Randy Blythe: Lamb of God, Sobriety, Punk Over Metal & Czech Prison

The last show he played was our first show at CBGB. It was us and like eight other bands and we were first. You were first on the CB's. Yes, first on and I thought this is it. I've made it. This is the birthplace of punk rock. This is where the Ramones came up. You know, Blondie, The Dead Boys, the bad brains during that magic formative period. This is where it happened. I have now walked into history. I've played Madison Square Garden. I've played in front of a hundred thousand f***ing people at the festival. That's nothing compared to what I felt there. I've never had an emotional reaction to playing any stage bigger than that. Ever. 88. 89. Hey everybody, welcome to this week's incredible episode of Hardcore with Randy Blythe. We had a little bit of an audio problem, but you'll notice it clears up in just a few minutes. And Bo is really sorry. So he's punishing himself and he's only got about a thousand more. I'm sorry. So enjoy this amazing episode with Randy Blythe from Lamb of God. Hello, welcome. It's Hardcore time. How you doing, Bo? I'm doing so well. I'm so full. Full life and laughter and love for the guests that we have. Live, laugh, love. Exactly. We're just getting to that. Live, laugh, laugh. This is a beautiful day on the show. Historic, meteoric, all the orcs. You got an incredible guest today. Many describe him as a titan of American metal. Wow. You know, I wrote that. Yeah, I was like many. Who's me? Many people are saying. A lot of people. A lifelong punk rocker. That's right. Constantly practices what he preaches. Best-selling author and Lamb of God vocalist, Randy Blythe. All right. How are you guys doing? Very well. Couldn't be near. Damn, there couldn't be better. Look, lovely. The weather is nice. Yeah, the weather is very nice. A little too nice. It's a little too nice. What's it like in Richmond on mid-January? It's not as nice as this. But not as bad as Chicago or New York. So right in the middle. Yeah. When you get, do you still kiss the ground when you get back home to Richmond? I haven't kissed the ground in quite some time, but I should. Now, I have feelings of guilt. Is Richmond still home? Yeah, as much as anywhere is. Sure, I understand. Yeah, it's very, very weird. I feel kind of rootless these days. I understand. Home is a question mark. A really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, much in the same way we went about approaching album number nine, number eight, number seven. I mean I think the biggest difference with us as a band, particularly over the last, I don't know, five or six years, is we have consciously tried to shelve the ego individual members have and like try and keep in mind the greater whole because when you're a younger band and we're five very different people, you're a younger band, it's like nobody hands you a handbook, this is how you be a band, but you're so passionate and it's so important to you and what you put into the music is so personal that when someone says, eh, I don't know about that, you know, in the band then you're like and we were very contentious for a long time, you know, writing was very contentious. Somehow in our old age as we wander off into Alzheimer's riddled legacy territory, we've learned to get along better than we ever did, so we get along great now and it's because I think when we're writing we're all like, there's a quote attributed to Tennessee Williams, you must be willing to murder your darlings, meaning your contribution, your art cannot be so precious that if someone else looks at it and is like, that doesn't serve the greater whole, you gotta cut it and it's painful, so for us we've kind of learned as a group to sort of shelve the individual egos and think more about the whole. We have a saying, better is better. It sounds stupid, but it's true and me just as much as any of the other dudes have certainly been guilty of like, I love this, but this is how exactly it works and then it's gonna be, but what about this? And it's a hard thing when you care about something so much and you put in so much time to have someone be like eh, I don't know, but better is better. So we try and say that to ourselves. You changed the logo on the cover for the first time in 27 years. Well, you know, our logo to be perfectly honest, needed changing, it's the Papyrus font and had we known, you know, 20, however many years ago, that it was gonna wind up, that we would wind up looking like a falafel restaurant menu, we wouldn't have used that, but that was before Papyrus font was ubiquitous. What's the highest grossing movie of all time? The highest grossing movie of all time? It's Avatar, you know what font they use? Papyrus. Did they? So, so I'm a... What's the third highest grossing movie of all time? Avatar too, you know what font they use? Papyrus. Pretty good, you got nine. Have you seen the new one? Not yet. I haven't either. I have. Looking forward. I want to go immerse myself in their aquatic dream world. You went? No, I want to. Oh, you want to, yeah. Because they got a whole theme park for that. When does music enter your life? In general. When do you start, when do you go, I think I care about this. I mean, when I was little, very little, I remember it was the disco era. I'm a child of the 70s, you know, so... Did you like that? Of course, you know. Like other than Abba, did you like that? No, I mean, like I was not like some sort of six-year-old musical improv scenario or something like that. I wasn't like, I got to have this vinyl, but I'd hear things on the radio because that's all we had in the little tiny Redneck town where I lived. And then I remember hearing in their disco kiss, I was made for loving you baby. I love that song. It's their top song. I loved it. And that's the only kiss song I give a fuck about. Really? Yes. And then when, and also I just liked... You don't like lick it up? It's all right. It's like, I love that song. And then I remember every year around Halloween, there was like this little Halloween fair and this little tiny air were in it and they had face painting. I would get my face painted like Gene Simmons. Hell yeah. Because I thought he was cool as dark and bloody, you know, the Dean. And then years later, Gene Simmons did one of these fucking interviews or podcasts or something where they play old dudes newer bands music and they played him a Lama God song. And he's like, you know, I'm no great singer. And the band is obviously very, very talented, but this singer is terrible. And I was like, yes, I got this by Gene Simmons. And I used to dress up as a little tiny child. So... Too extreme for what was too extreme for the world. Yeah, for the demon. So, you know, that, I mean, that's really the first, I really remember having hearing music as a kid was like, a funky town, you remember? Well, that was on the radio when I was a child. How does that evolve into developing a taste for the extreme? Well, I think... I'm gonna make a bet. Please. Alice Cooper. No. So I lived in a very small, paper mill town in southeastern Virginia, a little tiny redneck town. And there were no record stores. And there was no internet then or anything. But I was... I didn't fit in. Like most of us, I think. Yeah, of course. We just didn't fit in with people. And I, as a young person, I tried to fit in and I didn't come from money. So like, people would be like, oh, you're wearing hand-me-downs. You wear fucking Bobo generic tennis shoes fuck you. And I didn't understand, right? Why does this matter? So I tried to fit in, but it didn't work. So that developed this sort of reactionary malice for the general public, I suppose. So Paul Croc already. So, and I don't, didn't want to be like these people. I tried to, but they didn't want me. So I'm like, well, fuck everybody. Right? And I got into skateboarding. And the most sort of aggressive music I heard was on the radio was Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil. Right? Shout. So, which is actually in retrospect, a political song. I know Nikki Sixx now, you know. So like... Really? Yes. It's kind of a punk rock song. Like just through the filter of Motley Crue's landscape, you know. Right? So like, I went to this summer camp in the sixth grade for gifted and talented kids. At the University of Virginia. And while I was there skateboarding, there was this guy, his name was Jason Smith. Shout out to you wherever the fuck you are. He was from Virginia Beach, Virginia. And he was a skateboarder too. So he and I had our skateboards at this, this nerd camp. And he's like, what are you listening to? I'm like, I like Motley Crue. And he's like, dude, if you like that, you need to check this out. And he gave me a cassette tape, a dub cassette tape. And I put it in and played it and it heard... And it was Holidays in the Sun, the first track I've never mined the bollocks off the sex pistols. And instantly, instantly, instantly, my entire life changed. I'll never forget it. The looking glass. It was like... And Johnny Rotten started singing. And I was like, I could tell he was pissed off. I didn't understand exactly what about, because there are a lot of weird cultural references to Thatcher's Brit that didn't make any sense to me. But I was like... But she must be awful. Yeah. I'm like, this is real. This is angry. This is not Boy Meets Girl. This is not everything's going to be okay. This is life. And this is a sonic representation of how I feel. Because I didn't fit in. I did not like the world, man. And from there, I just... He's like, this is punk rock. This is the sex pistols. And from there, I just slowly started learning about it. Because this was in the 80s before the Internet. And where do you go from there? Yeah. I started piecing it together. And I was very snotty at first. Oh, really? Like, oh, you've never been a snotty young kid. Oh, because you throw in punk rock and then the straight edge thing on top of it. We were the worst. I'm the worst. Right. So I was very snotty because I started somehow, like, finding out about punk rock. And I was convinced that real punk rock, only real punk rock came from England. Right? Because the sex pistols were from England in the clash. And I'm like, oh, that's where punk rock comes from. And through the skateboarding community, where when I was visiting, like, my mom down in Cape Fear, North Carolina, she lived at the beach. Or a lot of... You lived here? Yeah, that's like Wilmington. Yeah, Cape Fear. Yeah. Wilmington, Riceville Beach area where my mom lived. My dad and my brothers, I lived in Virginia. My mom stayed in North Carolina when they split up. But I would go to the beach and skateboard. And there were a lot of surfers and skaters there. And at backyard ramps, et cetera, they would be playing this music. And or they would tell me, hey, you want to check this stuff out. You want to check out, you know, Black Flag. I'm like, where are they from? Los Angeles. I'm like, that's not real punk rock. Right? Like a shitty little fucking... That's not real punk rock. Exactly. That's not fucking punk rock. And I'm from Little Redneck, Southampton County, Virginia, and I've already got a shitty attitude, like all little kids do, I guess. Not all little kids, maybe just me. But eventually, through the skateboarding scene, I started listening to stuff. I was exposed to stuff like Black Flag, the Misfits, the Bad Brains. All through skating. All through skateboarding. It's such a threesome. Thrasher magazine used to put out a compilation. It's called Skate Rock. And there was Skate Rock Volume 3, which I recently bought on vinyl for an obscene amount of money. I found on eBay. That's what we did. Yeah. But I had a cassette of it, Skate Rock Volume 3. And on that was Septic Death, plus head span. Whoa. The accused from Seattle, animosity era, COC. This is aggressive like stuff. You remember what accused song would have been on there? Oh, yeah. I think Splatter Rock. It's a different version of Splatter Rock. We can all live together, I think. I could look it up. I have it on my phone. It's awesome. That's awesome. But that was the sort of aggressive stuff. Through skateboarding, I was exposed to this music. Common, a very common introduction. Many people will tell you that. Pretty much a couple generations prior to us. It's like always. I mean, even me, I was, I skateboarded. That's how I met the drummer in my band. We've been friends ever since. Well, when you were skateboarding, how old are you? 38. Right. So when you were skateboarding growing up, the people think you were a homosexual because you skateboarded. Did anyone ever throw a beer bottle at your head and call you? They threw slurs, Randy. Yeah, the F-bombs. Yeah, for sure. But it wasn't, no, it was very, it was in vogue, for sure. Right. So it was cool. Right. So in the 80s, it was not cool, dude. Because did you? Maybe out here, and maybe in certain sections of like Virginia Beach, that was the capital of the East Coast skateboarding for a while. Oh, really? Yeah. But like everywhere else, like you would like see these stickers or you'd see them skateboarding is not a crime. People were just like, fuck you. Wow. But they get mad, they'd see you skateboarding. So this music came with it. Yeah. You know? And surely dressing the park. Oh, yes. 100%. That's part of it, the identity. 