Lamb of God is a ferocious band, on record and on stage, largely due to the presence of frontman Randy Blythe. Equally as ferocious is Blythe’s worldview. Holding multiple truths simultaneously, he navigates the crossroads of past, present, and future with immeasurable ease. What began as an interview about the Ashes of Leviathan tour soon breached the invisible barrier between personal morality, life and death, human communication, and the responsibility we have to our own experiences.
These observations have been fine-tuned over the twenty years since the release of their seminal album Ashes of the Wake in 2004, which redefined metal in the new millennium. Woven together with incisive commentary on the Iraq War, the album also serves as a powerful war journal for those who were there, mirroring a perspective that can only be captured through a unique blend of art and music. Celebrating its twenty-year anniversary next month, Ashes of the Wake remains as cerebral, detailed, and lyrically sibylline now as it did then.
We caught up with Randy Blythe on the eve of the Ashes of Leviathan tour, arriving in Richmond this Sunday at the Virginia Credit Union Live, to discuss the tour with Mastodon, his new book Just Beyond the Light, and surviving twenty years on the road.
Randy. Good to chat with you again. Ready to hop right in and talk shop?
Let’s lay it out.
Congratulations on the upcoming tour and all of your success. The running tally is 11 studio albums, a best selling book, along with film and TV appearances. How do you channel all that creative energy and prioritize your efforts?
Oh, man, that is a very good question and something I have been struggling with over the last couple of years. I am consciously trying to narrow down my areas of focus because multitasking is a lie—it doesn’t work, even though I have been trying for so long. Number one is the band; that’s my day job, as weird as it is to say that. I also have a problem saying no. People will ask me, ‘Hey, do you want to do…?’ and I’m like, ‘Yes!’ before they even finish. All you have to do is throw some sort of creative stick, and I’ll run after it without much thought.
But I’m really trying to narrow that down and concentrate on doing one thing at a time. I am at the mercy of the band’s schedule, so I’m constantly looking for ways to focus on other things and practicing more discipline as to what I’m going to concentrate on. Because I have at least three different fiction books running through my head right now.
I’ve also thought about doing a podcast and starting a Substack or Patreon. My only form of social media is Instagram, and I use that for my photography, but, increasingly, I am finding that a non-viable outlet due to the algorithm. In fact, I would completely abandon social media right now if it wasn’t for the fact that I use it for charitable means fairly often. I met a terminal fan at Sick New World Festival through an organization I work with called Living the Dream. They bring terminally ill people or those with life-threatening illnesses to meet members of their favorite bands. I always try and be really present, and I’ve learned it matters when you spend time with people. Sometimes they’ll have a GoFundMe, so I’ll write up a nice post and have Lamb of God post it on their socials and on my Instagram to raise money for them.
So, I’m trying to learn how to creatively prioritize what is most important to me. And that means not fucking around on social media or looking at the news every five minutes, which I’m also guilty of. Lamb of God never has to break up, but we can move out to pasture in a few years and just play festivals. But I want to write books until the day I die, so that’s where I really want to put my focus in my freer time.
Ashes of the Wake and Leviathan (Mastodon) came out on the same day in 2004, hence the tour name—Ashes of Leviathan. What’s it feel like 20 years later, bringing that full circle at this particular time and place?
Well, it’s really cool because of Mastodon. If it was another band that we weren’t really tight with who also put out a fairly career-defining record on the same day as ours, people might be like, ‘Okay, sure.’ But we’ve known Brann and Bill since before Mastodon existed, when they were in Today Is the Day. So they are very dear friends, and we’ve traveled the world with them touring and playing festivals. Both of us toured the world with Slayer. So it’s a real family vibe, and we’re really excited for it [the tour].
Was there ever a sense of competition with Mastodon, even friendly competition, given the simultaneous release date and how each album was celebrated?
You know, people ask me what I remember about the day the record came out. ‘Surely you remember it?’ And I’m like, ‘Nope’ [laughing]. I know I was on Ozzfest. That’s all I should have to say. That was a lunatic heavy metal summer camp, one of the wildest summers of my life. So I don’t think there was really a sense of competition with our recorded output; I don’t think we’re really that competitive. Like it or not, we’re not trying to compare ourselves to anyone else.
Touring is where it’s different. When we go out on stage, it doesn’t matter who we’re with, we definitely want to smash every band on the tour [laughing]. If we’re opening for a band, we want that band to work right after we play. And that’s what we want out of the opening acts for us. I want the bands to come out and make me work because I don’t want to rest on my laurels. So we go out and swing real hard, connect, and make motherfuckers on the tour work with us—but it’s all love and friendliness.
Everyone is pointing to this 20-year benchmark, which is a very clean and easy number to measure against. What have you found most surprising during this journey, these past 20 years on the road?
That all our band members are still alive [laughing].
There is that.
Several of us probably shouldn’t be, maybe all of us. But I’m still surprised that people still care. [In my mind] I’m still the restaurant cook or roofer from Richmond, washing dishes in some joint on Robinson Street. And I always have this feeling—I don’t know if it’s imposter syndrome—but one day someone’s going to show up and say, ‘You guys don’t belong, you don’t deserve this.’ Then it will all disappear. I try not to take it for granted.
