God Complex

Lamb Of God guitarist Mark Morton misinterprets an innocent 'Whachoobinupto' as a literal question. “I'm at home in Richmond, Virginia. Just finished picking some blackberries with my daughter actually. Its real nice man, real nice. She loves it. I live out in about eight acres or so back in the woods so when the wild blackberries are out we go and pick them and my wife makes cobbler out of them.” Did someone pass on the number for Forrest Gump by mistake? “Nah man, that lifestyle still exists. My neighbours got a bunch of chickens, there's fresh eggs over there. They've got goats. I took a picture and put it on my Twitter of a whole family of wild turkeys crossing my driveway this morning. I caught a peek of them nice and early when the sun was still coming up.”

The derailing of the conversation takes a bizarre twist. In 2010, Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe rejected the presence of an overeager fan that jumped on stage, and assisted him off the stage while playing a show in Prague. The fan, a Czech national named Daniel Nosek, aged 19, hit his head and later died from the wounds sustained from the impact. Czech officials arrested Blythe with charges of manslaughter in 2012 and sent the singer through the judicial ringer. Imprisoned in a foreign county, Blythe was left to fend for himself before a fundraising effort saw him released on $200,000 bail. The jury acquitted Blythe of the charges in March of this year. The tragedy was well-documented at the time through media filters, though the desecration of the band's name was largely compounded by a general lack of understanding for mitigating circumstances of a gig and metal was once again demonised as an unsympathetic killing machine. The split reaction from Blythe had seen the dagger of fate enter and twist with a disembowelling action.

The ride for Lamb Of God was anything but easy. The rusty axe of eastern bloc justice threatened to decapitate the band, and while Blythe was eventually released on bail and subsequently acquitted, the six-month trial had indelibly left the indents of a death grip on all involved. For the duration of this six-month eternity, the band came within a hair's breadth of losing it all.

“You know the old saying, 'You don't know what you've got until it's gone,' it's completely true,” reflects Morton. “But when we talk about being faced with changes in career and those kinds of things – yeah, those are things that you think about but they are not even on the same scale as what the real ramifications of that situation were.” Despite having been asked a thousand times before, Morton pauses to compose his words carefully: “That tragedy in Prague definitely renewed my gratitude for the situation that we're in as a band. You know, we've been doing this a long time, but being faced with that situation made me feel really lucky that we're able to continue to do this. That said, I think it is important to stress that that was certainly not the worst part of that situation. I mean, that situation was about Daniel and his family, so any sort of concerns that we may have had about our career, or that kind of thing, paled in comparison to that kind of tragedy of Daniel being injured and subsequently losing his life, and the trauma and grief that his family had to go through  – and are still going through. So I think that is, to this day, something that we all really think about all the time.”

The two discussions, while polar opposite in theme, link to provide an illustration of a band born from geographical coincidence but bound in blood. “I've known Chris [Adler, drums] and John [Campbell, bass] since we were 17 and we all turn 41 this year.” says Morton. “Chris and Willie [Adler, guitar] are brothers so they've known each other since day one – and have grown up together – and Randy not much less than the rest of the guys. We've all known each other and were friends long before we were even in a band and long before we were doing anything but playing basements and parties and stuff, so we've all taken this trip together.

“I haven't known any different experience, I think we have that Lamb Of God way of keeping ourselves humble.” adds Morton. “If anyone gets a little too full of themselves, there's always four other guys right there that are ready, willing and capable of knocking your ass back down to earth because we all know each other so well. You can't get too high on the totem pole before someone is going to remind you who you are. It keeps us humble. And, I mean, we stay at home. You and I started this conversation just shooting the shit about what I did today and I went out and picked blackberries and hung out on the driveway. I'm from here, you know what I mean? I never left. I never moved to Hollywood or NYC when the band started hitting the big time. It's just not who I am. Most of my friends and people that I hang out with don't really talk about what I do. There's a whole 'nother life outside of Lamb Of God.”

The well-adjusted, but increasingly rare, outlook reflects deeply woven moral values, spun from a cloth of historical brutality and injustice in the region. This level of passion and reflection has a way of filtering through the arts and Richmond, Virginia is no exception to the rule, giving birth to more than its fair share of international-calibre talent. The old 'something in the water' chestnut is met with laughs but Morton is quick to assure that Lamb Of God is only one cog in a complex wheel.

“Municipal Waste are killing it, they're from here.” remarks Morton with a touch of fatherly pride, a suggestion he laughs about: “We've taken them out on tour, but I don't think we mentored them. They've made it on their own, which has been great to watch. We do have some great mentors down here, though: There's a band called Gwar and they've been doing it a long time. They took us out very early on and they've taken Municipal Waste a few times as well. I think if anyone is the town mentor it's been Gwar. They're still doing it and I think as these bands come up and out of Richmond, hanging out with Gwar is really the rite of passage. It's like, you know, you've got something going on when Gwar takes you out. It's always a good little christening for your career and we've been able to pay that back. We've taken Gwar out a couple of times now and they can open for us,” he laughs. “That's kind of an ongoing joke.”