Lamb of God won’t rest in Metallica’s shadow

By John Benson

When Lamb of God set out to write the follow-up to 2006 album “Sacrament,” its most successful album to date, the heavy metal act was at a crossroads. Did it continue to write more accessible material or return to its aggressive beginnings? For Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler, the answer was simple.

“It was certainly the goal to not soften up or go for the cash grab or for the commercial moment that a lot of bands seem to do,” said Adler, calling from Jacksonville, Fla. “I love ‘Sacrament;’ that record did more for our career than any other record that we put out, but I think in that record we fooled around with some things in the studio. The songs themselves are really well-written and very heavy tunes, but I think some of the production and some of the steps we took to make this perfect record really sterilized it a little bit and took some of the life and the aggression out of it. So I don’t call that a mistake necessarily but more of a learning curve.”

He added, “We started as a heavy-metal band and we’ll end as a heavy-metal band. Our goal is to walk away at the end of the day and feel proud of the project. That’s the most important thing for us.”

This leads us to the group’s newest effort “Wrath,” which restored the band’s heavy nature in spades. In fact, Adler points to the track “In Your Words” as being the most definitive Lamb of God song ever recorded. As for the band’s fan base, they obviously agreed, with “Wrath” debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart and No. 1 on the Canadian album chart.

Building on its momentum, Lamb of God is playing for the largest audiences of its career as opener on Metallica’s worldwide tour, which comes to Cleveland for an Oct. 15 show at Quicken Loans Arena. So considering its meager start in what ostensibly is an underground scene to its current seat atop of the heavy-metal genre, what’s next for the Richmond, Va.-based band?

“I think for us, we’ve been working very hard, and so I don’t want to say it’s undeserved or we haven’t paid our dues to get where we are, but these are things that we kind of can’t really pay that much attention to,” Adler said. “At the end of this tour, we’ll be playing two sold-out nights with Metallica at Madison Square Garden. It’s like ‘how do we top ourselves?’ The record debuted at No. 2. If we get caught up with the idea that we have to do bigger and better things all of the time, those bigger and better things will kind of stop happening.

“We never thought we’d play Madison Square Garden. So what do we say, ‘Next is Giants Stadium?’ It’s just ridiculous to even contemplate that. So I think the goal for us is to keep working hard and to maintain the integrity and fan base we have, and not have any kind of weak material or missteps in our work ethic, and hopefully bigger and better things will come to us.”

This means, in context to Metallica, that Lamb of God has no plans on releasing a “Black Album,” which in many ways was the coming out to the mainstream CD for Lars Urlich, James Hetfield and company.

“I think the days of Metallica and U2 are just gone,” Adler said. “The attention span of fans today is so much shorter, and the Myspace generation isn’t interested in going to 30,000-seat arena shows. They want to have the band up in their face at the local club, so I think it would hurt us to take that step in hopes of something that would never happen. We’re happy where we are; we‘re very happy with the music that we make, and to think that if maybe we would change things up a little bit we’d get more fans, I think would be a terrible mistake.”