For nearly three decades, Lamb of God have proven themselves titans of heavy metal. Front and center of the Richmond, Virginia band is Randy Blythe (vocalist/lyricist). Blythe’s words make for the core emotional element to the band’s music. From the greater conflicts taking place in our world, to exploring his own personal matters, Blythe’s words strike with poetic ferocity.
As of this May, the band will be releasing a new self-titled LP (coming out five years since their last record, VII: Sturm und Drang). Along with releasing a crushing first single in the form of “Checkmate”, the band released a follow up single titled “Memento Mori”. In a press release covering the single, Blythe shares that “Memento Mori” is commentary on how obsessing over constant news can be harmful to our mental health; how the bombardment of so much negativity can wear us down, and the efforts we need to make to take care of ourselves and one another.
Accompanying the song’s release is an awesome music video. Blythe wrote the treatment for said video, which was shot and directed by Tom Flynn (with Mike Watts acting as producer). To help bring Blythe’s vision to life, he brought on the ghoulish talents of Sinisteria – a haunt group based in Richmond, Virginia. Thanks to their skills, Blythe and the production team have crafted a delightfully nightmarish experience with the “Memento Mori” music video.
As a hardcore fan of Lamb of God’s music, it brings me great pleasure to bring you this awesome interview with Randy Blythe. He was super generous to offer up his time and talk with me on the phone. Blythe speaks to the new song and music video, his views on the horror genre, the Sinisteria tribe, acting, and being conscientious of what’s going on in our world.
Michael Pementel: Regarding the subject of the song “Memento Mori,” what are some practices you have taken on in your life to help you stay involved with news, but also take care of your mental health?
Randy Blythe: For me, and I’m going to have to reimplement this, I took a month-long sabbatical from social media awhile ago. I only have one social media account, which is my [personal] Instagram, because I’m a photographer as well. [During work on the new album], I found myself, when I wasn’t tracking and just sitting there, because I was out of town and in LA recording, just filling time by mindlessly scrolling through stuff … But I decided to take that month-long sabbatical from Instagram. It was amazing how much time of mine [social media] had eaten up. I’m a news junkie. Particularly in the current political situation, even before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, I would find myself constantly checking all these different news sites … trying to find some sort of median ratio of truth amid all this bias.
I [ended up] installing a VPN blocking app called “Freedom.” It allowed me to check social media, the news, YouTube, or anything for 30 minutes exactly. I would wake up, have a cup of coffee, look at all of that, and I did that for a month or two. I found that it broke me of this constant refreshing, looking and looking. It is important to remain informed, particularly right now, particularly with your local municipalities and the different research [updates related to COVID-19] coming out. But it’s also important to not get swallowed by [the news]. Right now life is not easy for everyone, but it is still occurring. We have to stay plugged in to the fact that reality does not exist on these small screens.
Lately, due to the lockdown and so forth, I’ve been guilty myself of going back to a little of that. But I’ve been trying to communicate some positivity through my social media account. Because it’s important to maintain a positive mental attitude.
Exercising the creative muscle for me is important. It helps me a lot. That’s how I process my life – through the art I make – whether it be music, prose writing, photography, or writing a video treatment.
MP: Along with writing the treatment for the “Memento Mori” music video, did you take on any co-directing work during the process?
RB: The narrative part of the video, with the monsters and everything, was really the most important part to me … When it came time to shoot that part, because the story did come from my head, I very much wanted to be [on set].
There were a couple of instances [where I did voice my opinion on shooting]. But [the production team] was setting up the shot where the lead monster scratches the dude across the face, and I saw them shooting it, and I was like, “That’s not what I see.” All of us went back and forth a few times and got it to a point where it was closer to what I saw. But for the most part, those guys seemed to have an intuitive grasp of what I wanted. The director did a fantastic job of translating my vision. I wrote a fairly detailed treatment and they translated it really well.
MP: In the “Behind the Scenes” video for “Memento Mori,” you speak to wanting a visual tone similar to that of Hellraiser and Nightbreed. What is it about those films that sticks out to you? And what are your feelings towards the horror genre?
RB: I am not a huge horror film guy. A lot of people I think assume that I am because I’m in a heavy metal band. But I’m not. I don’t like slasher films; I think because I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the fourth grade, at my YMCA soccer team’s pizza party at the end of the season and it fucking terrified me. Then Children of the Corn came out and I was living on my grandma’s farm out in the middle of a corn field … literally I’m in the middle of nowhere in the country and there are corn fields everywhere. I’m just like fuck, I know what’s out there.