Lyrically, in Ashes of the Wake, there was a lot of rage directed at the George W. Bush presidency and the Iraq War. That was a narrative theme. Twenty years later, the world still looks just as fragile and complex—if not more so. How has your worldview evolved since then, as a musician and artist who tackles these kinds of themes?
In some ways, it’s gotten better, and in some ways, it’s gotten worse. That’s a real struggle.
And a very true statement.
It’s a real struggle for me to not fall into some sort of cynical, nihilistic state of apathy. I believe that mindset is the refuge of the intellectual coward because they don’t want to think—they just want to say, ‘Oh, nothing matters.’ We have to recognize the injustices in the world; part of me is taking lessons from Bad Brains, that is my default training growing up in the punk scene. Doing something—evaluating—and trying to find a positive path forward. Then the other half of me is like, ‘Just drop the bomb now, let’s start over.’ Maybe something that deserves to live will evolve after we split. So it’s a tough balancing act for me, it really is.
I think it is also made tougher, in no small part, by the changes we’ve seen in communications technology. Twenty years ago, the internet existed, but not everyone was walking around with an iPhone in their pocket and feeling the need to blast invective constantly via their chosen social media outlet or just mindless nonsense. The fact that being a star on TikTok is an aspirational goal makes me despair for the future of humanity. It’s damaging us mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Let me dig down on that for a quick second, because you seem to have an ethical North Star and have spoken out on many of the prevailing issues of the day—the Dakota Access Pipeline, support for response workers during COVID, and the racial justice protests in 2020. In today’s hyper-contextualized media landscape, why take those risks?
Well, because right is right and wrong is wrong. I’m not saying I am an arbiter of ultimate morality, but I was raised by people who, I correctly believe, had calibrated moral compasses. And if people don’t step up and do the right thing, even when it reflects back on them, then things just get worse.
I recently visited the Pat Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort, South Carolina, to deliver a commissioned portrait by an autistic artist from North Carolina. The center does a lot of good work with young, burgeoning writers. One of the reasons why I am a big fan of [writer] Pat Conroy is because he came of age in the Civil Rights era, and being pro-Civil Rights in the Deep South does not necessarily make you the most loved person. But he had a very firmly calibrated moral compass.
While we were there, I went over to a place called the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, which was the first school for formerly enslaved African Americans. When Conroy was a young man, his high school teacher took him there—way out in Gullah Country. There is an isolated cottage on Penn Center Campus where Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech. So sometimes you have to embrace risk, and the people I admire always did and many times suffered for it.
What issues are most important to you right now? What are you following?
I know there’s a horrific war in Ukraine, and the situation in Gaza is horrible. The political situation in America is a total clusterfuck; I don’t know how a presidential race could get any worse. But I really try to pull back and take a broader look at things that will be impactful even after I’m long dead. So my primary concern is the environment and has been for the last few years. None of it matters if we don’t have a planet that’s capable of sustaining life. People need to remember that this is hard to do as a nation or ethnic group when you’re facing an existential crisis—people in Ukraine might not be too worried about the environment right now, although there is an environmental impact from warfare.
But for those of us not in that situation, we need to remember that we are slowly boiling the planet. I’m not going to call it fucking climate change—it is global warming. Let’s not get it twisted.
They say we are on the hottest consecutive summer ever recored.
Yes. And the hurricane season is coming earlier and getting worse, which is great for me as an East Coast surfer. But none of us are going to look forward to the cost of everything. So the environment is now my primary concern because I think it is by far the most pressing matter. How are we ever going to figure out all of our bullshit if we don’t have a home to figure it out in?
I want to circle back to something you talked about at the top of the interview. You really support your fans—connecting them to resources, holding fundraisers, and even being there in person. Where does that sense of altruism come from? Not a lot of people at your level would really show up that way.
When I got sober, I realized I had this position and might as well try to do some good with it. I don’t know if it is just me, but I get excited when I’m able to really make a difference in someone’s life who’s having a hard time. One of the greatest compliments I can get as a musician is when someone tells me that a song I wrote spoke to them or helped them. That means everything to me because that’s what music did for me and still does for me—so I lean into it.
I’ll admit to you, I have a new book coming out in February 2025, called Just Beyond the Light. It is about trying to maintain a balanced perspective in the world right now, and in order for me to do that, I have to look to other people I admire. One of those people I write about is my grandmother, who was 94. I was beside her when she died, and I was grateful for that because it was post-COVID. I interviewed her over the course of two days and learned about her life. I asked her what the biggest difference is between [her generation] the modern age we’re in right now—she didn’t say computers or globalism; she said people are not as close as they used to be.
Do you feel like we’ve lost that sense of interpersonal connection between people?