100%. So the natural next step must be finding this locally live. Yes. When does that start happening? So the first show I ever remember seeing, and I do not know the band's name, it was a local band in Wilmington, North Carolina. I was down there visiting my mom and I had made some skateboarding friends down there and they're like, we're going to go see a band, we're going to go see a show tonight. And I'm like, who is it? And they told me and they're like, we'll give you a ride. I went with them and it was at one of these storage space, like you rent storage. Yeah, of course. You know? So this band had their setup. Set up, yeah. And there was like 40 or 50 like local punk rock kids, hardcore kids, skateboarders, dirtbags, watching this local band. And I was like, this is fucking killer. Right? There's no, because I was underage. So it's not like I have to show an ID and get stamped or I can't go here, I can't do that. It was like, we're just going to play music and we're going to play it in this environment that is meant for something else. And if you like it show up and I was like, this is very, very fucking cool, you know? So and then I was still living in this little tiny town. And then in my last two years of high school, I started going to the Virginia Governor's Magnet School for the Arts, which is basically they had dance, theater, music, and visual art, right? And they sent me there, I think, because they just wanted to get me out of regular school, because I could not fit in. And there there were a bunch of other skateboarders. Really? And punk rockers and gots and weirdos like art freaks. And we were going to school for half a day during the school year, every day at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. And there is a strong scene there. So I started traveling up to Norfolk to see shows and stuff. There was a pretty good scene there. And those my Norfolk in Virginia Beach, the earliest, like name show I remember seeing, if you'd like to know that, was The Circle Jerks was seven seconds opening up. And I got thrown out during making the bombs. Because they weren't British? Huh? Because they weren't British. No, I got thrown out. No, I had already gotten over the whole like punk rockers in English by then. I had already started learning about hardcore. But I think it was either sneaking a beer or doing something stupid. I got thrown out. Did you catch seven seconds though? Yes, I did. I saw all of that. They were the opener. Saw seven seconds. It's not just boys fun. And then I saw most of The Circle Jerks, but I got thrown out during my favorites. You had a little too much fun. Yeah, had a little too much fun. You are very open about not really being much of a metalhead. Yeah. Which I like that. Yeah, I like that. I admire that. I think every interview I've ever seen or read from you is like, first off, I don't really like this. Well, it's not that I dislike metal. I think I say all this stuff because I do like metal and I do like some metal bands. But I do so much press where people like, as a diehard metalhead, you grew up and they tell me, you just probably just loved Iron Maiden and whatever. I'm like, no, dude, that's just not the world I come from. It's just not. So it's not with great reluctance that you accept the faith that you've been handed. I mean, what do you mean? Tighten the American belt. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I read that haul. Did you make me a little prize? I will. We can work on that. Chris, we can work on that. We're doing that. The hard-law freedom metal. Yeah. The tighten the American belt. We both have to put it around you. Our fucking president is taking imaginary prizes. Why can't I? Exactly. We'll get you a bigger one. Yeah, bigger. That's what it's all about. Some people say too big. It's too big. When do you end up in Richmond? In 1989. So, and because I was going to shows, I graduated high school in 89 and I was told you have to get a job or go to college. Either way, you're leaving the house, right? True. So, which is cool because I definitely wanted to go. Yeah, right. I don't want to live at home. I do not understand kids today that live at home forever. I'm like, what the fuck are you guys doing? A lot of people can't afford nothing else. This is true. This is true. This is true. And I should shut my bitter old man. I suppose. I just don't understand it. I'd rather squat. And I have. So, like, I wanted to go to Richmond to VCU because once again, it was an art school. Right? And I knew there would be a lot of weirdos and I knew Richmond had more punk rock shows. Like, I saw really good shows and back in the day in Virginia Beach, I saw Agnostic Front with the Vandals. I saw Agent Orange, The Undead. A lot of great bands. A lot of great bands. But Richmond had more clubs. So, I moved to Richmond to go to college. Right? College was the school. This was a school of hard knocks. You graduated? Yeah, I did not graduate. I spent, I was a student off and on for about seven years. Just burning money. That's seven more than eight. So, you did great. Yeah, true. Six more than you? Six more than you. I was way more interested in going to shows and drinking and chasing hot girls. Unsuccessfully mostly. But I did. We've all been there. What did, had you been to Richmond? Yes. But so, once you finally became a resident? Yes. What was that community like for you? Were you, were you, oh hey, it's the kid from Southeast? No. No? No, no, no, no. It was very, Richmond at that time was musically in a very interesting state. The late 80s to the early, mid 90s was incredibly fruitful as far as music. The bands there that we were watching, all the dudes in my band, you know, who I didn't know until we were in a band together. Interesting. But the bands we were watching were, in general, they were people that had come out of the pumpkin hardcore scene who had started gravitating more towards heavy, weird, odd time signature, like math, metal type stuff. Right? So, there's a band, old school hardcore band from Richmond called Honor Roll, I don't know if you're familiar with them. They morphed, their guitar player, Penn, is kind of a legend. Like, if you talk to a lot of older heads, they're like, oh my god, that dude's a guitar freak, you know? He made a band called Butter Glove, which morphed into this band called Breadwinner. There was a band that really, huge influence on us. From butter to bread. Yeah, there's like Mike Bishop, who used to be Beefcake In Guar, and is now back singing in Guar. He left and he had this weird, like, heavy band called Key Pone. There was a band called Slang Laos, that very, very heavy, very off time sinister type music. So, these are all bands that are coming from like the pumpkin hardcore underworld, but like changing shape, you know? And the musicianship was very intentional. It wasn't like, let's just bang out some aggressive shit. It's like, let's be fucking weird. So, like, all of those bands were, like, important to me. And one of the guys on one of those bands I went to, I went to English class with in the university, and he gave me a flyer. He's like, what are you doing tonight? My band's playing. I came and went and saw them. They were this band called Brain Flower. And they remind me, I guess, the most of like, kind of current neurosis, you know, how neurosis has gotten all like really weird and stuff. But they were already doing all this really weird shit when neurosis was still more straight. Hmm, big time. Interesting. Hardcore. So, like, the music was a bit more cerebral enrichment at that time. I mean, I still knew some of the Richmond hardcore people, like Taylor Steele from Four Walls Falling, if you're familiar with them. I know they're more of your contemporaries, but when I mention avail to anyone from Richmond, they start levitating. Something happens. There's a scientific response by avail that, huh, are they one of like the Marquis Richmond bands? Sure. In the punk rock world, for sure, man. And we, it was interesting because they moved to Richmond in, I think, 91. They were all from Northern Virginia, the suburbs of D.C. And it's a cultural wasteland up there. You can go into D.C., I guess, to shows, but Northern Virginia is just suburbia, you know? And they, I don't, I, Tim told me, I can't remember how they decided on Richmond. I think it was from playing shows down there. So they moved down and got a house on Gray Street, like a block away from my apartment, the avail house. And they were playing shows and it was really fun, you know? They were a local band that all of us enjoyed going to see. And then they got really popular and it wasn't fun to go see them anymore. It was just too much. You lost your secret thing. So they, so they would have secret house shows. So you'd get a call and, you know, and at like 4 p.m. on a Friday and it's like, I'll show what the avail house tonight. And then you'd show up and there'd be, you know, 100 people in a bedroom watching avail do their thing full on. And it was great, you know? That's awesome. Yeah. They were, they're a little, they started a few years before us, you know? So I wouldn't, we're as old as them. I think so. But just a different, yeah, different scene. Before we move on to band stuff. Richmond is all mixed up. Yeah, yeah, it seems that way. That's the thing. It's very mixed up. So like there's a band called bio ritmo, which is a bunch of punk rock guys who's, who some of them were had Puerto Rican ancestry. They started a salsa band, a traditional salsa band. So like, and now they're big, like they tour and we'll play in Puerto Rico and all that stuff. The salsa version of the band? They are a salsa band. Oh, okay. They are a salsa band. So like, but they, when they started, it was just all of us going to go see this salsa band play. It's just very mixed up. I got you. Richmond is very like, it's a wild place. And there's a street that's just called Boulevard. Yes. It's now, it's now, uh, Arthur Ashe Boulevard. Oh, they gave it a name? Renamed it. That sucks. We were just talking about this. I think about Boulevard all the time. Oh, I lived on Boulevard. You lived on Boulevard. I lived on 712 North Boulevard, most dangerous house in Richmond. Really? Yeah. Boulevard. A bunch of drug dealers and you. Yeah. It's a good time. Shout out to Boulevard. What's your first band? My first band that I was in was a band called Black Friday in high school with my friend Alex Podesta, who went to this art school with me. And we would rehearse in his garage and he had, uh, he had constructed out of like old speakers, some sort of rigged up PA. Cool. Right. Like an old stereo system through a, a mic input or whatever and hung these speakers. And we had someone who played drums. I can't remember. I asked him this recently. And he would play guitar and I would attempt to sing and, uh, we were just playing this sort of blues punk stuff. Okay. And I was singing a lot of, just making up lyrics on the spot, uh, a lot about drinking vodka and. Were you singing melodically? No, just yelling, just kind of yelling and, and like yelling, yelping along. Okay. And, um, singing, I just remember singing a lot about drinking because that's what we were doing at the time. It is foreshadowing, but we never played a show. We never made it out of the garage. He says he has tapes of it. So, um, I would like to get the band back together and see after, you know, get back to that way. Yeah. Exactly. You know, see 35 years later or 40 years later, we could make some music. Is burning the priest your second band? No. Okay. Talk to me. Fill me in. So my second band is how I got in burn the priest. Okay. So I joined a band called stink Hogan. Okay. All right. Hogan does stink. Yeah. R.I.P. Stink Hogan. And, uh, and nobody, I was like, what is a stink Hogan? I asked for a guitar player, Abe, he's like, it could be anything bad. It could be like, you know, indigestion or a piece of dog shit on your carpet. That's a stink Hogan. Whatever. So stink Hogan, uh, was me, this guy Abe, who was a guitar player, this guy Jim the rim, because you two had the edge. We wanted the rim. And this guy, Bryant Murphy on drums. And we were four very different people with four very different ideas about music. So like Abe was like, I think he wanted to be a combination of Jimi Hendrix and maybe sepple Torah. Uh, Jim the rim was classically trained. So he wanted to be Charles Mingus on the bass. And our drummer was at that time, like into like the smashing pumpkins. And I wanted to be, you know, HR Johnny Rotten. Yeah. So it was just stink Hogan train wreck of music. And like, they were actually good musicians, but it did not coalesce. Yeah. And I was not a good lyricist, and I was not a good singer. Okay. Um, and we eventually changed the band name to Furious George. Right. Now there's, we're up to no good. Now there is a punk rock band from Florida named Furious George. Oh, really? Where a guy, but we were before them. Parallel thinking. Right. Yeah. And it's a guy named George tab who used to write for maximum rock and roll. You guys know that Max. Yeah, of course. So, but he had a band named Furious George. But anyway, our band just felt us like felt a pieces. Okay. We played one show out of town in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, at some college party. And then we'd play some local shows. And Furious George fell to pieces. I wasn't really digging the music. It was too complex. Yeah. And I decided describing jazz when you describe it. It was very jazzy at times. Yeah. Yeah. But it had, it did have a Richmond flavor to it. Cause like I said, there was a lot of odd time signatures and some heavy rips. Sure. Okay. So I was done with it and I had had about enough of college. I was just working in restaurants and working on developing my alcoholism. So, and that was a main goal of mine. Sure. Were you roofing at this point yet? No, working in restaurants. Okay. So no roofing yet. No roofing yet. We'll get there. So I was working in restaurants and just kind of floating through life. And I decided alcoholism. Yeah. We're probably working on my alcoholism, developing it. Yeah. Studying. 