Lamb of God lands spot on Gigantour

No one could accuse Lamb of God of having unrealistic expectations when the band first unleashed its heaviest of metal sounds on audiences.

"We started this in 1994 doing heavy metal when definitely metal was not big-time stuff," said bassist John Campbell. "We've always played kind of mathy, weird metal, not your typical (style). We thought we could go tour from Richmond (Va.) to Chicago and hit some bases and that would be cool."

Lamb of God has gone a lot farther than that over the past decade. The Richmond-based band became one of the first of the current wave of extreme metal/hardcore bands to land a major label record deal (with Epic Records). And as perhaps the genre's leading band, Lamb of God has helped push a hardcore/extreme metal scene that has been an underground phenomenon to the brink of mainstream acceptance.

This summer, for instance, metal's premier summer tour, Ozzfest, had Hatebreed playing the main stage, while the second stage lineup primarily featured bands from the extreme wing of metal. The Sounds of the Underground tour, which in summer 2005 booked Lamb of God as its headliner, returned for a second year and looks like it will be an annual touring festival for extreme bands.

Lamb of God, meanwhile, spent its summer as the primary support act for Slayer on the Unholy Alliance tour. Now Lamb of God is the featured opening act for Megadeth on this year's Gigantour festival, which stops today at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel.

 

This outing coincides with the release of the new Lamb of God CD, "Sacrament," which could carry the band into mainstream metal stardom.

Just the fact that Epic Records signed Lamb of God says something about the burgeoning audience that is discovering — and enjoying — hardcore and extreme metal. Campbell noted that Epic doesn't expect Lamb of God to be the kind of band that thrives at radio, delivers mammoth first-week sales of its new CDs and moves millions of units with each album.

"I think they'll throw a track at radio and see who picks it," Campbell said. "I don't think they're terribly aggressive about it because when we even first sat down with them, we were pretty much immediately said, "You know, this is not a radio band you're signing.'

"I think they just saw the underground scene rearing its head and showing some commercial viability from a business standpoint," he said. "Being in the business of selling records for a profit, I guess they figured there was some formula that they could plug us into and work that up."

Not having the instant success of some major-label acts shouldn't bother Lamb of God, which has been anything but an overnight sensation in the first place.

The band's beginnings actually go back to 1990 when Campbell, guitarist Mark Morton and drummer Chris Adler met as students at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. They began playing as an instrumental trio before adding singer Randy Blythe.

Calling the band Burn the Priest (a name changed later because of he controversy it created), the group debuted with a self-titled CD before adding a second guitarist (the drummer's younger brother, Willie Adler), signing to Prosthetic Records and, in 2000, releasing its first CD as Lamb of God, "New American Gospel."

Two years of touring helped establish Lamb of God on the underground scene and set the stage for 2003's "As The Palaces Burn" and helped pave the way for the deal with Epic. Hoping to seize the momentum generated over the preceding couple of years, Lamb of God accepted a tight deadline to write and record its Epic debut, "Ashes of the Wake."

It did not become the breakout CD that some expected, but it continued to expand the band's audience, and with "Sacrament" now in stores, the band's profile is at its highest point yet.

Campbell did not want to go into detail in describing "Sacrament" and how it compares to Lamb of God's previous albums, but he did offer a few thoughts about the CD, which once again was produced by Machine.

"It's our absolute best songwriting," Campbell said. "There have been some steps up in some departments with some vocals and vocal arrangements. We cover absolutely all of our (stylistic) bases on this record, from doing some songs that kind of make you think about earlier work to doing stuff that makes you think about more recent work to doing a track or two that might be something you never saw or heard before from us, but it definitely fits right into place."

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