NO
BARRIERS
BY JOE CHARUPAKORN
PHOTOS BY TRAVIS SHINN
Lamb of God’s Mark Morton and Willie Adler talk
about their favorite Boogie heads, developing upstroke
wallop, and how their love of HendrIx and Billy Gibbons
informed their diverse new album, Resolution.
“Whether it’s Slayer or Megadeth or anybody else, I want to go out there
and mop up the floor with them,” said Lamb
of God’s lead guitarist Mark Morton in Walk
with Me in Hell, the band’s 2008 documentary
DVD. “I want to play as hard as I can and make
them look old and tired when we’re done.” This
take-no-prisoners mindset has been the driving
force behind LoG since its earliest incarnation in
1990 as Burn the Priest. The current lineup was
solidified in the mid ’90s, when Morton, drummer Chris Adler, and bassist John Campbell
were joined by vocalist Randy Blithe and guitarist Willie Adler (Chris’ brother), and the band
changed its name to quell controversy that got it
banned from more than a few venues.
Around that same time, change was also in
the air for the metal scene in general. Along
with bands like Pantera and Mastodon, Lamb
of God helped usher in the New Wave of
American Heavy Metal movement , bringing back some long-missing credibility to the
genre after several years of “nu-metal” reigning
supreme on the charts and radio waves with a
recipe that often seemed to jettison melody and
musicianship in favor of detuned monotony and
guttural gibberish.
Albums like Ashes of the Wake and
Sacrament—the latter of which garnered
a Grammy nomination for Best Metal
Performance on “Redneck”—and prime touring
slots opening for icons like Metallica, Megadeth,
and Slayer gave Lamb of God a prime spot to
surf on that new metal wave. Resolution, the
band’s latest release, hit the streets this January,
and though its title and timing might lead some
to think the band is embarking on a feel-good
spiritual reawakening, nothing could be further
from the truth.
“Although we do like puppies and flowers,
that’s not what we’re writing about,” explains
Morton. “I think it’s safe to say all of our songs
are pretty dark. Resolution is more about being
resolved to something. It’s more about the end
of a certain phase of one’s life or situation, and
also the clarity of an image.” Asked to expound
on the latter point, Morton says, “I think we’ve
kind of reached a new sound—a more realistic
vision of what we are, personally. I don’t want
to get too specific—I prefer not to spell things
out literally, because it’s always best when people
interpret the songs for themselves. But I think
it’s all there [on the album].”
We caught up with Morton and Adler to get
the inside scoop on recording Resolution, their
signature axes, and the secret formula for main-
taining a successful career.