10,000 hours. Yes. I got there, man. Okay. And I decided that I wanted to go to Berkeley, California to see shows at a place called Gilman Street. Right? And so, and I also decided I wanted to ride freight trains. Oh, wow. Okay. So me and my buddy Tyler, who was like this punk rock kid who was really into the band Filth, if you ever heard of them, they'll look out band Filth. He loved them. And we decided we were going to ride freight trains in California. And so we did through trial and error. We rode freight trains in California and we wound up squatting out in Oakland and in Berkeley. Right? Oh, before I left, I forgot to tell you this, before I left to go be a bum, squat or hobo, right? Our guitar player from Stink Hogan slash Furious George, Abe came to me and he said, I have a new band. I want you to sing for it. And I was like, I don't know about you. Oh, dude, I don't know. The last one was, let's be honest, it wasn't great. You know, I'm going to go be a bum for a while. And he's like, dude, you need to sing for this band. Oh, right. And I'm like, I got better things to do. Like, go be homeless in the Bay Area. You know, so I hopped out to the Bay Area. Can I ask you, what does trial and error mean when it comes to very dangerous things? It's very dangerous. Well, for instance, from the beginning, it was, we didn't know. My friend Tyler and I didn't know how to do it yet. So we thought we were just going to, we knew where there was a freight yard, right? So we went down to this freight yard off the Boulevard. It's right off the Boulevard, cuts through it, and we snuck in and we got into this, it's like, it's what they call a gondola car. And it's half of a box car basically with no door, but just open. We climbed in there, we're like, we're in. Okay, we're going. And eventually this train sort of took off. And it went very slow. And it went very slow for two or three days around Richmond until finally this train worker spotted us. It had stopped and we got off to take a leak and he spotted us and he's like, look, he came in and he's like, look, you guys should know that this is the garbage train. This is a junk train. All it does is move garbage around Richmond. You're not going anywhere. And he's like, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but I know you're going to do it anyway. If you want to get out of here, go to this other freight yard, which our friend Tim Berry from Aveil knows about. He's hopped out of there and faulted. So we're like, oh, okay, thank you. So we rode from this freight yard in Richmond to just over in the West Virginia border and got off in a freight yard, had to hitchhike a little bit and wound up somewhere in Ohio, caught another train and went to Chicago. And along the way, we started meeting people who were riding freight trains and kind of telling us learning, learning how to do this. I'm full disclaimer, do not fucking ride. My wife's childhood best friend passed away climbing freight trains. She got her into like dystopia and all kinds of crusty stuff. Played shows with dystopia. And one of the last things she gave her was a burn CD with as the palace is burning on. Really? So RIP Christina, she passed away climbing on a freight train. It can take your life very easily. And do not do it. And I think also when we did it, this was prior to September 11th. I believe that post September 11th, the sort of legal ramifications, depending on where you are, can be much greater. If you're crossing state lines. It depends on the train. There's Homeland Security. Who knows what could get involved. But I know after September 11th, it got a little bit more serious. So I haven't hopped a freight train since I was 23 years old. Yeah, nobody has been doing it. But I did it twice. So anyway, I went to California. You made it to Berkeley. I was out in Berkeley. I met this kid named Mikey Brosnan. And he, we were living on the streets, squatting and stuff. And he was from Philly. And he's like, Hey, after a while, he's like, Are you sick of being here? I'm like, Yes. I don't want to live on the streets. He wanted to go home to Richmond. He's like, Well, we have a van. And we're going back to Philly. Me and my friend Jay, do you want to ride? We don't have any money. We don't have a gas cap. So we had a sock stuck in. So I'm like, Yeah, so we spare changed our way back across America. In this broken down van. It was fucking crazy. And I kept in touch with this guy, Mikey. This is important. Remember his name, Mikey. So the second time I rode freight trains, I rode all the way back. I didn't get a van back. The next summer, I went and did it again. And I got off in the West end of Richmond, Virginia. And the only person I knew with a car was my old guitar player, Abe. So I go to the food lion, like parking lot, the grocery store parking lot out in the suburbs. And I'm like, Abe, I'm back. Can you come pick me up and give me a ride downtown? Where I'll find some place to couch to sleep on. And he's like, Yeah, and my band is playing a party tonight. You got to come and I'm like, Oh, fuck. It's fucking bad. I just want to lay down. I like this fucking band. Yeah. I'm like, Oh, there'll be free beer, at least, you know. So I wind up going to this house. He told me where the house was. And I walk in and I see these three dudes, I hear this fucking heavy music. And it's just jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, and I walk into this garage and I see Abe and John and our old drummer, Chris, and they're playing this music and it's heavy as fuck. And I'm like, Oh, they're good. And I looked at the girl I was with at the time. And I was like, That's the band I'm going to sing for. And she's like, Whatever, Randy. You know, but the cops came to tell him to stop. And like the garage store had like these glass windows. I remember they pulled up and they were shining these spud spotlights in there. Stop, stop, stop, because it's so loud. And they didn't stop playing. They just got down lower, like an ostrich. You can't see me sticking his head in his hand or whatever. And just playing and they were ripping. I was like, Holy fuck. How many people are there? Oh, I don't know. It was a house party. So 100, 150, you know, something like that. It's crowded. Yeah, pretty. And so I talked to Abe. I'm like, That's the band you want me to try out for. He's like, Yeah, I'm like, Killer, give me a cassette of one of your songs. So he gave me a cassette of like three of their songs, I think. And I picked one. The working title is Dwayne, which is our guitar player, Mark Dwayne Morton. It's his middle name. He was originally in the band and he had left to Chicago to go to school to get his masters degree. Welcome. So in political science, which didn't work out. So bad for him. But he gave me this tape of these three songs and I wrote lyrics to this song, Dwayne. And the song is about TV and how it rots your brain. And the internet didn't exist then, but it's the same. Applicable. It's applicable. Now, it's the same thing. And I've written since song about the internet. So I for 30 years with this fucking band, I've been singing about the same thing. Now TV feels productive. You agree? Yeah. Yeah, I suppose. But I wrote the lyrics and I worked out a pattern listening to this boombox cassette tape. It wasn't like a proper demo. I went into their practice space and sang the one song. And that was it. I was in the band. Now in stink Hogan. And of course, the following period. Were you doing the I know, approaching it, it was more approaching it at times every now and then more like a scream would come out, but it was more kind of like pitched, you know, stop that. Okay, let's not do that. That's exactly what they said. So then for for this tryout that you did, were you then closer to that direction? Oh, that's what I was. Because it fit that. Because the other thing is, is I was known for being able to do the metal voice. I see. Right? So I would do it as like a joke, like a yes, total joke at a bar. That's precisely how it happened. Of course. And we were at a bar. I was in a bar slash club called the Metro and some in the bartender was playing like some, you know, cannibal corpse or something. I was like, oh, I could do that. And people were like, whoa, you could do that. And so there was a band, a sort of hardcore ish, weird punk noisy band from Richmond called a hose got cable. I don't know if you ever heard of them. Certainly not. Yeah, great band. They would play shows and stuff. They'd be like, jump on stage, do the metal guy voice. And it was just funny. I see. It was all a joke. So me just like kind of clowning it because my brother listened, my younger brother listened to all the metal. Okay. Right. He was handing me like obituary and bolt thrower. Really? You were the punk old head. Yes. Yeah. And he was just like metal. And I was like, that's cool. But like punk rock is my thing. Yeah. My thing. But then, you know, eventually some of that stuff I did. I mean, both. I mean, both. Amazing. Yeah. So when you are joining what would become or was already called Burn the Priest? Was Abe and them were they like, Hey, do that voice? Or were you just like, I'm going to do this? No, I just did what I was going to do. I think he knew he knew I could do that. So it was metal. And very like, kind of like grind influence, like sloppy. We like, we didn't, my guys didn't know how to play their instruments as well as they do now. Yeah. Morty. Yeah. It was a lot more raw. Power slot. Yeah. Yeah. Pardon this interruption. We swear we don't want to interrupt this very important, very special episode with this Titan of American Metal. But we have two very important things to talk to you about. First off, guilty party. The greatest men's wear store in North America. Tell them about guilty party, Beau. Guys, we basically exclusively wear guilty party. It is brought to you by none other than the drummer of foundation, the great Champ Hammett, one of our dear, dear friends we love. I love going there. I love shopping there. I love everything they got. They, what do they got Colin? All of our favorite brands, Ironheart, Full Account, Free Note, Samurai, the French one. Straight up dude. And the first, the first pair of Red Wings I ever bought in my life were from Champ when he worked at some boot store 15 years ago. And now he's running his own spot, boots, belts, bags, shirts, jackets, pants. You can transform your life with a few little things from this place. And you can shop, pay an installment, which is good because that's what we did. So go to guiltyparty.co, use code hard lore, get 10% off. And if it's a nice pair of denim, it might be over $300. And then the shipping will be free. And if you're anywhere near in Atlanta, go in, try some stuff on, they'll hem it for you on the spot. Say that one more time. Champ hem it. Because that's what he'll do. And if you have any questions about a certain pair of denim, hit them up, hit us up. We'll help you find something. We love it. Absolutely. We get asked all the time what we're wearing, what this is, what that is. We're happy to share. We're not gatekeeping. We want everyone to win. So go over to guiltyparty.co and use code hard lore and change your life. This episode is also brought to you by Danny Wimmer presents specifically Sonic Temple and welcome to Rockville, both of which Lamb of God are playing. I have played both of these fest just last year. They're both fantastic. They both have great headliners. Colin, tell them who they got this year over at Sonic Temple. Sonic Temple in Columbus, Ohio, you can see not only Lamb of God, but dying fetus, suffocation, napalm death, sepulchra, biohazard, suicidal tendencies, citizen, the story so far, carcass, tool, my chemical romance, and many more. That's insane. Down, way down Daytonaway and welcome to Rockville. You got a little band called Turnstile. You never heard of them. Creator, Deicide, and a lot of other bands. You just got to go and check them out. We just named a bunch of bands and they're all playing that too. They're in great venues. They're easy to get to. Everything is great. I could see myself going to them if I lived even remotely close to either of these fest. And I think we may just be there. So go grab a weekend pass or a single day ticket right now on their respective websites back to the episode. How long have you been sober now? 15 years. Congrats. 15. Thank you. Has the has the vape been instrumental in? Well, this is my last fucking vice. Yeah. This stupid nicotine. It's the last one and I keep on trying to get to it, but I used to smoke two packs of Marlboro Red today. Yeah, that's not good. Wow. Yeah, not good. So once I get done with this, several of your compatriots have told me I can get my X tattoo. 