This article originally appeared in a 2005 issue of Revolver Magazine.
Randall Blythe has just about had it. As the frontman for Virginia thrash purveyors Lamb of God, it typically falls to Blythe to handle most of the band’s interviews. In theory, at least, he is cool with this — after all, such obligations go with the territory, and it’s nice that people care enough about his band to want to interview him in the first place. But with Lamb of God currently holding down a high-profile support slot on Slipknot’s Subliminal Verses tour, interview requests have become more relentless than drummer Chris Adler’s double-bass fills, and Blythe is beginning to crack under the strain.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t ask me the same exact questions each time,” grumbles Blythe, as he paces agitatedly in the front lounge of Lamb of God’s tour bus. Tonight, Blythe, Adler, and their bandmates — bassist John “J.C.” Campbell, guitarist Mark Morton and guitarist Willie Adler (Chris’ younger brother) — will rock the living crap out of 7,500 kids at the Wolstein Center arena at Cleveland State University in Ohio. But this afternoon, as the rest of the guys are napping or playing video games, Blythe prepares to endure yet another phone interview, this time with a local high school paper. “I’ll bet you anything that this kid is gonna start with one of two things,” he says while dialing his cellphone. “It’s gonna be either, ‘Why did you guys change your name from Burn the Priest?’ or ‘What’s it like being on tour with Slipknot?’ I’ll put it on speakerphone — you’ll see!”
Blythe reaches the youngster, who starts by informing Blythe that he won’t actually be recording their interview. “Can you try to speak slowly?” he asks the singer. “I’m typing your answers on my computer.”
Blythe rolls his eyes, then tells the kid to fire away.
“OK, um, so … how is it touring with Slipknot?”
“It’s really great,” says Blythe, enunciating slowly enough for the student to catch every syllable. “We’ve been sucking tons of cock every night.”
Lamb of God have come a long way since 1990, when Morton, Campbell and the elder Adler bonded as metal-loving freshmen at Virginia Commonwealth University. After more than a decade of playing dives and paying dues — first as Burn the Priest, then, since 1999, as Lamb of God — the band has struck a deep nerve with discerning metal fans with its uncompromising, politically charged brand of thrash. Ashes of the Wake, Lamb of God’s first album for Epic Records (and third overall), has sold nearly 200,000 copies in the U.S. since its release last August. Now Epic is releasing both Killadelphia (a live DVD shot last fall at Philadelphia’s Trocadero Theatre) and a remixed and remastered version of Burn the Priest’s self-titled 1998 album. And the band is second-billed on the nine-week Subliminal Verses tour, which also features longtime LoG pals Shadows Fall. As success stories go, it’s a well-deserved one, although the band members admit they still occasionally have trouble processing their good fortune.
“We used to sleep on our equipment, and now we’ve got an 18 wheeler to haul it,” marvels Morton. “That blows my mind!”
“On this tour,” says Chris Adler, “we have 10 people with us — including the five guys in the band — which is big for us. It’s getting to the point where we may soon need more than 10, and it’s hard for us to mentally swallow the idea that we are going to need more people than there are in the band in order to put on the show. Not that we’re an arena band, but we’re currently playing arenas, and there’s a lot of work that goes into playing a show like that.”
When Lamb of God take the stage at the Wolstein Center, it immediately becomes clear what Adler is talking about. The sterile arena is the polar opposite of the dingy, sweaty clubs the band came up in: There’s at least 20 feet of space between the security barrier and the 10-foot-high stage, and much of the crowd is seated so far away you can’t even make out their facial features. But from Blythe’s opening shout of “What the fuck is up, Cleveland?” Lamb of God make it clear they can hold their own in an arena environment. Though the sound is muddy at times — on this tour, Slipknot are the only band to get a pre-show sound check — the power and precision of songs like “Laid to Rest,” “As the Palaces Burn” and the old Burn the Priest chestnut “Bloodletting” slice impressively through the mix. Unable to dive into the crowd, Blythe instead transforms himself into a one-man mosh pit, urging on the kids below with his wildly flailing limbs. By the time the band closes its 45-minute set with “Black Label,” the arena floor has become a veritable sea of writhing, headbanging humanity.
“That’s the first time all week I felt we really slayed,” beams Campbell, as he heads for the dressing room. It’s not unusual for this notoriously self-critical band to spend hours dissecting a set it’s just played — as Chris Adler explains, “If somebody blows one part of one song, to us that’s a bad show.” But the general consensus backstage is that despite some difficulties with the lighting cues and the stage monitors, tonight’s show was the best of the tour so far.