But the horror movies that have stuck with me, that I’ve really enjoyed, tend to have this aspect of hidden society. Like Nightbreed, an alternative society, a darker society. I think [that concept] is indicative of the things that lay underneath the veneer of normal society. Particularly in Nightbreed, with all the guys sleeping in Midian, it was all just very interesting to me. It was like this alternate, sort of mirror to society. That for me, coming from an underground subculture, appeals to me anyway. And just visually, I just love the way those movies look. Hellraiser is so well done with all the Cenobites.
MP: Can you share a little bit about how you came across the Sinisteria tribe? How did their look impact your vision for the music video?
RD: We have a Krampusnacht Parade I had gone down to [in Richmond, Virginia]. I’m a photographer, and I needed to shoot some photos of the people there with a friend of mine. We missed the beginning of the parade and walked all the way down to the end, and I started seeing people in these cute little Krampus costumes. Then, I get to this parking lot and there are all these people surrounding [the Sinisteria people] and I’m like, “Holy shit, who are those people?” I’m walking up to them and I start shooting photos of them, and I hear one of them say to the rest, “Yo that’s Randy from Lamb of God.” Because they’re fucking metalheads. They came up and started talking to me. One of them was like, my husband and I [were at a protest you helped organized against the Westboro Baptist Church]. There’s a transgender state delegate name Danica Roem, and the Westboro Baptist Church had come to Richmond, in front of the capitol, to protest her. So I got a few hundred people with kazoos and shit to drown them out. Those two people from Sinisteria, Sabrina and George, who started the tribe, were there. [I remembered seeing their monstrous makeup]; they both showed up looking crazy as shit.
I saw [the Sinisteria people] and was like, “You guys would look rad in a video.” At first, I was thinking of them in a video for my friends in the band Behemoth; I actually sent Nergal some photos of them. Then I was like, wait a minute, I want you to be in our video.
I knew we were going to pick “Memento Mori” as one of the lead singles off the new record, so I wrote the entire treatment out of the fact that I wanted to use those guys. Just seeing them on the street, I was just like, these guys are so rad. They’re just awesome folks and work really hard at what they do.
As far as developing their look and so forth, I had a lot of talks with Sabrina and George. I just kind of trusted them. They said they wanted to build some new shit so [the video would] look really cool. I’m like, “Cool, whatever, you guys are the pro monster guys, I’m just the guy who jumps around like a monkey and screams.” I trusted them 100% to do what was right [for the video].
MP: Speaking of actors, you yourself have done a little acting. What led you to take on those roles? Is acting something you would want to do more of?
RB: Yeah sure. I went to a school for the arts when I was in high school. I was there for theatre. I never thought I would be wanting to go to an art school to be an actor … I went to this school for the last two years of my high school and it was wonderful. I met all these other like-minded people: artists, visual artists, dancers, theatre people and musicians. It was just a big freak show. All the weirdos were there together. It was very adult.
But once I was done with that, I had zero desire to pursue acting. My music career started at some point and actually became a career, something I do for a living. A friend of mine, Brian Pulido, who writes the comic Lady Death, he was doing the horror movie The Graves. We’re friends and [he reached out and said], “I think you would make a good bad guy. Do you want to do it?” And I said sure.
So [I’m in that and] Hairmetal Shotgun Zombie Massacre; Tom Arya [from Slayer] is in it, as well as Dave Vincent from Morbid Angel. Someone asked if I wanted to do that, and I said sure. Then there’s this TV show [Paradise City], which hopefully we’ll have some news on the release of it soon. I happen to know some people on that show and they’re like, “Hey dude, do you want to be on this TV show?” And I said sure.
So, it has always been a matter of me saying yes. It’s not like I have an agent or am thinking I’m going out to be an actor. It’s kind of like these opportunities are presented to me and I say yes. They keep on popping up.
MP: In approaching the subject matter throughout the new record, what was your writing approach? How did you map out your ideas, and how do you know when an idea really clicks?
RB: I think any writing, whether it be prose or lyrics, every time, evolves as you write it. I’ve written a book and I knew what was going to happen because it was nonfiction, but I didn’t know how I was going to get it all out. I had a rough outline for the book; I tried to hit the main points, but the [book] took lefts and rights and made me sort of meditate on what I was thinking about as I was writing it. Song writing is the same thing for me.