100%. For sure. The late life nailing myself to the X. That would be awesome. I'll do it, man. Once I get rid of this, I'll be like, yes, finally nailed to the X. Have you tried any of them Zim pouches? Yes. You still prefer that though. Is it the... I'm lazy. No, man. It's just easier to... I'm done. I don't know. It's don't do this, kids. No, don't do it at all. They already are. So we've had one second hand interaction. Yes. You and I. And I apologize in advance. No, it's funny. And it's my fault. How drunk was I? I don't think you were. You weren't. It was the vape. This is post sobriety. So we're on tour with Hape Reed. We're playing first. Twishing tongues. Yes. I think, you know, we're about to start. We'll play in a big sample of something. And I see out of the corner of my eye one Randy Blythe walk in and I'm like, dude, this is sick. He's going to watch us play. We come in. We're in C sharp standard. Alec, our bass player. C standard for some reason. He forgot about the sharp aspect of this particular show. And we go, but his goes, and I see you react to the bass being out of tune and go, and turn and walk away. I'm sorry. If it sounded off, it would be like... In the moment, I was like, this sounds like shit. And there he went. All right, I guess I'll sing now. But yeah, that's the only interaction we've had. So welcome. Where was that show? North Carolina. I think Wilmington, North Carolina. And Wilmington, or something. Yeah, or somewhere. It might have been a roll. You did Doomsayer that night. It was the only time on the whole tour they played Doomsayer. Ah, it's one of my favorite Hape Reads. It's one of the best all time banger. Hardest mosh part, some would say. We just saw them play an actual hardcore set at FYA in Orlando. And they played only Rise of Fatality in before. Right. Didn't they do the tour with the whole satisfaction album? That was the tour. Yeah. Now this truck is... Love Jamie. Now it's a fucking helicopter. Love Wayne too. Dude, he's back rocking back. I was at his first gig back. Really? How was that? Triumph. I bitched at him a little before. I'm like, don't go too hard. Yeah. They opened your fucking head. For real. You know? But I got pictures of him. I got pictures. Let me see the scar, bro. She's hard. It is hard. She's hard. He's incredible. Crazy. Wayne, we love to hear. Burn the priest self-titled. Okay. Share some memories of that time. So I got to know what happened. Yeah, tell me. So I told you a name. Mikey. Yes. Yes. Remember that name. I remember. So we started playing shows around Enrichment and stuff. And I was still in contact with my buddy Mikey, who I'd been squatting with. Is he still out in... He's in Philly. Oh, he's in Philly. Right. Because he went back. And so he's like, hey man, I'm starting to book shows and warehouses up here. Do you want to... You have a band now. Do you want to come and play? Yeah. And I'm like, yes. So there were three sort of houses in West Philly. There was Stalag 13, which was Mikey's, fake time, no, fake house and kill time. There were three houses like in like a... Was the house called Stalag 13? It was a warehouse called Stalag 13. Oh, wow. And so we started going up there and playing shows with a lot of like crustier bands and some hardcore bands in these warehouses. So we started going up to Philly and playing shows that my friend Mikey Brosnan was booking in these warehouses. And we were playing... We were playing with some of the local sort of Philly bands, but also we did shows with like Coalesce. Oh, cool. Logical nonsense. Who else? But like some hardcore and punk bands that would come through is a very vibrant scene. Yeah, big time. And so people from record labels were starting to come out and see us. But like relapse because they're up there. They were like, oh man, they're a great band and they're drawing big crowds here now, packing out this like 200 person warehouse. Two or 300 people cram in there, nuts. But we were maniacs and drunk and you know, would fight each other on stage and there were train wrecks. So I think labels were like, these guys are really good, but they're not going to last. Sure. They're going to implode. Sure. So why would we invest in these guys and put out a record? Sure. So my friend Mikey, who I met Squatty, who was booking us, Mikey from earlier, is like, I'll put out a record for you. So he put out, he started a record label and put out our first split seven inch. It was Burn the Priest in this band called Zed from Philly. And then Rich from Brutal Truth, his little label put out our second split seven inch with a band of power violence band called Agents of Satan from California. Intense. Still. So we had now we had a couple of seven inches. We're getting good reviews, but no labels are putting anything out. So my friend Mikey again, says, okay, I'll really start a record label and I will put out the Burn the Priest record. And so he started what was originally called Goat Boy Records. And then it turned into Legion Records. Okay. And we had a $5,000 budget. Damn. Pretty good. That he maxed his credit card out. Okay, $300,000. Today's money. Yeah. And we went to record with Steve Austin from Today is a Day in Clinton, Massachusetts, and slept on the floor of the studio. Yeah. Um, Braun from Mastodon was playing for Today is a Day at the time. Oh, wow. And he was living in the studio. So me and Braun became friends before Mastodon ever existed when we were recording the Burn the Priest record. We just became very close friends and are to this day. Yeah. We were there when Bill from Mastodon tried out for Today is a Day because both of them before Mastodon existed were in Today is interesting. So I would say all of your like modern contemporaries are from New England. Man, people thought we were from fucking New England. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, up up north people thought we were from up north because a lot of our modern contemporaries, of course, Shadowsfall, Kill Switch, Unearth, God Forbid, and the Mastodon guys were originally from Rochester. Oh, it's you know, the two of them. Wow. Braun and Bill are from Rochester. Like we were up there a lot, you know, and people thought we were from up there, but we're the soul sort of southern band to come out of that scene. So Mikey gets his shit together. Yes. He gives you five grand. Carries us up to record this record. Wow. The first record we did the Burn the Priest record with Steve Austin. And then we did the first Lamb of God New American Gospel with Steve Austin. Oh, okay. Same studio. Okay. The Burn the Priest record I did in 10 hours. Vocally. Yeah. All the way through. Jesus. And New American Gospel I did in eight hours. Jesus. Because my band takes all this time getting all their, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, tap, tap, tap, tap, and then we have a $5,000 budget. It's like, go. And so I'm like, what the fuck? And also they kind of wrote some new shit while we were there. I never sang it. You can barely understand the thing I say on the New American Gospel record because of that. Yeah. Interesting. Why the name change? Because our guitar player, Mark Morton, with some foresight, he came up with the name Burn the Priest, right? Okay. And he's like a 20-year-old metal kid or whatever. Sure. He's like, we need a edgy, good, yeah, a metal name. Yeah. When you hear the name Burn the Priest, you don't think it's going to be a soul band. Sure. You don't think it's going to be jazz. You don't think it's going to be anything other than what it is, right? Of course. There's also the sort of religious connotation around that. And at that time, Satanism had sort of re-entered the consciousness due to all the crazy black metal shit that was going on in Norway, where they were murdering people and burning churches and all that stuff. Yeah, totally. So we were looking at that. And while we were still playing mostly with hardcore and punk rock bands, we were definitely known as being more of a metallic band. And people were like, Burn the Priest, are you guys part of this Satan bullshit? You know what I mean? Oh, I see. And Mark, our guitar player, I probably wouldn't have changed the name because I was like, ah, fuck you. Yeah. But it was important to him. Sure. And so he's like, let's change the name. So Mark, so you got pigeonholed a little bit or potentially, and Mark just did not want the perception that we were a Satanic band. You know, he didn't want that. And also, when Lamb of God has gone on to cause maybe just as much confusion. Yeah. But the coolest thing is that it's a bit more cerebral in its confusion. Big time, little more. Because people hear it and they're like, what does that mean? Yeah. So Mark was like, no. So we put out the Burn the Priest record with my friend Mikey, right? Priest is not supposed to be on fire. And we did some touring, you know, mostly, well, not mostly, all of it. We booked ourselves through something called Book Your Own Fucking Life, which is a resource maximum rock and roll put out. Awesome. Which is a print magazine with all the different kids in every different city. Oh, really? Who would have basement shows and VFW shows. It's crazy. It's fascinating. So we called them and routed this and showed up and played, you know, the squad or the VFW hall and just hoping for some spaghetti in a floor to sleep on that night, you know, in a broken down band. So we did that for a few years. And we started playing up in New York. And at one point, Mark, who had had enough of going for his master's degree, he's like, I want to play music again, move back to Richmond from Chicago and rejoin the band. So now we had Mark and Abe and the guitar players. And Abe was a photographer, very talented, still is, and wasn't so much into like, he wanted to pursue his career in photography. So there was a split. The last show he played was our first show at CBGB. He's like, he's like, I want to at least play the CBGB show. That's cool. Who played that? Do you remember? I know the person that booked it. The first band or the headliner was Disassociate. Ralphie Boy, I don't know if you know him. He was, he's from the New York scene. He was in a band called Jesus Cross 2. Disassociate, heavy ass grind band. Cool. He put on something called the Mad Grinder's Ball. It was us and it was us and like eight other bands. And we were first. You were first on the CBGB. Yes, first on. And I thought, this is it. I've made it. Yeah. This is the birthplace of punk rock. This is where the Ramones came up, you know, Blondie, the dead boys, the bad brains during that magic formative period. This is where it happened. I've now walked into history, you know, and it was, I've never had an emotional reaction to playing any stage bigger than that ever. Wow. And I've played Madison Square Garden. I played in front of 100,000 fucking people at Festival. That's nothing compared to what I felt there because that's how important this music is to me. It's my life, you know. So we started getting label attention finally. And you're partying hard. Hard. Yeah. Hard, hard. So that ceases to matter. Yes. So we started getting label attention and we talked to a few different labels and then we went with Prostetic, which is a division at that time of Metal Blade. Right. The two guys, EJ and Dan, worked at Metal Blade. And they're like, we want to sound burn the priest. We're like, killer, killer. By the way, we're changing the name. They're like, no. And we're like either name, change or we go with someone else. And so we did. And then went on to record the first Lama Cod rock. Let's talk New American Gospel. Well, before we get there, are you roofing yet? No, you're still not roofing. Still restaurant. Still restaurant. Okay, the roof is, the roof calls. Mark was roofing. Okay. Mark was a roofer longer than me. Well, we could talk about it. We're, I'm referencing. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm, oh, okay. I can tell you yes. Oh, yes, I was roofing right after the shift from burn the priest to Lama God. Okay. I started roofing. I knew it. I felt it. Tell me about the roofing. It sucked. Early on in your book, you mentioned having essentially a panic attack. Yes, on a roof. On the roof. It's the only one I've ever had where you just froze. Yes. What was that about? I don't know. It's the only time you hear of people that happening to roofers. Yeah. Right. Like I was on this ledge, a copper ledge, it's about like this wide, you know, plenty big. Yeah, plenty big, but it wasn't even that high up. It was like two and a half, three stories or something. There was a window beside me and I was soldering this, this seam of this copper roof and, and all of a sudden I was working no problem. And all of a sudden, and it was a flat little roof. It wasn't like a steep one. It's a good roof. Yeah. It was hot, but all of a sudden I remember just starting to sweat, but being cold at the same time. Cold. And I looked at, at the ground and it was grass. It wasn't even concrete, but I was like, Oh my God. And I was like, I need to get off this roof right now. I'm not supposed to be here. And I was frozen, completely frozen with terror. It was horrible, a complete entire body feel as for no reason. No fear of heights. No, I'm not afraid of heights. You played in front of hundreds of thousands of people later on wouldn't have a panic attack. No, no, no, not at all. So like, I was just like, Oh my God. And, and I just couldn't move. So I, I yelled out to the guy who, who owns the roofing company, our buddy Noel, I'm like, No. And it took him like a half an hour to get me down off that roof. He had to like come up and then put my foot on the ladder and I'm just like this, like, Oh, like it was the weirdest thing. I have no idea of why that happened. I'm not afraid of heights. It never happened again. And I've been on much sketchier routes, but it just came over me. Were there any substances? No. Okay. Did this happen in this time period that we're talking about? Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. That's fascinating. I, I read that and I just wanted to pick your brain about it. It was, if I think about it, really think about it. I can remember the feeling and it's awful. Wow. But it's the only time and I've talked to other people who that have happened, that's happened to have frozen at a height, you know, and it's, it's dangerous because if you're immobile, you lock up, you do my fall. Yeah. My God. You know, unbelievable. Take me there. New American gospel. The, the debut LP for Lamb of God. Yes. Proper. Tell me about the writing and recording and anecdotes that come to mind when you hear these words. Well, I recorded, I was, we were living on the floor of the studio again, I believe, up in Clinton mass drinking heavily. And I remember a certain band member wanted me to record songs in a certain order. This is back in the day when my band members were still allowed in vocal sessions. Right? I got you. Rookie mistake. No more. None of that. Yeah. Love them, but fuck you guys. Get out of here. So like, I didn't really know what I was doing. And when they're recording all their stuff, I leave them alone. Right. But they're all done. And they're sitting in the control room. And I start singing and all of a sudden someone's like, wait, and I'm like, I just started. Right. I don't need your, you have to let me, I'm not interrupting you in the middle of the solo telling you, you hit a fucked up note. Like you got to get through it, you know. So I just remember being very stressed. I remember Steve Austin famously said, what? Looking at me one time and saying, if you don't get this right, the next try, I'm going to shoot you. He threatened to kill me. I was like, yeah. And I was like, right? Right enough. I just remember we were really broke. And in Massachusetts, I don't know if that's still the same. If you carry your beer cans back, they have a machine at the, at the grocery store. Five cents. Yeah. Five cents. Right here. So we were collecting all these cans to go recycle, to buy ramen. It's amazing. And more beer. No kidding. Yeah. So how much was a packet of, a packet of, he loved beer. How much is a packet of ramen? At that time? They're like a quarter of a piece. Yeah. 25 cents. It's five cans. Unbelievable. Yeah. And so 45 cans. You're all eating dinner. Yeah. It was very, it was, it was very stressful. But it was, it was cool. Like my biggest memories of that time, recording those two albums, or what came out of them, the most important to me is a friendship with Braun, my friend, Braun from Mastodon. That's when he and I really became friends. And are they already a band? No. By 2000? No. No. He's in, he's in Today is a Day with Steve Austin. Right. Right. Right. Him and, uh, him and his guitar player. They were in a band called Bill. They were in a band called Lethargy from Rochester. Okay. Kind of already off time stuff. And then they went down and joined Today is a Day. Very cool. American metal gets thrown around so much when you hear about Lamb of God that it's easy to forget kind of how lumped, like especially to me and to us, you were lumped in with hardcore a lot in the early 2000s. Yeah. And I think it's music, musically it has more in common with Hunter Demons than it does anything on liquid metal, you know? But it's crazy to me going back to listen to this record, how fully formed the idea of Lamb of God is musically. New American Gospel. Yeah. Feels fully formed. I think so. I think at least the, the, the direction. Yeah. The trajectory of, of mute, the music. The intention was there. Yeah. For sure. Do you ever revisit this? Only when I have to relearn lyrics. I very rarely listen to our music. Okay. By the time I'm done with it, I'm just like, oh my God. Yeah. I'm the same way. And then we're going to go on tour and I'm going to hear it. Yeah. So sometimes like recently Mark and I both have listened to some like some new American Gospel and some burned the priest I know I have and like, man, that's fucking killer. Yeah. Some of the rest. I'm saying, yeah. You know, you can listen to something out of this first one and hear where the song Redneck comes from. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, that's what I'm saying. It's like, same guys. It's a progression. It's there. Yeah. It's a progression. So is it, is it four out of five of you now that are OG Lamb of God? You mean at this point in right now, right now, right now, is it four of you? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Except for Chris. Well, yeah. Well, Willie, the other thing is, is after Abe quit to go do his photography, right? He played the CBGB show. Yeah. The send off. And Chris is Willie's brother and he already was like, I want to bring Willie in and I already hated Willie. I never met him, right? Because Willie was living out in Washington state and he was like, had some hippy van, right? And they had their dad's AAA card, right? Your auto. Yeah. Like if you break down when you get pulled and you can get towed 100 miles a day. Our van on one tour was a disaster. In fact, we changed the transmission in a Walmart parking lot. Holy shit. Yeah. Because Abe was really good at stuff he could do. We changed it ourselves in a parking lot. But when the van would break down, they'd bust out the AAA cars. But it was only $100, 100 miles a day. Right. And then Willie proceeded to use it at the same time to tow his hippy van because it was breaking down. And I was like, fuck Willie. Fuck that guy. I've never met him. Fuck him. He's like, I was stuck here for the night. Willie used the tow already, you know? Wow. But then Willie started kind of roading for us. And by roading, I mean getting really drunk and causing problems. And so I didn't know if he could play guitar or not. Chris is like, dude, he rips. Are you also getting really drunk and causing problems? Oh, of course. Yeah, that's sure. So you're psyched about the problems. I'm not. I'm no. In our van for a long time, it was always, there was always finger pointing and someone had to be the clown. Okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it took heat off you. That's good. And different people wore the clown hats at different times. You know, no one does now, which is a good thing. Excellent. But Willie for a while as a sort of accessory wore the clown hat a few times. And you would come to find that he couldn't fact play. Yes. Weird. He plays a little weird. Do it. Why are people so, you play? Yeah. So yeah, so many people look at his his guitar like it's picking holds. It's real weird. And they're like, I've seen like comments on social media. I don't normally look at our social media shit. In fact, my social media is deactivated right now. But I've seen comments before, where it's like, why the fuck does he hold his hand like that hurts my hand? People getting kind of upset about it. He plays real weird. I was talking to him at the casino show we did late last year. And he was warming up and I was just kind of watching. Yeah. But yeah, but he grew up. He can know it's like, it's so weird. It looks like he's had some sort of disorder. Like muscular like seizure. His right angle. You know how a handman would do like whole arm. It's kind of it's fascinating. It's weird. So Willie though, but he could play once. Yes. It's like, okay, Willie can play. Okay. And then that is when Lamb of God became what we were, it was Willie, Chris, John, Mark, me. Okay. That's like, and Chris is drumming to me as a young lad and a drummer is like really, I was rewinding parts, trying to decipher things. He was like a fucking God. So you guys are actual musicians. You should know. You like it. You should know that like, I know nothing about any of that stuff. People will talk to me about our guitar players. I know about the weird guitar. Yeah, sure. But the way he did this, and I'm like, uh-huh. So you hear me about amps. You hear the fill and ruin and you're like, cool. It's part of the whole. Sure. And now it is. Sure. But it's a really good soundtrack for me. Good part. You understand? I don't dissect it because I'm not talented enough to play any of that shit. I'm the overpaid hunky jumping around. Yes, I love music. You know when it rocks. I know when it rocks, but I don't, okay, not fair. I dissect vocals. Yeah, sure. I dissect singers. That's what you do. I miss your profession. Because that's what I do. Yeah, that makes that's fair. But all the other stuff. Oh, and drummers in particular, by the way, listen to the drums. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're like drums, drums, drums. Yeah. They're they're very sick. Yes. Sick. You take them away. What's left? You know, twisted people. As the palace is burned. Let's talk about it. Further refining the Land of God sound. It's a, you got progressive time signatures, overtly political themes. Yes. Did the 9-11 and the Bush administration have a big impact on the next two records? Yes. As much as I despise GW Bush, I kind of owe him for two records. You're muse. Yeah. Things were much like now, very fucked up. But it was there was a much more concrete thing to aim the sort of bio at something you could put your finger on instead of today's world of zone is like, you know, it's like holy shit. So, but yes, that was, yeah, the war in Iraq. And also you have to remember, man, like, I have friends who didn't come back from that. Yeah. So, and I also have friends who went over there for the first one because GW was trying to finish his daddy's war. You know, being from Virginia. Yeah. Yeah. One of my old roommates was in the army and he joined the army. He's a punk rock guy from Newport News and he joined the army to get money for college, right? As many as once he was in the army, they discovered he could shoot really well. So they dial him into the school for bang bang, you know, and then at 19, he gets shipped over to Kuwait and Iraq, right? During the first, the first one. And years later, we were living together and he got drunk and he was like, let me show you something. And he pulls out this VHS cassette and it's a video of him in the oil fields and he's 19 years old and he's lean. He's in the desert with a fucking gun and the oil fields are burning behind massive, massive flames. And he, they weren't supposed to have a video camera there. Yeah. He's like, I'm not supposed to have this, but he named all his friends back home. Was it a video or photo? It was a video. My grandfather has the exact same photo in front of the exact same oil field. He's, he's, he's like talking the video and he talks to his friends back home. He's like, hey, it's Mike. I just want you guys to know if I die over here, we are not here for freedom. We're not here to liberate anything. We're here for this shit. We're here for fucking oil. Don't believe it. That's why I'm over here. This is fucked up. And it fucked, it's fucked him up. You know what I mean? So those are people my age, you know, it's not some nebulous thing that you don't think about. It's like, oh, I know people who went over there. I have friends. Well, no, this is zero degrees of zero degrees. Right. This is real life. And so that informs those two records, you know, and September 11th certainly forms those two records. So is that, is that all of that, the royal that the first thing that comes to mind when I just even bring up these records? Those two records, absolutely. Yeah. 100%. I mean, like Ashes of the Wake was our major label debut. It like, it was a time when our band like suddenly was playing Osvus and all that other shit and it was paradoxically a really good time for my band. And so was Ashes of the Palaces burn. Yeah. Because there was a moment I remember on Ashes of the Palaces burn. We were touring on the head bangers ball tour, which was us kill switching gauge, shadows fall on earth, and then on another leg was God forbid. And these are our compatriots. Yeah. The quote unquote new wave of American heavy metal. Yeah. Right. And I remember sitting on kill switches and gauges bus outside the electric factory in Philly and seeing this huge crowd and then going back to my boss and looking at my guitar player mark and I'm like, something special is happening right now. This is a special time right now right here. And it was, you know, so that that was sort of a moment and it was a good moment. But overarching like the political and war that that's what informed us. Yeah. I mean, that's just the way certified gold and it's in a very extreme record. Very rare. Osvus is very much in full swing by this time. Yes. You guys do it this year. 2004. Our record came out while we were on there. Do you have any by the way at Macedon's Leviathan came out on the same day? Aha. That's nice. Jesus. That's cool. Yes. So the decade is defined in one day. Do you have any fond memories or anecdotes that come up in regards to that Osvus? To Osvus? Oh, God. Yes. Tons of them. I mean, like my liver still hurts from that. It was it was wild, man. It was just like this huge heavy metal summer camp. And there were some bands more from the hardcore world as well. You know, was hatred on that one? Haperyd was on that. We were on the second stage. It was all rotating slots except for the three headliners. And it was hate us, then hatred, then slipknot. That's the second stage. Headlining the second stage. Everybody else is rotating, but I believe bleeding through was on that, you know, from out here. God forbid our homies from New Jersey. Just a bunch of us. And we were just hanging out, grilling, you know, in the park and lot, partying like fucking maniacs, you know, like maniacs. And then at night, cruising over, invading the main stage to watch Slayer and Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, the original lineup. What's better than that? Not much. Not much. Not much. Beautiful. Free beer all day long. That was prior to number one. Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways it sucked because we didn't, you know, that the showers were like, port of shower. This is the shower. Yeah. And your bathroom was a port of potty. So everybody was trying to wake up early to get to the port of potty to take a shed before it became foul. Amen. Something I liked about you, Randy, and I've always liked about you. And that a lot of people don't actively think about how often you're just wearing band shirts in photos and videos from that time. That's, it's important to me and it's important to me today. Could not agree more. You look at, if I see a band promo and it's like Jack Daniels shirts and plain black shirts, I keep scrolling. Yes. I'm not interested. Yeah. I want to know what your influence is. Much too. And it's been a little bit of a bone of contention with management at times. Well, they're like plain bike shirts, you know, blah, blah, blah, plain bike, plain bike. And I'm like, this is not a fucking GQ ad. So this time I showed up in a swan shirt for a photo shoot. So all the, all the stuff. But I like wearing on stage. I'm very intentional on like, what I wear. And in fact, I'm very intentional in wearing this here today, because there might be some younger people who watch this and are like, Oh, who is his hero is gone. And I'm like, you need to check out the record monuments to thieves. It's fucking sick. Remember tragedy, the band I lectured you all about a couple of weeks ago. It was a band before that. Exactly. I wore a tragedy shirt in one of our video shoots. See, this is what I like. I'm sick of the plain black shirt, knock it off. This is an official PSA. Yeah. Wearing our influences on our sleeves is how we bring people. Well, and it's how you show up to these other bands, man. It's how you expose people, because when I was young, dude, even a metal, you would look at like a Slayer record and there's Hanuman in a COC shirt classic with the skull. Or if you look at an old Metallica record, there's Cliff Burton in a Sam Haynes shirt. Yeah. It's like, Oh, what is that dude listening to? That's what it's all about. It's part of the culture. Exactly. Yes. I was told to ask you, have you seen the leprechauns? Have I seen the leprechauns? Somebody said none of them have seen the leprechauns. From Mayhem? I don't know. I was told you'd know it at me. They're oompa-loompas on Mayhem Fest, I think. Good. That was from Tony Faresda. Thanks, Tony. Tony Faresda. You know what? Okay. Can I do this on camera? Yeah. I swear to God, this is the truth. For the last two days, I've been meaning to send Tony a message. His girlfriend made this. It's a little like chain thing, right? Yeah. And I can't wear a regular old school chain wallet anymore because I'm old and it's too big. Too big. I need a little wallet, but I will lose it if I don't have something. And Tony's girlfriend made this and he gave it to me and I would just like to say thank you to both of them for this. Thanks, guys. Tony. We can't have a losing wallet. And it means something to me. I cherish it. It's really nice. Are you involved in writing the musical part of Ash's awake or as opposed to- No. No. So it's all- No. I have one riff on a Lama God record. All right. Really? Yes. And I gave Mark on this new one. I gave him a very specific outline for a song, a structure that I wanted with different influences. And it's not what he did. It turned into something else different, but he took my ideas and kind of bettered things. Better. Better. Everything. But those are the only two things. I do have one riff and that is the chorus to Resurrection Man. I wrote that. On guitar are you going- No. By saying that I said Mark, play this. And he's like, and I'm like, no, no, no, no. And he's like, I'm like, there it is. You're fucking flat, Mark. So I wrote that. So is Mark primary songwriter? No. This time? Mark and Willie. Mark and Willie. There's three dudes that write Lama God's music. Always have, always, I'm not saying we won't, but always, that's just the way it always is. Sure. Sure. Mark, Willie, me. Is there a song or songs from these first three records that you remember them presenting to you and giving you the CBGBs for the first time? From those first three records? From those first three. I'm just like, holy shit, guys. Yeah. Sure. Particularly stuff, some of this stuff off New American Gospel, I think. I love the last track on that. And that's in my wheelhouse. The song, now you've got something to die for. I didn't write the lyrics to that one. Oh, really? No, that's a Mark Morton. Okay. Fascinating. Has one of my favorites. So my favorite Lama God part is before the big pit. It's the burn. I wrote the burn. There we go. Hey, I love that. I get like one go or one burner record. And then restrict myself. And then live the way, way, way. Which is why. And so now when they play it, it used to be very metronomic because we used to be on a click. Now we aren't, thank fucking God. Oh, wow. But Mark sometimes links it so like, I have to watch. Yeah, you gotta look at each other. And I'm on a show. And it sometimes I'm like, just do it straight. Let's just get this fucking done. And then sometimes I'm like, ah, fuck it. Beautiful. Beautiful. Sacrament. Talk to me. What comes to my least favorite record? Really? Yeah. How about that? Also went gold. So. Well, both of my gold records, I auctioned for charity. I don't give a fuck. Right. Yeah. You're all, you're all about that, which I said earlier, you practice what you appreciate. I don't need a trophy. I mean, it's cool at all. I'm not dissing anyone as a gold record that puts on their shelf, but like mine's going to sit in the closet and gather dust. I'd rather it help some kid with cancer, you know what I mean? 100%. So sacrament, I was, alcoholism was advancing. Heavily. Heavily. What does that mean for you? Yeah, what does that mean? What do you mean by that in tale? It means that when we signed, when we signed with, with a major and ashes of the wake 2004, we had to make a decision. Are we actually going to try and make this our living or, or are we going to continue sort of being the weekend warriors working straight jobs? I've been working at jobs since I was 12 or 13 years old. It's extremely frightening to be like, I'm going to go be a professional musician. You know what I mean? We signed with Epic and I got a check, the advance I think check was for like $35,000. That was my piece of it. And I thought I was fucking a millionaire. And I had to get a bank account because I didn't have one until then. I went to the check cashing place or, or I got paid in cash, but I had to get a bank account because the check cashing place is not going to cash a $35,000 check. And that went straight to checking. Yeah. So like the IRS went rental. Yes, sir. All right. We love this guy. So I like, we made this decision and now we're going to be professional musicians and we started actually getting paid because you have to realize up until that point we were on tour. Sometimes at that point we were even in a tour bus from time to time. We're out going out, signing autographs and all that stuff. And then coming home with no money for eight or nine years, you know, I come home and live on my girlfriend's couch. Nice. Come home, bro. Can I have some money for cigarettes, honey? And you know, yeah. So, so yeah, my purse. So we made this decision and then all of a sudden I had enough money to live, but I didn't have a responsibility when I wasn't on tour or in the studio. What else are you going to do? Yeah. So I started drinking coffee when I woke up and I drank a whole fucking pot of coffee like this. I got a mellow out. Yeah. My chick has gone to her job. What am I going to do? I need to mellow out. Fuck it. And so, and it was, that was a fun, free time during the ashes time. Yeah. You know, but by the end of that, and I only know this in retrospect, you know, being sober 15 years, I only know like watching the progression of my alcoholism when the throttle was twisted a little bit more. I see. And when we got done with ashes and the offer started getting bigger, the gigs were starting getting bigger, the advance for the next record was a little bit bigger. And I really didn't have to go to work, but my alcoholism was progressing. And I was getting drunker and drunker more and more and more and existing dependent on being drunk. That's what being an alcoholic is. Sure. Yeah. No doubt about it. Can't live without an alcohol. So first, first grant. Yeah, talk to me before we move on or talk about that. I brought it up before, the song Redneck. Yes. I just want to hear you talk about it. I've always wondered what, what is the song? That's the first Grammy, though. I didn't write that one. You didn't write that. Mark Morton wrote that one. And part of that one, and it's that time, is about me. Wow. Really? Yeah. Please tell me more. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's about me and a certain other person. I won't say who it is because it's not my, my point to say, but it's definitely about the sort of mess that I've gotten myself into, you know? And Mark wrote that song musically kind of feeling a COC vibe, like a, what is the record that Albatross is on? It's the one with, yeah, After Blind, with the fucking speaker on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my favorite COC records, I can't remember. Anyway, sorry, Pepper. But he wrote sort of that with that in mind and the vocal sort of approach to that is very much influenced by that. The main riff is very subtle. Yeah, yeah. But we have that in our DNA. For sure. Mark grew up listening to all that Southern Rock stuff too. He's from Williamsburg, Virginia, you know? So I hated all that shit until I moved out of the redneck environs. And then later I could appreciate Leonard Skendert and some of that stuff, you know? And also it was not punk rock. Yeah. It's not pretty. So, but like that, that, I know it's a big song, but I just, I would never issue anyone a motherfucking invitation. It's some of the dumbest lyrics I've ever heard in my mind, but people connect with it. And people are like, oh, I'm gonna accept your invitation. I'm like, no, Mark is inviting you. Go to his house. I've never invited anyone anywhere through our music. Is it the closer most nights? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Invite them to go home. Go. Well, I invite them to get worn out and look, you know, it was a, it's a, it's a good song, you know? It is a good song. And then, I was always wondered. Not talking out of school, but like a lot of it dealt with like me being so fucked up. And then I got sober. I'm not talking out of school because Mark has written a book about his fucked upness. And then he went down. So some of the lyrics for years, I was singing to him on stage. I was like, you wrote this about me, but now you're the mess. So it is very bad, but he's now like seven years. That's what's over. Yeah. Welcome. So yeah, it's one of my greatest joys. I love it. Everybody from the, from a, I think Mark is nailed to the X. What's up, Mark? No shit. He doesn't smoke. Maybe every now and then he'll have a cigar, but he doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. He's not nailed to the X. Sorry. Everybody, you know, peripherally from the Lamb of God camp, from just that one show we played together was, everybody was very happy. Everybody was very cool. Yeah. Very chill. Yeah. Very welcoming. We tried not to be dicks, dude. It was a really pleasant experience. We learned coming up, we were told, you know, who you see on the way up is who you're going to see on the way down. And also, there's just, I don't have any time for the Rockstar bullshit. Yeah. That's not the world I come from. That's why I love the punk rock scene so much. It's because like they're not these mythic rock god like people. It's like you go see them and then after the show, they're at the merch table selling t-shirts, you know? What the best monsters make the best of it? No, no, no, no. It's the only genre. Yeah. It's the only genre that can happen. Yeah. The only genre where the guy standing next to you can simultaneously be the guy on stage and be your best friend. Yeah. It's awesome. Where the guy in the pit is eventually, if they stick around long enough and are cool at all, going to end up in some cool band or some or booking shows or making flyers, making art, contributing in some positive way. Yeah. I can, you know, I was, I did fanzines before I was ever in a band. That's what it's all about. I wanted to be a part of this world, you know? So, Sacrament Deluxe Edition had a bonus disc with stems to the entire album on it. Yeah. Did anything cool or creative come from that? I doubt it. I had mixed feelings about that. Pretty wild. It is wild and very progressive. Nobody's separating my wolf of, I'll tell you what. Yeah. I don't want no one to do that, you know? But I mean, it's like whatever. You were probably put onto some sound board for prank calls or something. Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, today, the way people can manipulate data, it's fucking scary. Yeah. You can do anything with anything. Yeah. But I mean, it's over. We do this for three hours a week, every week, every word I've ever said in my life is on the internet. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? So, that's just reality. Yeah. For sure. I actually have a both sound board. I actually have a check coming to me. Okay. Because I was part of a class action settlement with an AI company that trained their AI on pirated books and stuff. And mine was one of them. And many of my author friends was one of them. No kidding. Get that money. Fuck them. Yes. Burn them. So, they stole all our books to train their plagiarism machine. I see. Scumbag. Are your, I didn't check this. Are your books on audiobook? One is. The first one? Second one. Because I wanted to do an audiobook for the first one and my publisher has shut. They were like, nah, there's not a budget for it. Now they're like, hey, do you want to rerecord the first one? Because audiobooks have blown. Yeah. And it was in my contract for my second book that I had to do an audiobook. Are you doing the reading? Yeah. That's awesome. Do you want to do one for your first one? No. Okay. I don't want to. Keep it analog. It's it's about a dark period in a long time and it's really long and there's a lot of foreign accents in it that I don't know if I can do just. Oh, I got you. Rollins Get in the Van. His audiobook is one of my favorite. I've never listened to the audiobook, but I own a first press, the first printing of the original. Sure. Because he reads it and then can yell. He can hear off and tell a little more than what's in the book. Oh shit, I'm buying that. It's great. It's great. Thank you. All right. That's a purchase. It's like a 15 hour podcast. Henry's a good welcome Hank. Henry's a good people. Never met him. That's what I hear. He's in heat. You know, yeah, he wasn't pretty cool. Yeah. Brath. I feel like this period is kind of you tore him with Metallica a lot. Yes. How was that? It was great. And I wound up getting sober on that tour. My man. So it was alcoholism is a progressive thing. Yeah. So we're touring the world. We toured with Metallica for about a year over the course of two years. We did a few legs in the States. We did Europe. And finally we did Australia. And we're playing with fucking Metallica. The biggest band in the metal world. One of the biggest bands in the world. And we're getting treated really well by them. They're such cool dudes. And we were playing and in a couple of times James and some of the other guys on his crew were sober, you know, and I would I had been trying to get sober for a while, like fucking around for about four years. Like I wouldn't drink when I was at home because my wife at the time was sick of my shit. I can't blame her. And I would wait until we were leaving for tour. And then I would get dropped off at the airport like two hours early because I couldn't wait. And I'd be at the bar immediately. Yeah. Before tours even started. So how much money are you spending way too much? I shudder to think about the amount of money I would have if I hadn't spent so much on alcohol and other assorted dry goods. It was also generous when I drank. So when I'm drinking, oh, let me buy you. I also like to buy a bunch of dumb shit when I was drunk at the truck stop. Do you tell? Yeah, like remote control robots. We had one named Steve that I bought. Yeah, Steve. Steve. Steve Wolf. Just all this stupid shit. Wolf shirt, Wolf blanket. Ask Jamie Jasta about it. He'll tell you about my truck stop proclivities because I wrote on Habreeds Bus forever. Oh, Steve. Truck stop, totally. Truck stop, totally. Yeah. So like we were on tour in Australia and one day I woke up and I didn't want to live anymore. So I was like, I went to the gig in Brisbane and I talked to James. I'm like, guys, help me. And they're like, okay. And my first day sober, I played in front of 14,000 people weeping my eyes out. No shit. Oh yeah. Was it out of pain, relief, fear, anxiety? Complete. I don't know what's going on with my life. What have I done with myself? Luckily I had long hair. So nobody could see. Wow. But you're at the top of the mountain. Yeah. And you're thinking about it. Well, utterly died. All right. Once it died. All the, like waking up in the hospital, getting in fights, getting divorced, not having anywhere to live, no money, all that shit. I could just drink through all that because I could blame it on someone else on something else. That's something to drink at. But then when you're sitting in a hotel suite in Australia, which fucking rules and you're on tour with Metallica and you're getting paid and you're still miserable, there's one direction to look. Yeah. Wow. And it all comes crashing down once. On stage. So what does day two of that look like? Oh my god, what's going on with my life? And James and them going, it's okay, dude, hang in there. Because they just eat in there. Yeah. Yeah. They all. Yeah. All these guys knew, you know, and they were like, just go out and do your job and worry about today. All you got to do is make it to the end of the day. You're gonna be okay. It was 15 years ago. That was it. That was it. Congrats. Okay. Yeah. Congratulations. That's amazing. I'd be dead if it. Yeah, we could not be having this conversation. I don't miss it. So that's that's a cool thing. I don't miss it. So that means resolution is the first album you made? Yes. First record sober. Great signal. What was that like? Very interesting. And more focused. That record has too many songs on it. It happens. Because, you know, and my guys will tell you that because you didn't want to trim it. We learned to try and trim it. So there was that frustration. And then my guys also were getting more and more fucked up during that. So they're not seeing what tremendous mental success you're having. They are. But like, it's like they can't and I can't like be like, you guys got to get something. You gotta do this. It doesn't work because I got preached at and it's like, fuck you. Yeah. You know, so it was frustrating for me. Good for you, man. But I don't need that. I'm fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and like it's a place of denial. But eventually they all came to like this. You got to face yourself eventually. So everybody has to hit bottom. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody quits drinking because everything's going great. You're having a good time. Yeah. It's the best part of the day. Yeah. It's a really good point. Yeah. Nobody quits drinking if everything's cool. This is your second Grammy nomination on Resolution. Was it? I think you lost the Iron Maiden this time. I don't know. You know, I don't know. I didn't go to any of the Grammys. I don't give a fuck about that shit. You just don't give a shit about that. No. Flavor Flav, who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy? I auctioned my Grammy Medallions offer charity. Really? It's a good man. Yeah. It's a good man. Now you get that's how you get into the Grammy. So little tip, it comes a little Tiffany box. It's like nice. Auction offer charity. So this, but this is when the dark days come. Yes. The ones you wrote about. Yes. In the memoir. Yes. Let's talk about it. Let's break it down. In 2012. I wrote a 500 page book, by the way, if you want to know about this. Yeah. So you know what happens. But there's no audiobooks. So yeah. So for the people listening. There we are. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how do you even set this up? I'd really just want to hear about, I guess, your first day in actual incarceration. In prison. Yeah. In jail or in prison. Prison. Well, I guess, Jay, I mean, the process is so fucking insane. It is objectively one of the most insane things to happen to anyone in our or adjacent to our world. Yeah. The very first thing in that book about this subject is your letter in your handwriting. Yeah. And the line that really got me was that you had no idea what had happened. And the next day or whenever when it was like, yo, this just happened last night or whatever. Yeah. The shock and just the complete what? Yeah. It's not, it's not cool. No, no. And we're not at all making light of it. No, it is. It's insane. It's fascinating in a way that is you had to go through something that I can't even imagine. Yeah. That also in the post-dimebag world. Yes. You know, you truly never know. You don't know. At that level, it should not have been your responsibility to remove someone from stage. No. And it's, you know, the people know the story. I was found not guilty. I was charged with the equivalent of manslaughter of intentionally throwing this young man off the stage and hurting him, which I certainly never intended to do anything. But I still have to take moral responsibility because what I should have done is stop the show. Right? It was out of control the whole time from the get people were on stage running and stuff. And it was tiny and our equipment is everywhere. It's just too much room. Stage diving. Yeah. Just craziness. All that. Okay. And it was should have stopped the show. And we have an agreement. Our tour manager advances the show. It's like, we need a barricade. It needs to be this high, this sort, this far from the stage. We need this many security guards, blah, blah, blah. None of that was there. So it was just like fucking crazy. And it's like, it's not like I didn't communicate to the crowd like stop. No, no, no, no, no. It just kept happening. And so I should have at that point said, okay, we're done. Mm hmm. Sure. But I didn't. You don't want to let, yeah, I understand. Yeah. But I would rather piss all those people off or, you know, maybe they would have started to turn on us. Who knows? Sure. I know. I'd say, yeah. But and I've seen that happen. You know, so all of that there could have been repercussions and we certainly would have been called rock star assholes or whatever. But like I would much rather that than a fan of my band be dead. Yeah. So I take responsibility for that. And I carry that with me till the day I die. It's not something I sit in and dwell and cry over every morning or something, but it's a part of my life. And it's a serious, serious thing. And I take it seriously to this day. Yeah. You know, you were in a prison in the Czech Republic? Yes. In Prague. In Prague. Which is otherwise a beautiful place. Wonderful thing. Have you played Prague since? No. No, no, no. Can you play Prague? Yeah. Okay. I won't unless there's clearance by the family of the young man involved and the money goes to charity. Beautiful. Because if we were to go back, you have to understand something. I was the number one news story in the Czech Republic. Like straight up. Wow. They're like the marauding American has come to kill. Yeah. Like their number one tabloid, their paper is like a tabloid paper. Very, very, very crazy. So like if I were to go and play there again, it would be a big news story there. Understood. And that would cause pain to this young man's family who did nothing wrong, never came at me in the press. They just want to know what happened to their son. I do not wish to inflict any more pain on them. Sure. That's beautiful. It's ethical. Yeah. Yeah. But like ethical is what we hope is bare minimum nowadays with the federal interest. Yeah. It's not what we get. No, it's not. But it's frustrating, you know, but I think the only thing any of us can do is hold ourselves to a higher standard. You know? That's what I tried to do. I fail. We all do, but I think you succeed more often than you fail. I try, man. You know? I mean, human being. First day in prison. It's shit scary. Yeah. Dude, are in prison? Is the story out there? Like, does a fellow in it? Oh, everybody knew I was in there. Okay. Wow. So, a more accurate question to ask if you want dramatic is like what is the first day in general population? Okay. Yeah. You know, because I was in a they for the first, I don't know. I forget how long it was like week or two, they put you somewhere to be monitored for depression. Right. To make sure you're not going to hurt yourself. So, where would you put someone to monitor them for depression? Isolation. The most depressing part of the prison, which is down in the basement, like isolated. It's horrible. Yeah. So, eventually, and this guy in the cell next to me, I had a psychological evaluation after about a week in there. And I was the guy in the cell next to me spoke a little English and he would speak it through the window. I told him, I have this psych evaluation. He's like, whatever you do, don't tell them you don't like it here. Right. Don't tell them that you hate it here. And I'm like, why? And they're like, because you'll stay in the basement longer. That's what I did. So, he had been down there a month. And that when the shrink is like, so how are you finding the prison? And he's just like, it fucking sucks. What do you think? You know, you're under arrest. You better stay down here longer. Oh my God. So, when this woman asked me, you know, how are you finding the prison? I'm like, oh, it's not so bad. I don't see why I hear people complaining about things. I don't think it's that bad. She's like, very good. And then they moved me to population. Wow. So, but when they put me in, me and my cellmates got moved into general population, because they had two cellmates, both Mongolian. And then you're allowed out once a day to walk to the yard to walk. And when we, they walked, they let us out and they line you up in front of the cells, you know, 150 dudes or whatever. And when I walked out, everybody went fuck. They're like, there's the guy. That's the guy. That's the guy. And is it mostly Czech men, I would imagine? Yeah. Mostly. Czech. There was two black guys in the whole prison, I think, from Africa. I met them. Czech and some Vietnamese. No other Americans. No, no, there are Americans. No, no other Americans. Oh, and a lot of Romani people, like Gypsy is the politically incorrect term. But that's what they told me to call them. Okay, cool. Yeah, sure. Are there. And they were discriminated against, very much so by the prison authorities and some of the white people in there. A lot of discrimination against. Are there Czech metalheads who are psyched you're in there with you? No, there's no Czech metalheads that are psyched that they're in there with me, but there is a prison guard who came to my cell after two or three days. He's like, Randy, you, I saw you at Rock and Ring and you were, I saw you watching Allison change with Vinny Paul by the barricade. You have to leave here, Randy. And I'm like, I'm trying to. I'm trying. He's like, you must leave. And he's like, I'm not supposed to be here. He worked in a different part of the prison and he handed me some cigarettes. And I was like, wait, I had some guitar picks in my, in my pocket that they let me keep. And I gave him some. And he treated me like a human being. And I was like, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I wrote in that book, Dark Days, I was like, whoever your name is, dude, if I ever see you again, I'm going to buy you a beer. And we were on a cruise, doing a cruise and this guy introduces himself. Do you remember me? And I'm like, I'm the prison guard who brought you. And I was like, oh, shit, it's him. So he came onto the cruise. So we did like this Q and a thing. The band was, and I made the guy stand up. And I told him, Ray, I promise this guy I would buy him a beer. So I told my guys, I'm like, go bring him a beer. And then I told everyone on the boat, I'm like, get this guy fucked up. And that was the last I saw him. I heard he was just hammered all the time. Everybody was taking care of it because he looked out for me and chicken. That's beautiful. Wow. When you need it most. Yeah. Just a little, you're a human being. Yeah. How long were you in there? 