In many ways, but I don’t think it’s totally gone. I think it’s dormant. I think it’s buried under the iCloud of bullshit, and it’s going to come back and bite us on the ass. In one way or another, you’re going to need help. People don’t know their neighbors; there’s not the sense of community there used to be. In this hyper-connected world, people are lonelier than ever—particularly young people. They’re interfacing with the world through this digital medium, and it’s providing an illusion of connection, but real connection requires friction. There has to be a push and pull when you’re in person, and that is absent via digital communications when there is a wall of anonymity.
You gave a great interview to the Dallas Observer on July 9th. You said something really interesting—that you’re not a metalhead. Do you think that ability to compartmentalize has aided your musical evolution, given your prominence in the genre?
I think a lot of metal musicians all have different influences. God knows, I love Black Sabbath, Slayer, Metallica. But a lot of those bands all have different influences; a lot of them listened to punk rock. I find a lot of professional musicians, people who have made a career out of this—you don’t hear a lot of metal being played. I take inspiration from all sorts of different music. Mark Martin, our guitarist, is a hip-hop fan, so when he writes, he lays out the flow and leans into hip-hop, and that’s amazing. You might not hear it in our music; we don’t sound like rap rock, but it’s in there. We do [metal] all day long. I also want to listen to some John Coltrane, some Hank Williams Sr., or even some weird Nigerian electronic music. You have to get out of your comfort zone and be well-rounded musically.
How would you credit the Virginia and DC punk tradition in your success? It does seem like Virginia has always been this low-key ground zero for music, punching well above its weight but never being really recognized for it.
DC, of course, you have Dischord up there; it was sort of self-contained, which is one thing I believe is regrettably being lost in the modern era—regional music scenes. Musicians used to be informed by the playing of people in their local area; that’s how you learn. Now, you can look on YouTube and learn exactly how to do everything.
[Richmond] bands like Sliang Laos, Breadwinner, Kepone, even instrumental bands like King Sour and BrainFlowr, all these bands were responsible for helping us develop our sound. There was a very intense and vibrant scene in Richmond in the late 80s and early 90s. There was a Richmond sound and a DC sound. Richmond was also known for instrumental bands and complex math rock and was fertile ground for artists and musicians because the cost of living was low, and VCU, back then, was primarily an art school—it was a great incubator.
There used to be six clubs on Grace Street; you could go to shows every night. Sadly, this has changed. But once again, there’s a lack of that tight-knit community and a geographic center.
For younger readers who might just be getting into music, is Bad Brains (from Washington, DC) still the greatest punk band to ever grace the stage?
Of all time. Without a shadow of a doubt. I saw them in Virginia Beach in ’88 or ’89 when they were at the height of their powers, and there is no one who will ever come close to that.
So this is a reminder for everybody who doesn’t know Bad Brains to go out and immediately get into Bad Brains.
RB: That’s right!
I also asked Troy Sanders from Mastodon this question yesterday too, because I think it is important and you have talked eloquently about technology and how we consume art. What’s the future of music look like to you?
That’s an interesting question. It’s not just the future of music, but the future of art itself, which is steadily being devalued. I’m not worried about my job; I’m already established, and what I do can’t be replicated by a machine because I am me. But unless something changes, I think it is going to move back toward a patronage system—like in the Renaissance, where art was only for rich people. That’s a real shame. Universal Music Group just offered their recording artists the option to have their singers’ voices put into AI. This is the largest record label in the world, so if you can’t tour anymore because your voice is gone, or even after you’re dead, you can continue to make music—fuck that.
That’s terrifying.
It is terrifying. The thing is, there are these dodos who say AI is just a new tool artists can use—it’s not. To be an artist, you have to create art. And to create art, you have to put something of yourself through the artistic process, which is painful, exhausting, and nerve-wracking. It is also exhilaratingly human, right? When you use AI to ‘create a piece of art’ by typing in a concept and it shits out a gold-plated turd, you’re merely microwaving an idea. This is leading to an even further devaluation of art and music. So I’m pretty firm on that.
There will be holdouts and people who will put in the time and continue to make music and visual art without the plagiarism machines that are trained entirely on our output. And what we do will become more valuable and rarefied for those who can afford it, which is a fucking shame.
Humanity loses something in every version of that scenario, huh?
Every single version. But you know what, I’m gonna be all right—type in an evil laugh at the end of that.
So just final question. You’ve already sort of plugged your new book called Just Beyond the Light. What can we expect?
It’s not strictly a memoir. Basically, it’s about people and experiences that I have learned from. I have tried to internalize lessons from their behavior, which I find admirable and have changed my perspective for the better. [In this interview] I have said some pretty nihilistic things, but I’m still going to do my best to fight the good fight until the day I die—this book is about that.
Before you go, can I trouble you for two shout-outs? For two of your fans that are going to miss this tour. I thought this might be second best.
Absolutely.
Michael Angotti in Los Angeles and Rian McLoughlin in Dubai.
Shout out to you guys and stay cool! ‘Cause it’s definitely hot where you both are.
Any other last points for the readership?
Drink fucking tons of water. It’s going to be a hot summer.
Thanks for all of your time chatting with me and we’ll see you at the show.
Yes, sir. All right.
Cover photo by Travis Shinn.
*This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.