With this album, this is the first album I’ve ever sat down and made a list of topics, ordered them in a certain way, and said, “I’m going to write about this.” I’ll be driving in my car a lot of times, and ideas come to me for some reason when I’m in my car, both vocal melodies and lyrical content. I’ll be riding in my car and [think], “Oh this happened in my life, I want to write about this,” or, “This is really fucked up and I want to write about this.”
On this album, I had an overarching desire to not write this super political record which is like, “This is what’s going on right now and this is fucked and that is fucked.” Instead, I wanted to find out how did things get so crazy in our modern society. I started looking for where did things change. For me, it took me back to the industrial revolution, the beginning of consumer culture, mass marketing and advertising. I believe everything sort of unfolds from that. The first song on the record which is about that is called “Gears”. It is about this glorification and embrace of the idea that money, material possession, or [even nowadays], virtual fame will bring you some sense of happiness and well-being. Because all of that is a false paradigm.
I started writing from there and brought in some commentary on some things that currently affected me and the world. A lot of environmental stuff, which is my number one concern, because nothing matters if we don’t have a planet capable of sustaining life for our descendants. So, I wrote these topics out and addressed them song by song.
[When it comes an idea clicking with me], sometimes it’s just this immediate thing. For instance, on our last record, there is a song called “Overlord”, and our guitar player Willie [Adler] had written it and sent me some demos. I was riding to go surf in my truck down in North Carolina and I [listened to the demos]. As soon as I heard it, I immediately started hearing a melody and singing along with it. That was one of those “BOOM,” click moments. I’m like, “This is how I want this song to be vocally.”
Sometimes it is a matter of sitting in the studio. I’ll bring in an approach, give a pass at it to our producer and I’ll say, “This is how I like this,” and he’ll say, “That’s cool and all, but let’s try something else.”
It’s not always this immediate, “I know this is right.” It’s like writing. I can have an idea about what I want to write about, but shit takes a left turn sometimes, and I have to go with what feels right.
MP: With quarantine taking place throughout the world, how are you keeping yourself busy? Are there any words you want to offer regarding how to cope with these times?
RB: If you are looking for something to watch on Netflix, Tiger King. You need to watch Tiger King, it is unbelievable. I’ve been reading a lot. I just finished re-reading a book called The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. He goes deep into the world of clinical psychology and how they diagnose psychopaths, using this check list, The Hare check list I believe. It is hilarious, but it’ll make you question a lot of things.
As far as exercising my creative muscle, I’ve been shooting at night, well isolated when the streets are empty. Posting those photos to my Instagram with messages stressing the importance of social distancing. Where we are, luckily, it’s a lot more spread out than where the population density is so intense, like New York. I’m also exercising some, getting out, taking walks and so forth.
In general, for me, it’s a matter of realizing that this is not the zombie apocalypse; however cool that would be for a film, it’s just not. For someone who is not struggling with clinical depression or anxiety, it is not that big of a deal to sit on your couch for two weeks, a month, or whatever. I think about my grandma who grew up in the Depression and went to World War 2. I talk to her on the phone some and she has told me many tales. [During the Depression], people didn’t have enough food, and not because the grocery stores were running out and people were hoarding, people didn’t have enough food because there just wasn’t enough food period. During World War 2, there was rationing for everything. But during those times, people came together for the greater good, and I think that’s what we have to do more than anything else. We need to embrace this idea of postponing regular life for a bit and think about the greater good.
I think the seriousness of this is going to be made apparent very soon and people will start taking it very seriously, because they’ll have no choice to. Staying out of the catastrophizing monkey mind is a good way to deal with this. Of course, wash your hands, practice social distancing and think about the difference between what you want and what you need realistically. I want to go surfing, worse than anything, but all the beaches are closed. I don’t need to go down, sneak around the beach and possibly be exposed to this thing, or if I’m carrying it, give it to someone else … It’s time to be really proactive and take this thing seriously.
Maintain a positive mental attitude, listen to the Bad Brains. That’ll help you.
The writer would like to thank Randy Blythe for his time in taking part in this interview. You can pre-order Lamb of God’s new album here. If you are interested in learning more about the work of Sinisteria, you can find them here (as well as on Facebook and Instagram).
