It’s been 30 years since Lamb of God formed, as Burn the Priest, in Richmond, Va. And the extreme metal band has been on fire ever since. The quintet has released 11 albums under its two monikers, including 2022’s “Omens.
” This year, however, finds the group looking back a bit; its current tour celebrates the 20th anniversary of its most successful album, “Ashes of the Wake,” while tour mate Mastodon commemorates the same for its 2004 release “Leviathan.” On top of that, guitarist Mark Morton published a revealing autobiography, “Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir,” that deals with everything from the music to his drug addictions and the death of his daughter just after she was born in 2009. We caught up with Morton, 51, at home in Virginia, to talk about all of that and more.
.. • Morton says marking the 20th anniversary of “Ashes.
..” was a no brainer for Lamb of God, which was the group’s first gold album.
“It was without question a really pivotal record for the band. That’s where we really started to gain traction and momentum within what I would call a more mainstream metal landscape. So that will always be the record where we catapulted a couple of levels above where we’ had been before.
In the long term I’m grateful to still be here and still have an audience that wants to hear any of my songs or any of my records from 20 years ago or two years ago. That is not something I take for granted, so this 20-year retrospective is just a reminder of the longevity and how proud I am of the overall body of work — not just necessarily that record, but everything.” Related Articles • Playing “Ashes.
..” in its front-to-back entirely is a new experience for Lamb of God, however.
“It’s interesting because I’m so accustomed to compiling set lists from a different perspective,” Morton explains. “In this case the set list is dictated to you. That’s not something I’m used to, and it leaves very little time to do anything else.
There are some albums that wouldn’t really work for, but it happens to work for this album. I think it flows very well when you play it front-to-back like this.” • Morton says he’d been encouraged by others to write a book, but he didn’t approach it with a particular goal in mind.
“I didn’t sit down and start tapping away with some point in mind. There are friends of mine who are also authors who suggested “you should know where you’re writing to. Know what your overall themes are.
” I can’t honestly say I knew that. I was just kind of telling the story as I lived it, as I remembered it. It wasn’t until I was done that I could zoom out and see what themes were there, really.
It’s easier for me to write a song; that’s my comfort zone, really.” • Morton says the writing gave him welcome perspective about his life, good and bad. “I was able to come to a greater place of acceptance about some of those experiences.
I was able to see the value in some of the addiction stuff and even in the grief and the turmoil and the chaos that I was going through in some of those periods. I was able to understand the value those experiences provide me now. I don’t want to characterize it as saying I recommend it or it was necessarily worth it or that it was all good.
It wasn’t. But I do think as humans we can extract negative and positives from our experiences that might go on to help someone lese down the line. I knew at least on a day to day basis there was a happy ending, so that helped.
I don’t think I could’ve written that book before I’d reached a place of relative serenity.” • While there are no firm details yet, Morton says he and fellow guitarist Willie Adler have both been writing new music for Lamb of God. “We’re always writing riffs and documenting that stuff for future use, scribbling in our notebooks and that kind of thing.
That’s kind of the standard situation. It’s kind of an ongoing conversation of, ‘Hey, when were you thinking about (recording)?’ I can say we’ve gotten that far, but there’s nothing to announce.” Lamb of God, Mastodon, Kerry King and Unearth perform at 6 p.
m. Saturday, Aug. 10 at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre, 14900 Metro Parkway, Sterling Heights.
(313)471-7000 or 313Presents.com ..
