LAMB OF GOD

LAMB OF GOD

When the nominees for the 2016 Grammy awards were announced last month, veteran metal act Lamb of God found themselves in the running for Best Metal Performance thanks to “512,” the relentless single from their acclaimed 2015 disc “VII: Sturm und Drang.”

One person was unaffected by the news: Randy Blythe, lead singer of the Richmond, Virginia-based band.

Speaking the morning after the Grammy nominees were announced, Blythe said frankly, “You know, I don’t care. It’s pretty meaningless to me. It’s cool for some of my dudes, but I just don’t care. It’s our fifth (Grammy nomination); I can say I’m a five-time Grammy loser eventually.”

So we shouldn’t expect Blythe to hit the red carpet or be smiling for the cameras at the 58th Grammy's, happening Feb. 15 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

“(It’s) not my scene at all,” Blythe said with a laugh. “It is what it is. I’m not really into awards or trophies or whatever.”

 Lamb of God is an American groove metal band from Richmond, Virginia. Formed in 1994 (as Burn the Priest), the group consists of vocalist Randy Blythe, guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler, bassist John Campbell, and drummer Chris Adler. The band is considered a significant member of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal movement.
Blythe is, however, still on the road with Lamb of God in support of “VII: Sturm und Drang.” The band’s current tour with Anthrax, Deafheaven and Power Trip hits Starland Ballroom in Sayreville on Tuesday, Jan. 26.
The band hails from Virginia, but the band has deep ties to New Jersey. Originally known as Burn the Priest, the group played the first show of their first tour as Lamb of God right here in the Garden State: also featuring Gwar and Amen. The fateful gig went down at the former Birch Hill night club in Old Bridge.
“It was a really good time, and I’m always had a lot of love for the Jersey crowds because they’ve shown us a lot of love. … Jersey’s always been really good to us,” Blythe said. “You’ve got a long tradition of metal and hardcore there.”

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When Lamb of God last made tracks through Jersey, for an August engagement with Slipknot at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, Blythe even took some time for a visit to the beach.
“I made a pilgrimage to Asbury Park,” said Blythe. “I went surfing because they have killer waves right there. Not far from the Stone Pony there’s a jetty right there, and I got to go and catch a couple of waves.”

The success of the band’s latest album, which debuted at the top of Billboard’s Rock and Hard Rock Album charts and at No. 3 on the Top 200 in July, followed one of the most trying times in the band’s history.
In June 2012, Blythe was arrested and detained in Prague, charged with manslaughter in the 2010 death of a fan of the band, 19-year-old Daniel Nosek, who Czech prosecutors accused Blythe of pushing from the stage during a Prague concert. Nosek hit his head on the venue's concrete floor and died from his injuries two weeks later.
Blythe spent five weeks in custody before being released on bail in August 2012. A Czech court acquitted him him in March 2013. The ordeal was chronicled in a 2014 documentary, “As the Palaces Burn.” Blythe told his side of the story in the gripping book "Dark Days: A Memoir," released in July through Da Capo Press.
“I didn’t want to write the book," Blythe said. "I had this weird, brief moment in the beginning of the book when I was being questioned, I was like, ‘This is going to make a great book someday.’ And by someday, I was thinking, maybe, when I’m 60, not so soon after it happened. But I was convinced to write the book by a literary agent who was like, ‘Your memories are going to fade, you need to get this down while it’s still fresh,’ and I was like, ‘You’re right.’ "

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The process of writing "Dark Days," Blythe said, was a learning experience. "It taught me how to be a writer, a prose writer, a real writer, as opposed to the lyrical form which I’ve always worked mostly in before," he explained. "With lyrics, it only takes so long to write a song. The book is almost 500 pages, and that took a long time. It taught me a lot of discipline."
With one book out, Blythe said he's already started working on a follow-up. Eventually, he said, he plans on transitioning from heavy metal frontman to author on a full-time basis.
“I wanted to write books since I was a child," Blythe said. "I never thought I’d be in a band when I was a kid, but I always wanted to write books. I wasn’t one of those kids who fantasized about being on stage. It was just kind of accidental the way I wound up in a band. I’m just good at being a clown, basically. That’s what’s required to learn how to be a frontman, a willingness to get up and look stupid long enough in front of enough people until you learn how to do it. So it was kind of accidental, that’s the only qualification I really brought to my job as a musician.