Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe Is not a Metalhead

Randy Blythe has said it before, and he says it again in this interview: “I’m not a metalhead.” Not that it’s a cut-and-dried dichotomy, but he’s a punk, through and through.

Although the Lamb of God vocalist has amply enshrined this fact into the historical record, it still bears repeating for many reasons, not least among them is the show Blythe has cited as the best he has ever attended: Bad Brains, Leeway and Corrosion of Conformity at The Jetty in Virginia Beach on Aug. 15, 1989.

Bad Brains vocalist HR’s trademark onstage ferocity set a precedent for Blythe’s similar stage presence. But then again, Blythe’s young mind was also blown by another transgressive and confrontational punk frontman.

“While I said that the Bad Brains [was] my favorite show I've ever seen — and it was — I was in high school. It was incredible. HR was still at the peak of his powers, but at one point, the Jesus Lizard were without a doubt — and I've said this many times — the mightiest band on the planet,” Blythe says over the phone with the Observer.

That’s certainly not an oversell of Jesus Lizard, especially considering the energy that vocalist David Yow is known to bring to each performance, whether manifested by Yow chucking beer cans at the audience, doing the same thing with cookie dough stuffed in his pants or even whipping out his genitals.

“I've seen [Yow] just do weird things to people he knows, right?” Blythe says. “I've seen him get off stage and then just come up to someone and grab their face ... and just sing into his face, cradling this guy's face. And at first, it's kind of funny, and then it gets weird. It's real weird and uncomfortable. It's a brilliant thing to witness.”

Blythe saw his share of punk brilliance in Richmond, Virginia, in the early 1990s. He cut his teeth at a local venue named Twisters, whose street address, 929 West Grace St., is so famed for launching careers and hosting superstars on the come-up that it has its own Wikipedia page. The location has hosted live music under many club names, including “Nanci Raygun” and, most recently, “Strange Matter.” Bands including Lamb of God, GWAR and Buzzoven got their start at the space and played at a time when it was conceivable that bands like Green Day and Deftones would play 200-capacity rooms.

The first show Blythe saw in Richmond is surprising, considering his career. Three days after moving there, he and his friends were eating at a Subway and were approached by a cop. Blythe had some run-ins with the law in his youth, so this encounter was already cause for trepidation.

“I was like, ‘Fuck, I just moved here,’ you know?” he remembers. “And he goes, ‘Would you like free tickets to a concert?’ And we were like, ‘Uh, sure.’ He's like, ‘It's at a place called Twisters, here you guys go,’ and he handed us four tickets. And it was the band A Flock of Seagulls.”

Twisters was ground zero for many a formative punk experience for Blythe. One band in frequent rotation was New Orleans-based Eyehategod which, like Lamb of God, is a punk band operating under the color of metal. After Blythe’s friend Ash Lee from Buzzoven introduced him to the band’s music, he eventually made Eyehategod’s acquaintance.

Well over a decade sober today, Blythe looks back and tells a story of drunken debauchery and excess. Every time Eyehategod played a show in Richmond in the 1990s, Blythe would invite band members to crash at whatever house he was living in. The crash would be hard, too, with Blythe getting beer kegs and inviting hordes of partygoers.

“I would inevitably get way too fucked up and wake up, and they'd be gone,” Blythe says with a laugh. “I’ve known Eyehategod longer than Lamb of God has existed.”

Blythe recounts this with a subtle cadence that only a man who has grappled with alcoholism and come out with unperturbed stoicism can strike. He sounds like he would much rather read or watch Lost in Translation than attend another rager, but also does not recall his past in the self-flagellating manner one might see at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

As Lamb of God fans and readers of Blythe’s memoir Dark Days probably know, he became sober after an ill-fated night of drinking in October 2010. Although Lamb of God was touring with one of the biggest bands of all time (Metallica) and playing three nights at one of the most scenic cities in the world (Brisbane, Australia), Blythe woke up without a shred of desire to smell the roses, both literally and figuratively. (He was right down the street from the world-famous Brisbane Botanical Gardens, but he stayed in his hotel room.)

“Staring at [a] row of empty beer bottles, I saw that they were a metaphor for my life,” Blythe wrote in Dark Days regarding the hangover. “On the outside, if you didn’t look too closely, everything was in order. I had a dream job, and somehow still maintained a regimented enough life to function on tour. I had money in the bank, and I had a home. My wife had somehow not yet left me, and I still had friends and family who loved me. But like the row of beer bottles in front of me, I had become a mere receptacle for alcohol, a garbage can to throw booze and drugs into. Now I was empty, just like those bottles; and just like those bottles, all it would take to bring me crashing down was one slight nudge.”

It is June 20, 2024, as the Observer speaks with Blythe, nearly 14 years after his last night of drinking, and over a decade after his highly publicized and well-documented manslaughter trial in the Czech Republic. (He was acquitted of manslaughter charges in the death of a fan thrown from a stage.) Although Blythe has gone through soaring changes in the past 15 years, the occasion for this interview focuses on an achievement from 20 years ago: the release of Lamb of God’s signature full-length album, Ashes of the Wake.

The anniversary is being commemorated with a co-headline tour with Mastodon (which will also celebrate the 20-year anniversary of its signature album, Leviathan). The tour will make its way to the Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie on July 19. Ashes of the Wake is slated for a deluxe re-release on Aug. 30, one that will include remixes from the likes of Godflesh’s Justin K. Broadrick and North Texas’ own Kublai Khan TX.

Lamb of God became acquainted with the latter band recently when they played the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas. After the festival, Lamb of God did an intimate show (an “underplay,” in music industry parlance) at House of Blues in Vegas at the organizers’ insistence and were availed the opportunity to select from a list of other festival artists as openers.

“Incendiary was immediately on the top of my list because they have been one of my favorite bands in recent years,” Blythe says. “[They] also put Kublai Khan on the list. I’d heard them; my girl’s a massive fan, though, so I was like, ‘All right, well let’s put Kublai Khan on!’

“The show was freaking awesome. Both those bands just brought it that night.”

As the interview draws to a regrettably swift conclusion, the Observer asks Blythe if there’s anything he wants to add. Without missing a beat, he offers: “Tell everybody to drink a lot of water. I don’t know why we keep starting these tours in Texas in July, but we do.”

Lamb of God plays the Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie on July 19 with Mastodon, Kerry King and Malevolence. Find tickets on Ticketmaster.