With everyone in a good mood, and the night still young, the decision is made to trudge several blocks through the freezing sleet to a dingy rock club called Peabody’s, where one of the band’s Cleveland pals is throwing what’s been advertised as a Lamb of God after-party. Though it looks kind of dubious at first — the club has paid some dude to stand in the parking lot and yell, “Lamb of God after-party!” through a megaphone — the Peabody’s shindig turns out to be a boozy good time. After about an hour of shooting the shit with fans and friends, and generally getting their drink on, the Lamb of God guys decide to invade the club’s tiny stage. Borrowing guitars, amps and drums from one of the local acts on the bill, the band treats the rowdy Peabody’s crowd — which now includes several well-lit members of Shadows Fall — to apocalyptic renditions of “Ruin” and “What I’ve Become.” It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it set, but the band pours everything it has left into the two songs, rocking out even harder than it had done hours before at the Wolstein Center. “Somebody get me a shot of Jäger!” Blythe yells triumphantly, disentangling himself from the microphone cord and the sweaty bodies of several stage divers.
“That was fun,” Chris Adler says afterwards. “It’s flattering to think that we can do an arena show, but at the same time, I know we’re a lot more comfortable when there’s people diving off the stage, and blood and beer and spit going everywhere!”
Back on the bus, Campbell and Willie Adler immerse themselves in round after round of the Xbox boxing game Fight Night 2004, while albums by Pantera, Gwar and S.O.D. are cranked at near-deafening levels. There’s a minor crisis when Chris Adler has trouble locating his extra bag of Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Crunchy Snacks, which he’d previously stashed away in anticipation of some late-evening munchies. Bozz, the band’s tour manager, comes to the rescue by fishing the spicy snacks out of an overhead cupboard, where they’d been hidden behind several bags of chips. “They’re the most perfect food God has ever made,” the drummer says, popping one bright red cheese curl after another into his grinning mouth. “You can put ’em in milk and eat ’em for breakfast!”
“Shark attack!” someone yells, and a guy in a full-body shark suit suddenly appears in the front lounge, brandishing a plastic funnel and a bottle of Jägermeister. The bizarre apparition comes courtesy of Slipknot, who pay one of their crew members to dress up like a shark and administer liquid cheer to all and sundry on a nightly basis. Swim at your own risk, though — the Shark pours ’em strong. “How can you not smile when the Shark shows up?” asks Morton, nodding appreciatively as the Shark goes about his libational business. It’s gonna be a long drive tonight from Cleveland to Chicago, but it looks like the Lamb of God gang will be smiling all the way.
If anyone ever publishes a guide to the most mind-bendingly boring places in the United States, the Flying J truck stop in Lake Station, Indiana, will surely warrant a chapter. There’s a blizzard whipping in off of Lake Michigan, and since the band has a day off between its Cleveland and Chicago shows, Lamb of God’s driver has decided to park the bus here at the Flying J until conditions clear up. The place is a godsend for those who need a shower or want to do some laundry — and a few members of the band avail themselves of both — but there’s little else to do here besides eat, attempt to take a dump or browse through the store’s supply of hillbilly statuettes, Louis L’Amour western novels, auto accessories and budget-priced DVDs. Time goes so slow at the Flying J, the clocks almost seem to be running backward.
“This is the worst part of the whole thing,” says Chris Adler, over a greasy egg breakfast at the Flying J coffee shop. “I’m sitting in a truck stop outside of Chicago while my wife’s at home, calling me and telling me she’s missing me. This is my job, and she understands that I’ve gotta be out here doing this, but sitting in a truck stop outside of Chicago is not my job. For us to sit around for a day and not play, it seems like we’re just kind of wasting time.”
“Isn’t being on tour exciting?” asks Blythe, eyes twinkling behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that make him appear more like a college professor than the potentially homicidal maniac who appears onstage with Lamb of God. “Usually, you just get so bored, you start buying stupid shit. Willie bought a giant jackknife at one of these places. One time, me and Alexi from Children of Bodom went crazy in Texas and bought about $30 worth of ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ merchandise — shot glasses, coffee mugs, T-shirts, all sorts of shit.”
Blythe stops at the “Robosapiens” display, where remote-control robots are on sale for a hundred bucks a pop. “J.C. and I bought two of these on the last tour,” he says. “That was probably the stupidest purchase I ever made at a truck stop, because it was a hundred dollars worth of stupidity. I couldn’t just say, ‘Fuck it — I was drunk,’ you know? We tried to get them to fight, but they couldn’t, because they were on the same wireless channel. They would both turn and walk away from each other — they would never actually face off. Robosapien is definitely peaceful. Which is not what I wanted.”
