Read the whole interview with Randy Blythe and Chris Adler as they discuss the writing of new album, ‘Wrath’, and how US politics might mean ‘the end of their career?’.

By now you’ll have heard something online or via the CD included with this very mag. ‘Wrath’, Lamb Of God’s seventh studio release, is a lava-blooded, fire-breathing monster of an album – a riff-tastic high-kicking gang-beating, a metallic mushroom cloud, a… you get the idea. In short, it rules, but then if you’re not from Mars you’d have been hard-pressed to expect anything less from these stalwart Virginians.

2006’s ‘Sacrament’, Grammy-nominated and the strongest argument there is for these Richmond natives being the natural heirs to Slayer, Pantera, and the list of heroes goes on.

It’s hard to believe when you first meet mutant four-handed drummer Chris Adler and master throatist Randy Blythe. The antithesis of what the lucky among you might have experienced at one of their gigs, they’re currently, calmly, ‘putting their faces on’ in the bowels of the Hammer towers for an impromptu shoot.

“I listen to the record and I seriously can’t believe that’s me playing on it,” says Chris in grinning response to an off-hand compliment from our Hammer TV crew. He’s in an exceptionally good mood at the moment – US president-elect Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony is just days away, a political event he’ll humbly admit to playing a small but not insignificant role in. “Yeah I canvassed my neighbourhood,” he says.
 
You mean, you went door to door?
Chris: “Yeah, I tried to be as active as possible. What happens when you don’t get involved is things like George W. Bush. For me it wasn’t pushing an idea, it was saying ‘do you need a ride to the voting booths on election day?’”
Randy: [invokes a southern drawl] “‘I ain’t voting for no Barack boy… weir-oh!’ Watching his acceptance speech I was impressed by the sense of gravity he brought to the office. He wasn’t up there smiling like a monkey, we’ve had eight years of that. It was almost like he was saying, ‘It’s a fucking mess, here’s what we’re gonna do…’”

Virginia’s Republican isn’t it?
Chris: “It was! We went Democratic this year. It was awesome.”
Randy: “I was in the studio that day we got a Democratic senator in there and I went to hang out with Trevor, the singer from Unearth, and he went, ‘Well there goes our careers!’ Look at the Reagan era. Thrash, punk rock – it was a great time for heavy music because things sucked.”
Chris: “I grew up with Megadeth and the political stuff would make me want to find out more about what Dave Mustaine was singing about. I could sit down and read it and I was interested in finding out more what it was about, as opposed to /Jump/ by Van Halen. There’s always the people that say, ‘I don’t want a political message in my music’ and that’s funny because we’ve never been on a soapbox. We’re saying,  ‘think for yourself.’”
Randy: “Once I had a radio DJ I was doing a phone interview with and he was like, ‘I don’t think it’s your place as an entertainer to express your political views.’ I was like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? It’s your job to spin my fucking records.’ That’s the only backlash I’ve ever received.”
 
Was it American politics that got the ball rolling for ‘Wrath’?
Randy: “I think it was Chris going to the practise space because he couldn’t stand to stay still, he just started going ‘digga-digga-digga…’”
Chris: “The initial push was restlessness. We decided to take a year off in 2007, but by January of 2008 I was sitting in the studio for four or five hours a day. We’d been on tour for 18 months, we were all tired as hell and sick of each other, so we needed to reconnect with the music, and then by early April my brother and I started fooling around and John [Campbell, bass] heard we were getting together and started coming by, and by May we had four or five songs. I have a very hard time staying still.”

How long did it take you to write?
Chris: “We spent from April to September writing and locked in a room, sometimes eight hours away. It’s a little practise space in Richmond, it looks like a little dentist’s office, and we’d never done so much pre-production before. We analysed each song over and over and over to make sure it was as neck-snapping as possible. And Randy was very involved this time.”
Randy: “Lyrically, what I do… I’d sometimes sit out in the hallway while they were inside working stuff out but lyrically I generally generate ideas when I’m at home or in my car, and I start writing them down. I can’t sit in the practise room while they’re working out some insane riff because I’d go fucking insane. I’m not a musician. These guys will argue over sixteenth-notes for an hour.”
Chris: “We’re meticulous to the point of ridiculousness. A three second segment in a song can take a week to perfect. It’s all analysed under the highest power microscopes. But as opposed to /Sacrament/, as you may have seen on the DVD, it was a frustrating process because we felt like we had really lost touch – it was like Randy was hearing this music for the first time and there weren’t enough lyrics to go around. It just didn’t feel like it was a team effort. This time he was there, he was sitting outside of the rehearsal space. We felt like we were all working toward a point on the horizon together.”
Randy: “Sitting at home and writing and coming in and sometimes working with the music on my own or with the guys, them giving me suggestions on where a phrase might work, it was a very good experience this time – it was a different experience for us.”
 
What was the first song you worked out?
Randy: “The first song I wrote was ‘Contractor’, which is about privatised military corporations. The new mercenary. Throughout the lyrics there’s four or five PMCs listed, Blackwater, Aegis, Executive Outcomes – there’s actual names scattered in. What people aren’t aware of is that right now there are privatised military corporations being employed by the government. There’s a part of Baghdad that’s supposed to be the eight most dangerous miles in the world. To get from the airport to the American military base you have to go down this fucking crazy road and there’s fucking IEDs, improvised explosive devices. Incredibly dangerous shit. The US military aren’t the people transporting people from the airport to the base. These people from these PMCs are. They’re kind of… they aren’t employees of the government, so they aren’t necessarily rooted to the rules of engagement. There’s a cowboy mentality going on sometimes, shoot anything that moves, with very little accountability. That being said – it’s kind of crazy. But the American, British, Canadians over there are having a very hard time because they’re told don’t shoot unless you’re shot at. That’s a good way to wind up dead, you know? It’s kind of a catch-22 for these guys, which may be why these guys are employed. You’re transporting someone and someone pops their head up, whether they have an RPG or not, and you blow their head off – they can’t say, ‘Oh the US government did this, it was a contractor.’”

Would you say it’s a politically-inspired record?
Randy: “It’s half and half. The first song [/The Passing/] is about the music industry and our place in it, how it affects people. Hunter S Thompson said, ‘The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.’ It’s true, but the music industry was vastly different back then. Labels are getting downsized, but to tell you the truth there’s a lot of people who should have been let go because it’s like, ‘What the fuck does this guy actually do?’ People living off the fucking fat, you know? You’re the lifestyle rep for Romania – what the fuck is that? The song is just about the commodification of pure music.”

Is that something you’ve experienced?
Randy: “I’ve never compromised, ever, I do exactly what I want to do and we’re very careful not to put ourselves in any position where we’re compromised, but anytime commerce becomes involved in art at any point it becomes sullied to a degree, that’s the nature of the beast.”