Lamb Of God: The Real Metal Deal

If you haven't heard Ashes Of The Wake, the new album from Virginia metal band Lamb Of God, then you are weak. Undeniably brutal, Ashes Of The Wake is the band's first album on a major label. In a scene that prides itself on being, it's up to the metalheads to decide if this newfound attention is a good thing or the not. Lamb Of God vocalist Randy Blythe spoke with ChartAttack recently to say that he doesn't really give a shit what the metal community thinks. To him, music's just music, man. Regardless of what label it's on, if you haven't heard Ashes Of The Wake yet, do so because it will kick you in the privates.

ChartAttack: So do you care that you're on a major label now?
Randy Blythe: No. We really don't care at all. With Sony, when we went with them, we told them, "Look, we're doing just fine on our own, we don't particularly need you." It certainly helps being on a label with that much clout, that much of a budget, publicity and so forth. But we told them, "Look, we've been doing our own thing for a while, it's working out great and as long as you don't mess with us in any way creatively, then we'll deliver you a record that you will be able to sell to the fanbase that we've already established, and with your clout you'll be able to establish it even more." Sony is a huge company, [points downwards at recorder] they might have even made this tape-recorder. But right now the Republican national convention is in New York City, we were on the last cover of this magazine Revolver, and I had on an anti-Bush shirt, and apparently right now all over New York there's a couple of billboards and there's 3X8 posters of that plastered everywhere with me wearing that anti-Bush shirt, which I think is just awesome. It's kind of like a big middle-finger to that monkey from Texas, you know. So they help expose us a lot, Sony.

I interviewed Hatebreed about a year ago, a while after they had got signed to Universal, another major label. What's happening with metal now? And I mean, extreme metal, not you know, nu metal?
Well, nu metal sucks, so that's why that's dying off. And I think with the socio-political and economic climate of the States, which of course affects the rest of the world — even Canada — people are ready for angrier music. I think people are ready for something that's real, not, you know, "I did it all for the Nookie." It's a product, you know, and especially within our genre, all the bands are striving to push each other to be as good as they can. And there's a lot of variety between bands like us, Killswitch Engage, Shadow's Fall, Hatebreed, they're all our friends and our contemporaries and I think when Hatebreed signed to Universal it did kind of open up a door a little bit. People started paying attention a little bit more at the larger labels.

You guys were on this year's Ozzfest bill, which had its most brutal lineup of bands ever. It used to be all nu metal bands only a couple years ago.
When Ozzfest first started up, there was Ozzy, Pantera were on the bill and they were undeniably heavy and then the whole nu metal thing happened for a while and that was very depressing. So I didn't go to any of those. I went to last year's because I was hanging out with Shadow's Fall, Killswitch Engage, Chimaira, Sworn Enemy, E-Town Concrete who were all on that bill. I just went up there to hang with them and there was actually a poll after last year's ['Fest] of what type of bands do you want to see on next year's Ozzfest? And I think 100,000 kids did it and most of the bands who are on this year's fest were on there. I think the whole nu metal thing is dying out and Ozzfest is one of the only festival tour circuits that is actually doing well this summer. Like, Lollapalooza got cancelled — nobody cared. I think it's just the right time and people are gonna spend money if they want to hear the real deal.