Randy Blythe

Lamb Of God

While on one of their off days from The Sounds of The Underground Tour, Lamb of God vocalist, Randy Blythe, sat down with me over a cup of coffee and discussed this awesome tour, the future of Lamb of God and outrunning cops on golf carts.
By Katrina Cannon
August 3, 2005
Randy Blythe (Lamb Of God) interview
How's the tour going so far?

Really good. The shows have been really cool. This is one of our off dates on The Sounds of The Underground. It's fun to play with our guys in Gwar and Devil Driver in a small club, instead of the 18 other bands all day long, so it'll be nice to play a regular show.

How do you feel about being on The Sounds Of The Underground Tour with such an array of Metal bands?

It's awesome. We're one of the headliners so we're pretty stoked about that. We know a lot of the other bands already, we respect them all. There's a bunch of good bands out there, good people, just partying, barbecuing, just hanging out. Good times.

You recently returned from the Subliminal Verses tour with Slipknot. How did that go?

It went really well but it was really long, it was like 9 and a half weeks. It was painful after a while, it got to where we were like fuck, I wanna go home but it did go really well. They were super nice dudes and it was cool to play in arenas and coliseums.

I saw you here back in November, lat year and you've pretty much been on tour ever since. Is it difficult having such a heavy schedule?

Yes, it is. I'm engaged, getting ready to get married in September, buying a house right now, so my fiancé's at home getting ready for all that and I'm out here doing this stuff. It's kind of frustrating to try to have a personal life, I guess, when you do this for a living because you have no life when you're on the road. But it's a good job, I can't complain.

Do you have any recent outstanding tour moments?

Last night, me and some of the guys from DevilDriver took the golf cart and went to the bar in Tulsa. We just went to the bar and got smashed. The cops weren't too happy with us driving around with beer and stuff, but we just zipped on backstage real quick and they didn't catch us...it was a good time. That's the third time on this tour that I've outrun cops on a golf cart. The first day I outran them on the Gwar golf cart, in the middle of the day, that was awesome, cutting down alleys and shit.

So you're notorious for driving down streets on golf carts?

Yes, yes I am. I've been known to do it forever. Last year at Ozzfest we did, we outran the cops on Hatebreed's four wheeler on that tour. That was awesome. We were cutting through yards and shit, people were not happy with me.

On June 21st your DVD Killadelphia was released. How did the production of that go and where did the title come from?

Production was basically 2 shows in Philadelphia, which is why it's called Killadelphia. Philly's always been really good to us and the crowds are rough of shit. It was 2 days filmed at the Trocadero and we put together one whole set out of it. For about a month the guy who filmed also traveled with us and filmed us being idiots backstage. It's about 3 hours long, an hour long set and 2 hours of other assorted bullshit and random stuff. It's a pretty honest look on what it's like to be in this band.

Why the name change from Burn The Priest?

We changed guitar players and it was kind of a new band so we changed the name. It's still lot of the same vibe but it kind of became a different band when Chris' [Adler, drummer] brother Willie [Adler, guitarist] came in so we were like ok, change the name because it's a different band now.

Back in February you were banned from playing in L.A. by The Faithful Central Baptist Church. What caused the ban and what are your feelings on that?

They didn't like our old band. They didn't do any research whatsoever. I mean we don't sing about religion at all, we aren't Satanists or anything, there's a much more political feel to the band. They didn't do their research, they were morons. But it's cool 'cause I'm still getting publicity out of it. CNN interviews us so it was like thanks dude, you're giving us press, we sold more records this week.

Are there any chances that the ban will be lifted?

I don't know. Maybe.

Do you care?

No. We'll go play somewhere else. I don't give a shit.

Last September you guys ran a contest to see which fan could sing Black Label the best and the winner got to hang out and sing with you. How did you come up with that contest?

We didn't. The people at Sirius radio in New York did. My friend is a DJ at the Metal station there, he came up with it. We met the kid, his name was Eddie Gobo, he came up to New York and we did it at the Sirius studio. Then we all went out and got completely hammered, ate a lot, we had a good time. The kid was 20 at the time and somehow I got him into this bar I can't remember the name of it, but one of the dudes from Guns N' Roses owns it, so there's strippers on the table and all that shit, then there was this 20 year old kid who was just freaking out and having a great time.

Are there any possible similar contests in the future?

I don't come up with these things, I'm not a game show host, you know, I just do what they tell me. They informed me right as this tour started, that I would be doing this, they were like oh yeah, you're barbecuing for these contest winners in Philly. And I was like I am? Thanks for asking? They said yeah, what do you want us to get, we'll go get burgers and hot dogs. And I was like no, no, back up and I got with my guitar player and spent all night making this elaborate grocery list with like $500 worth of stuff and I sent it to them. They were horrified when they saw that. I was like you either get what I want or fuck you I mean, I'm not cooking fucking hot dogs. We had ribs and steaks and all sorts of shit. Good stuff.

Are there any plans for a new album anytime soon?

Yeah, we'll start writing the record at the beginning of the year. After this tour, everybody's going home, me and my bass player are both getting married, so we gotta go home and take care of all that. Then in December we go out to Europe for 3 weeks and when we come back in January we'll start writing the new record and look to start recording in early summer.

What are some of your musical influences?

Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Sex Pistols, any kind of old school Punk/Rock, Black Sabbath etc. We listen to a lot of Hip Hop, we obviously don't make Rap Metal but their use of vocal patterns is very interesting.

Any last words?

Thanks for coming out to the show. We'll see ya. Bring your ear plugs!

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