it into the news, some of those cowboy antics over in the Middle East. It fascinates me. And that song is written from the view of a contractor over there in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. It was a lot of fun to write.
There’s a couple of levels there, especially that many of the contractors are veterans who are getting paid twice as much as the guys who are working directly from the government.
Yeah, and it’s also a statement on how our government takes care of our veterans, which is fairly fucked up. I’m not in any way or shape a pacifist and I don’t believe we should exist without a military, I believe that a military is necessary in today’s world. I think it’s fucked that these guys are trained to go over there and when they’re done—all these ads you see on tv, ‘Army: Be All You Can Be’—I’ve talked to a lot of veterans and it’s a bitch getting their VA benefits and stuff. It’s a bitch making a living.
With the economy the way it is, you aren’t automatically guaranteed a job. Naturally, for some of these guys who have been over there and seen action, the logical thing to do to make money is to go back there and get paid from a private corporation. I think that says something about the way our government takes care of its veterans which is pretty sad in and of itself.
It doesn’t really seem like a political song in that sense, but it does speak to a greater sociological problem that is a little different than your normal focus, personal rage, moral and religious aspects. It just seemed to be an idiosyncratic personal interest.
I think very much so. I kind of became just obsessed with mercenaries and I am kind of an idiosyncratic type of person, all sorts of weird shit. My band and my wife are like, ‘Oh, there goes Randy again, now he’s interested in elephants or something. He’ll get really into that for a while.’ I guess on this record I was trying to paint with perhaps a little broader brush than I had before. Maybe a little more encompassing worldview, not strictly this narrow aspect of politics, this narrow aspect of myself, but kind of bring things together. Because I believe the world is in bad shape right now.
Is there anything that you’re researching now?
I’m interested in the idea, it’s kind of a catchphrase now, of sustainable architecture, sustainable living and stuff. There’s a neat book I got recently called Toolbox For Sustainable City Living. It comes from not just an economic or ecological perspective but also from a moral perspective. Small sustainable communities within cities, particularly lower income neighborhoods. It’s an idea of ‘Okay, I don’t think the whole world is going to go green and we need to redesign everything with permaculture buildings and all this shit, we need to work with what we have right now.’ It’s an interesting book, it addresses a lot of that stuff. It was written by dudes from Austin called the Rhizome Collective [Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew]. I would recommend checking it out.
That’s a good point about the green movement and how it affects lower income populations. There’s a saying that the people who are most interested in environmentalism, organic foods and sustainability are people who never had to worry about their shopping bill.
Absolutely. This book is pretty realistic, I believe, of what I’ve read of it so far, in looking at people particularly in urban areas of what they can do to sustain themselves. It’s pretty cool. But I think you’re right. The average health-conscious, tofu-eating, Whole Foods-shopping person normally makes a good amount of money, enough so that they don’t have to worry about actually sustaining themselves.
And there’s no Whole Foods by the projects and Salvation Army you’re near right now.
Exactly. This book addresses it from a different viewpoint.
Regarding the writing process, as I recall, with Lamb Of God, it was always instruments laid down first, vocals second. Has that changed?
Nope. I think really that’s every band. You lay down instruments first. I don’t think anybody does a cappella versions of songs and then works under them. I’m not a guitar player. Mark [Morton, guitar] writes some lyrics with his guitar parts because he’s able to do that. I write away from the band, since I’m not capable of producing a riff if you paid me. So I write separately and then we come in and put it together.
Do you ever want to change that paradigm? The band originally started as an instrumental act, and I’m never going to get the idea that Lamb Of God is going to write three disc epic prog albums or anything like that, but does the idea of trying to change things or get out of your element in the process appeal to you?
For me, you know, watching them write a record is a very painful process. Let’s get that straight first of all. They like it when I come around to the practice space while they’re writing, and I’ll sit there outside and I’ll listen to them play the same riff for two hours with a sixteenth note variation. At the end, they’ll say ‘What do you think?’ and I’ll say, ‘I don’t fucking know, it all sounds the same to me.’ They’re changing things in such a subtly nuanced way that it’s almost impossible for me to pick up. Especially when you’ve been hammered with it again and again and again. They’re pretty meticulous. Sometimes if there’s a major question like a riff or progression of where something’s going to go, I’ll certainly give my opinion. But most of the time it’s me sitting there watching the paint peel while they play the same riff for two hours over and over again. That’s just the nature of the beast.
So unless the dudes in the band shifted their work mode into a manner in which I felt that I could understand what they’re doing…. I don’t know. As it is, I like writing alone. I enjoy being alone while I write. I don’t want to write around those dudes. I see them enough, you know. That’s when stuff comes out of my head. I don’t like being around anyone while I write. They do their thing together, creatively, and I do my thing separately.
Sometimes Mark and I will work on a song together, and that’s a little bit different. We have a really good relationship and we work well together and bounce things off of each other. But as far as all five of us coming together and writing something, it’s enough of a clusterfuck as it is without throwing my dumb ass into the mix. So I don’t see that changing in any way and I don’t really see the need for it to change.