Credit: Travis ShinnOn Lamb of God‘s new, self-titled album, frontman Randy Blythe tackles a number of different issues, including environmental pollution, immigration, and politics in general. But in writing about these topics, Blythe felt the need to dig back to their roots.
“I’m like, ‘This is really messed up. How did we get here?'” Blythe tells ABC Audio. “And that’s what I started thinking about. These sort of shifts in our character in modern society, and it’s messed up. So I started thinking, ‘How did this start?'”
“I took it back to the beginning of consumer culture and mass marketing advertising, which began around the Industrial Revolution,” he continues. “So that’s where I started writing from.”
The song “Gears,” for example, takes place in England during, as Blythe puts it, “18-whenever.” Meanwhile, a song like “New Colossal Hate” references the meaning of the Statue of Liberty, and “Checkmate” tackles our polarized political system. “Poison Dreams,” meanwhile, is about the history of water pollution in the U.S., something that Blythe has dealt with personally throughout his entire life.
“All this stuff has happened during my lifetime, but it’s been going on for years before that, too,” Blythe says. “So it’s seen through my lens, but it’s not exactly, like, ‘This is happening right now, you need to pay attention to this!’ It’s stuff that has always been happening.”
Blythe adds that the album isn’t explicitly about the current president, either.
“I didn’t want to write a record about Donald Trump,” Blythe laughs. “He’s just a symptom of a much larger problem.”
Lamb of God is out today.
By Josh Johnson
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