Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe reflects on a life lived onstage – from warehouse squats to heavy metal cruises to Madison Square Garden...
From rubbing shoulders with riot police and enduring serious injury, to dodging snakes in India and hosting their very own metal cruise, many of Lamb Of God’s greatest victories and darkest hours have played out onstage. As they get ready to headline Bloodstock this weekend, frontman Randy Blythe dives back into the blood, sweat and tears of the shows that shaped them…
“According to an old flyer, the date was March 14. We were still called Burn The Priest, and I never imagined this band would turn into a ‘job’ or anything. I didn’t have any dreams of playing to huge crowds. But if there was one place I did want to play, it was CBGB, because that was the birthplace of punk rock. Getting to actually do it [on a bill with bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Exhumed, Dystopia and a post-GG Allin Murder Junkies] was hugely impactful. I remember going onstage like, ‘This is it. We’ve made it. We can hang it up now!’ We played for 30 minutes that night, and within a year we’d come back and sold the place out as a headliner. Did we feel punk rock? Very much so. That’s the scene we came from and it’s a huge part of this band’s story and my personal tastes and values. So getting to play CBGB was probably the most emotionally impactful gig of my life!”
“Also in the Burn The Priest era, on another tour with Dillinger, we were booked to play this warehouse in Philadelphia called Stalag 13. Coalesce from Kansas were the tour headliner, but we were more ‘known’ in Philadelphia, so they agreed we would close the show. But as soon as Coalesce went on, this huge fight broke out. The venue was this crusty squatter warehouse and a bunch of hardcore kids came in from the suburbs, so it turned into a brawl. People had knives out. There were dudes with pitbulls. Then the police showed up in riot gear. The guy booking that show – the late Mikey Brosnan, who started a label to put out our first record – lived there and he was just like, ‘Get in the van, we’ve got to go!’ Apparently people came back later and shot the place up. It was a gig we never actually got to play, but it was definitely one of our most eventful – and scary.”
“Brooklyn’s L’Amour is a legendary thrash spot where Metallica and Slayer played in their club days. In 2003, we had become Lamb Of God and were beginning to get significant label attention, and when we played there the head of Roadrunner Records flew from Europe to see us. The show starts. The opening bands play. We had been drinking on the bus before the gig, and within 15 to 45 seconds of us starting I’ve yelled, ‘We are Lamb Of God, what the fuck is happening?!’ I attempted to stage-dive, caught this rail around the edge of the stage with my foot, fell onto the floor, dislocated my shoulder and knocked myself out. I woke up on the way to the hospital and asked our merch guy how far through the show I made it. He just looked at me and shook his head. It felt like we’d blown it. But someone talked to the owner of Roadrunner the next day and he was like, ‘That was the most dangerous 45 seconds of rock’n’roll I’ve seen in a long time. I want to sign those guys!’”
“Summer 2004 was just magnificent. Ashes Of The Wake, our major-label debut, had just come out, and we were one of three non-rotating headliners with Hatebreed and Slipknot on Ozzfest’s second stage. We were on tour with Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Slayer and so many other amazing bands. And it did a lot for us in terms of introducing us to new fans. Every date of that tour was a really big deal. What do I make of the idea that Ozzfest could return as a celebration of Ozzy? I think it should happen. Some people might say, ‘No Ozzy, no Ozzfest!’ But that’s bullshit. The spirit of Ozzfest was always to show off a whole range of different bands, and it was amazing to be a part of that.”
“Our first-ever arena tour was opening for Slipknot in 2005. That was amazing in itself, but one of the arenas we played was the Hampton Coliseum, in the area where I grew up. I saw my first-ever arena show there aged 13 or 14, which was ZZ Top on the Eliminator tour. I went with my buddy from school, Tom Ayers, and his biker mom. We were standing on the floor with all these big biker dudes passing around joints. I didn’t really know about that shit at the time so I was like, ‘Wow, this is intense!’ Plus, you had ZZ Top with spinning guitars disappearing in puffs of smoke. I also went to a Grateful Dead concert there in my later teenage years. I don’t really like that band, but I did want to buy drugs in the parking lot. I was successful – and also ended up being chased around by this big lunatic hippie. So it was weird to be back there to play that place after all those years!”
