Thursday, March 28, 2024

As the comic stacks burn

Armed with killer musicianship and razor-sharp socially critical lyrics, Richmond VA's Lamb of God have been bringing superior heavy metal to the masses since 1990. Hard work has rewarded the band with critical acclaim—they've been nominated for multiple Grammy awards. The band recently released a remix of their second album, As The Palaces Burn. The band is currently touring the United States. We surprised Lamb of God's bassist, John Campbell, with an interview on a Toledo stop between tour dates, while his band cut the ribbon at JC’s comics and more.

How's your tour with Killswitch Engage going so far?

We're about a week into the tour and I've managed to pick up a head cold, which, in heavy metal especially, is terrible. But, there's no sick days in rock and roll, so I'm powering through. The tour's going great. A Lot of kids showing up, we're playing well, so no complaints there, but give me a couple weeks.

For the readers, tell me where we are and what we're doing right now.

[laughs]
We're in the pervert's section of JC's comics, which is really just some old Playboys and Heavy Metal magazines. I am looking through some old Playboys, looking for the date and month. I have some friends' birthdays coming up, and these things make the perfect gift. I'm in the [issues from the] 70's right now, so we're in the land of the large pubic area.

Do you realize we're some of the last people that will ever see printed porn, thanks to the internet?

Looking through these, the look into the culture of the time—the ads for hi-fi stereos—is really interesting.

For the articles, right? A little vintage Kurt Vonnegut.

[laughs]
You know that's very true, and actually Shel Silverstein did a lot of illustrations for them.

Noam Chomsky published there.

It's true, Playboy used to have some very nice articles. Maybe they still do. I wouldn't know; there's this thing now called the internet. Which is funny, now we're getting way off topic, but when I was a kid you used to find a stack of these things in the woods, and that was how you found pornography.

But why leave it out in the woods?

You know, we've had this conversation in the band. I actually think I should take it on myself to be one of those people who leaves stacks of pornography in the woods.

So you've done this.

I… haven't. but I think it would be good to be Johnny Pornoseed, and leave the neighborhood children grocery sacks full of porn

[hysterical laughter]

I think all it was is somebody would just grab their dad's stuff and stash it out in the woods, and someone else would find the stash and move it and so on… but in the world of Lamb of God right now—

[laughter]

We'll finish up this US tour by Thanksgiving, then head to Europe the UK and South Africa in January, then take some time off the road to write and record a new record.

Any thoughts on the new record?

Our main writers are Mark [Morton, guitarist] and Willie [Adler, guitarist], who are always recording demos at their houses whether it be for Lamb of God or something else. Then we piece together things that they've worked on, make changes or say 'it's perfect we'll leave it like that,' and very organically the record takes form. We don't decide to make a certain kind of record beforehand.

Your next release is the re-master of As The Palaces Burn. How'd the decision to do that come about?

There's a movie that comes along with the re-release that explains a lot of this, but we were really unhappy with that record when we finished it. So much so that I sort of cringe and don't want to listen to it anymore. We finally had the opportunity with the ten year anniversary to do it right.

Was it difficult to work with producer and virtuoso guitarist Devin Townsend on As The Palaces Burn when it was first recorded?

No. Well. It was difficult in the sense of… I still hear Devin in my head saying "That's not it, man, you've got to record it again." He pushed us to play our absolute best, pushed us way beyond what we thought we could get away with in terms of playing a riff. "No man, you're not playing it right, you've got to get it right!" So that was the difficulty of working with Devin, but it was an amazing difficulty because I feel like it's made me a better performer and better player overall.

Are you working more Palaces material into the set now?

We are. So far on this tour, we've been playing some songs that we haven't played in a really long time: "Purified," "As the Palaces Burn," "Vigil." We're talking about putting even more of that material in, but I don't want to say it because we haven't even rehearsed it yet.

 

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