There are times when the boredom of life on the road, combined with the strain of living in each other’s pockets 24/7, manifests itself as something far uglier than truck-stop spending sprees. Included among the Killadelphia DVD’s behind-the-scenes extras is some rather disturbing verité footage of Blythe and Morton beating the shit out of each other on a street in Glasgow, Scotland. (Excerpts from said footage are also featured in the band’s new “Now You’ve Got Something to Die For” video.)
“I think that fight was a big pressure release, a valve opening up,” Morton explains. “It doesn’t mean that Randy and I hate each other. It doesn’t mean that the band isn’t getting along anymore. We live on top of each other for long periods of time, and people get on each other’s nerves. Put the right amount of Scottish whiskey in there, and something’s bound to happen.
“There’s a couple times on the DVD where there’s a fight going on, or two people are going at it over something, and then we just take the stage,” the guitarist continues. “I never really realized it until I watched it, but we’ll be at our worst, and then we’re able to flip that switch and go out and do our thing. We channel some of that tension into it and let it go from there. That night in Glasgow, we didn’t have a stage to go out and do it on — we just went outside.”
As darkness falls on Indiana, the bus finally pulls out of the Flying J and heads for the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. Tomorrow night, Lamb of God will be playing the Allstate Arena in Rosemont; tonight, the Mötley Crüe reunion show is in town and Lamb of God have free tickets. “I don’t know why I want to go,” says Chris Adler. “I guess it’s kind of like a donkey show or something — you’ve gotta see it at least once.”
The next day, the Crüe show is the talk of the tour bus — opinion is split as to whether that was the worst rock show that anyone’s ever seen, or just the “gayest.” “When I’m 50, I really hope I won’t be fat and unable to sing,” says Blythe. Chris Adler says he forced himself to sit through Tommy Lee’s drum solo, though it doesn’t sound like he picked up much in the way of professional pointers. “He was flying around like Peter Pan between two drum sets and two turntable decks, yelling ‘You feelin’ me? You feelin’ me?’” he recounts, laughing. “There were so many people streaming toward the exits, it looked like the fourth quarter of a bad football game!”
The band has several activities scheduled in the hours before the Allstate Arena gig — photo shoot, interviews, record label meet-and-greet — but the afternoon still moves at a crawl. The only time the band members seem to be having fun is when they meet Venus, an adorable yellow Labrador who is training to serve as a bomb-sniffing dog for the local police department. Venus sniffs around backstage, does a few cute tricks, and everyone oohs and aahs; for the moment, it’s as if the boys are back in Richmond, doting over a pal’s pooch on a sunny afternoon, instead of freezing their asses off in a Midwestern arena. “This is rock & roll, right here,” announces Campbell, as he climbs back into the bus and boots up another video game. “Boring as fuck.”
Tonight’s show, however, is anything but. Unlike the Cleveland audience, which took a little while to warm up, the Chicago fans are good to go from the first galloping riff of “Laid to Rest.” The crowd is loud, and even though tonight’s stage mix is nothing short of terrible, the band feeds on the audience’s energy like wolves in a livestock pen. Chris Adler nearly hammers his kit to pieces, while Willie Adler, Morton and Campbell send one lacerating fusillade of notes after another into the ether. Blythe, who is briefly joined onstage by Shadows Fall’s Brian Fair for “11th Hour,” has the crowd completely eating out of his hand; when he encourages them to “Destroy this fucking place!” at the climax of “Black Label,” they damn near do.
And yet, the post-show mood is a sour one. Down the hall from Lamb of God’s dressing room, the Shadows Fall guys can be heard loudly (and hilariously) practicing their Paul Stanley imitations in preparation for tomorrow night’s gig at Detroit’s Cobo Arena. But here in the dressing room, the conversation is quiet, and the tension is unbearably thick. “The playing was good,” grumbles Willie Adler, “but that’s about it.”
“We’ve been a week into the tour, and we’re still trying to make the best of the situation,” says Morton, referring to the band’s continued sound problems. “We can deal with the time constraint of playing only 45 minute sets. But it’s the production constraints — not being able to get a soundcheck, or even a line check — that are a little more frustrating.”
After an hour or so, the mood lightens as a couple dozen of the band’s Chicago pals stop by to say hello and pass around a bottle of bourbon. The Shark makes another appearance, as do several fine ladies and someone who bills himself as Meatball, the World’s Biggest Midget. For a moment, the room seems like something out of a lost Fellini film. Only eight more weeks of this madness to go.
“If it were our show, we’d be doing a longer set,” says Chris Adler of the Subliminal Verses tour. “And if it were our choice, we’d definitely try to make those ticket prices a little cheaper. But it is what it is, and we’re flattered that Slipknot invited us along. It’s an amazing opportunity to get in front of people who haven’t heard us. They may walk away hating it, but that’s fine — at least they got a shot at it. So that’s kind of the dice we’re rolling. And so far, so good.”