“We’d played big gigs before, but I’ll never forget the first time we played the main stage at Donington in 2007. My band had gone ahead of me to tune up their instruments. I was hanging with friends, and this van came to pick me up and take me to the stage. That was no big deal. I wasn’t feeling nervous at all. Then we turned a corner and I saw the stage, then I saw the crowd, and you couldn’t see the end of it. I was just like, ‘Wow!’ I guess I said it out loud because the driver asked, ‘Are you alright, mate?’ I just said, ‘That’s a lot of people.’ He just goes, ‘Yes it is – and you’re about to be in front of them!’ That was the last time I felt real nerves. Once I went on, the audience just took over and I came off on this huge high, like I could run through a wall. The whole show is up online. We’ve played bigger shows since – significantly bigger – but there was just something about not being able to see the end of that crowd!”
“The first time Lamb Of God played Madison Square Garden in New York, it was when we were opening for Metallica in 2009. My mom had never been to New York City, so when I told her we were doing these two sold-out shows, she decided to come up there for the first time. The shows were in the round, in the middle of the arena, so they had to set up barricades to get out to the stage. My mom walked out with the band and was standing in the centre of this massive room, where you feel like you’re in the Roman Colosseum. I made the whole audience say, ‘Hi, mom!’ and you could just see her eyes opening up like saucers. Playing MSG was cool, but it wasn’t half as important as being in New York for the first time with my mom!”
“I had never been to India before we played at the Palace Grounds in Bangalore in 2010, and there were several memorable things about that gig. Number one, we showed up and the stage – the size of the big stages at Download or Bloodstock – was made of wood and bamboo. You might think that’s sketchy, but bamboo has a greater tensile strength than steel! They just tied it together with rope, so it looked like something from Gilligan’s Island. I was up there before the gates opened and saw these guys beating the grass with sticks. They were chasing away the snakes! Then an hour later I tried to take a photo beside this giant ‘termite mound’ near catering that was, like, five-feet tall. The head of security stopped me and told me it was a cobra nest! I was like, ‘You have cobras at catering?! What the fuck, man?’ The gig itself was crazy, too. The crowd went wild to the point where the barricade broke and the armed forces had to hold people back while they were rebuilding it!”
“Every year that we’ve been able to do our Headbangers Boat cruise has been amazing, but the first year in 2023 was so special. To go from being this bunch of construction workers, dishwashers and bartenders from Richmond, to being able to contact a bunch of bands I used to listen to in high school to say, ‘Hey dudes, we’ve got this big-ass boat, do you want to come hang out on it and get paid?’ was so awesome. We had our friends in GWAR with us that first year, and Lacuna Coil, who we first met on that first Ozzfest, so it was so cool to be like, ‘Do you guys want to get back together… on this boat?!’ If you end up playing at the front of the boat while it’s moving, it can be interesting. You jump in the air and don’t know where you’re going to land. But the whole thing is so incredible. You certainly don’t join a band called Burn The Priest and think that one day you’ll get to play on the pool deck of a cruise ship out on the Caribbean!”
“It was totally overwhelming to play Back To The Beginning with Ozzy and Black Sabbath, the guys who invented our genre. A friend told me Tom Morello [the musical director] was looking for my number, and when he called to say they’d like us to play, it was an immediate, ‘Yes!’ even before I’d asked my band. We were one of the first acts to confirm, so we snapped up Children Of The Grave as our cover song quick – after we found out Sabbath had reserved War Pigs for themselves. A French air-traffic strike meant that some of the band got stuck in Germany on the way over and we missed soundcheck, which was a bummer, but the day itself was so special. The energy was awesome, from the dressing rooms to the audience. I’m in a heavy metal band. Black Sabbath were the first heavy metal band. And we got to play at the creators of this genre’s final show. Gigs like that come along maybe once in a lifetime – if you’re lucky – and it was such a massive honour to be a part of it.”
Lamb Of God headline Bloodstock this weekend.
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