Lamb Of God

Jourdan Turner

RAD: Throughout you career as musicians what has been the focal point of your message to the music world?
Randy: Where's the beer?(laughs) Well don't accept everything that's handed to you, think for yourself. having a hard time because his parents don't treat him good, or the person who has too much and doesn't know what it is like to be a simple person The different songs on the album kind of cover different stories.
RAD: Growing as brothers you've both learned to get along, but what has been the biggest conflict so far in your relationship as musicians?
Chris: We got along worse when we weren't musicians together. I think doing this and having us struggle for the same goal really puts it in line because we're brothers shit happens where I'll talk to him in a way that I'd never talk to the rest of these guys cause he's my brother and I know he's gonna say some smart ass shit right back to me. We really haven't had any big conflict since we started playing.
RAD: Do you drink/what's your Favorite beverage?
Mark: I like Miller light, Amstel light, Budweiser I like really watery beers.
Randy: I like Pabst Blue Ribbon, or Black Label, Highland, Becks, and for whiskey I like Bushmill's Irish Whiskey. and getting off drugs; different things like that. A lot of the songs are about his experiences, but different kids can use those for an anthem for selves.
RAD: Who has been the most influential throughout your lives in music?
Randy: Barry White!
John: I'd say everyone in this band has been most influential to me because we've been focused on making music together. We've been doing this for almost ten years so that's been the direct influence in my life. We push each other alot and as each of us grow in different spurts and as one dude gets better then the whole band really has to step up around that and as we all have our spurts at different times we're constantly progressing and it's sometimes hard to keep up and sometimes it's cool to get ahead a little bit. The more we push each other the more at the end of the day we feel satisfied.
RAD: Through your lives is there anything else you'd like to accomplish besides music i.e. parenthood, politics etc.?
Randy: Right now just music, but for me I'd like to retire on a fishing boat and write a big long book in which I tell horrible lies about all these guys and expose them for everything they are. you’re with a major label. You get to do a video, and try to get your song on the radio.
RAD: In your childhood who was the first group you listened to and became addicted to?
Chris: Aerosmith!
John: Probably Black Flag for me was the first that I heard and it just opened the whole music for me to be addicted to.
Mark: Kiss
Randy: Sex Pistols
Willie: I think it might have been Sheer Terror(laughs)
RAD: Has the impact of recognition been a surprise or did you expect a broader audience and what kind of audience do you expect as musicians?
John: I think it was definitely a surprise and as far as expectations go the only thing we can really at least hope for not really expect is to continue to progress and see more and more various people getting into what we're doing. I mean as much as every little kid wants to be in Circus Magazine or whatever we didn't set out as a band to go on tour to be famous or be great at what we do. Chris and Vinnie lived in Gainesville, and I met them at a party.
RAD: Was there anything you did different with the song structure on your latest album compared to the previous?
John: I'd say no but why do you ask?
Mark: Yeah I think that on the new album parts are repeated more and I think that we explored a lot more with the two guitars playing off of each other rather than everybody playing the same thing, that to me is a big difference. Parts are returned to more and the song structures I think are a little more conventional not necessary what's going on within that arrangement I think that's as far as conventional as it can be. Start and finish are a little more structured.
RAD: Growing up many of the events that take place in our lives shape our thoughts, feelings, and can either inspire us or makes us apathetic towards music so what events took place to solidify Lamb of God as a group?
John: Definitely would be alcohol because we drank together before we played together and started playing with drinking and got the glue to hold it together.
Mark: We're not a message group, your not gonna get some political statement or some religious statement we just play. There's no party line.
John: There's a line for the party though (laughs).
Chris: We all went to college and pretty much came together the first year and got to know each on a getting fucked up level and looking for parties.. stuff like that.. Our relationship just progressed and all of us being so drunk we couldn't get jobs and bored, we pulled out the old instruments and dusted them off to see what we could do.
RAD: On your five day UK tour what city held the best crowd?
Randy: London was off the hook.
John: Oxford was alright, Nottingham was good.
Chris: There was a college town there with tons of chicks, the food sucks, well not that it sucks it's just weird.
Randy: No it sucks blatant statement Food in England sucks except for the Indian food.
Willie: They put tuna fish in potatoes. They put corn in tuna fish. They put mayonnaise on everything, everything! Tons of it like the veggie burger from Burger King tons of it all over.
RAD: Currently Lamb of God is not widely known in the U.S.A but after word of mouth and festivals such as the Ozzfest which currently you denied to go on is an example that your music is gaining recognition. My question is what will you say when your fans say you sold out?
Mark: We don't give a fuck I mean with all due respect we don't care about the fans I mean we do, we're glad their here, but I don't play note.
number one for you as I much as I appreciate you being here I don't a write a song for you I write it for me it has nothing to do with you besides that you dig it and that's cool and I'm flattered and grateful all at the same time but like you wanna say we sold out we don't give a shit dude I don't write a song for you I wrote it for me. I could go write some Michael Bolton shit if that's what I wanna do. I don't care what you think. (Laughs)
Randy: If all in the capacity of the other we'd all doing some sort of music where there was a 1,000 people or there was no one there, so I mean if anybody has any expectations of us doing anything, talk shit we rock it to the top!
John: We did last night.
Mark: Well every kid, fan wants their band in their back pocket and they wanna be hip because they got this hit to this band you know it's just how it's always been and we're out doing this for a living so yeah if a million motherfuckers go by my next album I'm glad and if 20,000 fans say we sold out because of it, Fuck them I don't market to any of those people so it doesn't matter. Nobody will ever be happy. I mean listen to our album we didn't expect to get signed. Just listen to the kind of music we're playing do you think were trying to get mainstream, fuck
John: No it was a good question even though we turned down the Ozzfest just because our current album probably sounds different from the last one there's kids saying we sold out, so any choice we make people are going to disagree with it. If we started listening to everybody's opinion we'd be a fucking mess.
Randy: There were kids that were pissed that you could actually understand what I said on this record you know, you could understand the vocals and they were not liking it their saying "You can understand what he's saying that's fucked up" I'm like what are you a goddamn retard man you know whatever man, but anyway that's enough of that what else?
RAD: What do you think of metal music in general, has it become another genre?
Randy: Sub-labels a million different times, there's so many labels of what type of metal you play and people ask us what kind of metal do we play and we're just metal. When I think of metal I think of oldschool Slayer.