37 days. 37 days. I mean, that'll do it. Long enough. Yeah. Yeah. There was a universal relief around the world. When you, when you're sent and sending you got home, like our whole world. Breathe a little bit. Yeah. I know some friends tried to come visit me. I know, I believe for Resta and them, we're trying to figure out a way to come visit me. I know the guys in terror canceled a show and checked. They're like, we're not going to tell you guys let them go. That's solidarity. So I was like, man, love, love, love all those people. Yeah. Do you remember the first thing you did when you got home? And the first meal? No. Okay. No, I don't. I remember eating because I had to hide in Prague for a few days, like a day or two. And I was hiding in my lawyer's house. And I remember we went out and got a steak near his house. And I was just like, this is awesome. So that sticks to mind more than anything you had in there. Okay. Seven. Sturm und Drang. Have you ever in your life experienced musical catharsis quite like this? I mean, I think people kind of view a lot of this stuff. You're kind of providing the answer you want to hear in the question there. Yeah. You know, true. Reverse. Hit you with it. So like I wrote this book about that whole experience. And it wasn't like this cathartic thing for me. It was like, I just want this done to be as honest as possible to have this out here. And when people ask me, what was it like in prison? I can say, here's a 500 page book that I answer all your questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the process of writing that record, obviously, there's some stuff from that. Yeah. You know, and some of the lyrics I wrote while I was in prison. Oh, so like 512 I wrote part of that song in prison. Wow. Which I remember actually was also a Grammy nomination. Hey. But like, by the time I get around to like recording, yeah, it's not like this catharsis in the vocal booth, we've dialed it in. Yeah, it's like an execution. True. It's an execution. Interesting. I mean, I understood. But hearing the finished products back for like the first time getting the master back, there's no like relief there of like not only am I home and safe, but I've made another album. I mean, there is definitely, I don't know, man, when I was locked up, I like I was trying not to really think too much about like, what about my band? What about my career? What about all this stuff? I'm just like, I need to get through this and not focus on the external things. I need to be focused in here on what I can do. And when I was awaiting trial, because I was out, we had to go on tour as soon as I got out, because lawyers are fucking expensive. Yeah. Yeah. And so people are like, what are you going to do? And I'm going to go back to trial. What will happen if you find you're found guilty? I'm like, I guess I'll go to prison. What if I don't fucking know? I don't have a crystal ball. So I'm trying to like stay here in the moment and deal with things and do the right thing. Yeah. You know, so I mean, I guess it is like, there's definitely relief. But I wasn't like happy when I got out of prison. And the trial was, and I wasn't stoked, dude, someone died. Yeah. So it's not like, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like, fuck. And I mean, that's the way I think about it. Like I said, I don't dwell in it. But it's not like got away with that. You know, it didn't go to prison for five years or 10 years. Can't wait to talk about it 10 years later on a podcast. Yeah, exactly. It would take five years and a pandemic to follow it up with your self titled eighth record. Right. Before we get there. Please. The last show that harms way ever played before the pandemic was on Valentine's Day 2020 with one lamb of God at the Chicago House of Vans. Oh, you guys were on that gig. We were the only other band on that gig. Holy, I was going through some personal things at that time. Unrelated to the band, just some personal, sure, relational difficulties. And it happens the worst and the best of us. And I think that was the last show we played for like three years. That show was really, that was the last show we played, I think. It would have to be. Yeah. Unless you had a tour right after. No, no, no. That was just the last show. Yeah, this is Valentine's Day. Yeah, we played that at House of Vans and I did. Free show. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't see you guys. But I was in a really busy headspace, figuring out my life. But it's one of the most bizarre, like, since that show, something has always kind of brought us back to Lamb of God in some good way. Yeah. And we're just continuing that with the rest of the year, with the crews coming at the end of the year and everything. So it's just one of those funny things. But yeah, one of our, my first memories of that whole time period. Let me ask you this. And I make it everything. Did you guys have a record coming out? We were supposed to be touring. On a record. On a record. Like, for like the second half of the cycle. Right. With the end of the cycle. So the record had come out and you had done some touring. You were on the second half of the. Yeah. Yeah, basically. We had a little bit more to go. So then we just wrote and recorded it during the end and it came out 2024. Right. So our album was in the can at that time. Oh, no. So it was done. And we're like, it's going to come out. And I had an art gallery at that show with 10 photos that were in, they were, they art in the insert. Oh, cool. So they put that up there. But we were like, okay, our record, that was Valentine's Day. Our record was supposed to come out in April. Bad time. Perfect. I think so was my way. And it was like, okay, we're gonna have this new record and we love it. We love the self titled. It's one of my favorite things we've ever done. Late stage self titled cool. And so we're all pumped about it. And then COVID happens and the pandemic keeps going. And we're like, okay, let's push the release because nobody knew what was happening. And remember how bizarre it was? We didn't know. Nobody knew and different cities had different levels of like lockdowns. And so the album release kept on getting pushed and pushed. And finally, us management and us were like, well, we can't delay it forever. So let's put it out. And it got really good reviews and people really connected, particularly with the song Memento Maury off that record. It's one of our biggest songs. You don't get one of your bigger songs in late career. Right. Sure. Yeah. But we didn't really tour on it. So that record just feels like lost. Lost man. And it's such and I'll get pissed if I think about it too much. But it feels like it never got the shot that it should have. You know, you could do some kind of you can do a record release for it now. Yeah. So we put out the self title and we're not touring and we're not making money. And I mean, we're okay because Richmond is not LA. You know, cost of living is not a million dollars. But we're like, well, we got to do something. And our label's like we want another record. So we're like, well, I guess we'll start writing another record since we're not doing anything else. Just there. And that's what we did. And that was Omen's. Yes. Where you experimented with more melody than ever. I guess you're saying on that thing. What was putting that together like and then returning to live music post COVID? Well, I didn't man, I didn't realize like we say we don't really take what we do for granted. We realize that that we're lucky to do what we do. But I didn't realize exactly until something like COVID happens, how much we do take it for granted? Because I felt when we did a live stream, right, from a club called the Broadbury, you know, and fans could buy ticket and see the live stream. A lot of bands were doing that. But we went to rehearse at Mark's house. And I remember getting the energy of like, holy shit, we're making music together again. That's where normally a band practice is just like, okay, let's get through this. So we can fucking get this. It is our least favorite thing. Yeah, this song on done and go on tour. I mean, I got to relearn these fucking songs from like three albums ago that someone's decided they want to play. But I remember rehearsing for that live stream. And I hadn't been with my guys in so long. I hadn't been able to hug them or anything. And or make this music and just being like in practice like, oh, we're a band. We don't know if we'll ever do this again. Yeah, well, we are a band. And it was like this really intense feeling, man, you know. And then when it came time to tour again, so we wrote and recorded the other record relatively quickly on the heels of the of the self titled Omen's. But when it came time to tour, I think we had already written that record. And when they were trying to book us a tour, going out with mega death and in flames was supposed to be on it. But somehow they couldn't get a visa due to COVID. And the tour dates kept on getting moved. And our booking agent, Tim Boer, I don't know if you know him, it's from our world. He was like trying to figure out routing's management is constantly trying to figure out stuff. I felt like it sucked not getting to play music, but I'm like, I'm glad I'm not a booking agent or management because they're every day it must have been like waking up and taking a handful of darts and just throwing it at a board and be like, what can we do today? You know, everything. We'll see what happens because everything kept on getting changed. And then finally, we went out and other tours had tried it before us. But most of them got people got sick, the tour got interrupted. Like people died. Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of people. Yeah. But in our world, people died. Well, I was going to bring it up and it's a somber thing, but over that time, not necessarily due to anything else going on, we lost all of our mutual friend, Riley Gill, a power trip who you guys had taken out shortly before, a couple of years before the pandemic started. I remember you played Aja Quarrel. Are you playing a Chromag song with us? Yes. Right? Yeah. We got to know. Yeah. And they were playing it at soundcheck. And you were just like, and I was walking through the club and I heard it. And I was just in the audience like, freaking out. And they're like, let's play it. And we played it that way. Oh, yeah. And I just, I remember that was one of my first inclinations of like, Oh, they might be cool. You know what I mean? Like, it might be cool. I didn't know. You know, it might be this not this weird middle. But I bring it up because the last memory I have of Riley, after trying to break into Fred Duris private bathroom at a fest that we were playing, it was it's funny because we talked about it with Brett also, but there's a fest in Germany with all the big diggers. I think it's brutal assault or full force. One of them. Well, I'm a god played. Riley and I watched you stand next to each other. That's my last memory of him in person was watching you guys play. He, they were supposed to tour. It was power trip. We're supposed to tour create Europe with Creator and us the 2019. Yep. 2019. That was it. And we were supposed to do this song together, which I wound up doing, obviously without Riley, but Mark was kind of chasing him. Our guitar player Mark was kind of chasing him. So I'm like, and Mark, uh, was a clean and sober guy. He knew something was going. You know, and it's really sad. And I did not know. I wish I did. It had gone down to Texas, trying to help him, you know, um, but yeah, it's super sad. The last show I remember seeing them was in kind of a honky talk bar, uh, down in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I went down there to see them and it was them and gate creeper. And I got great pictures that night and pictures of Riley backstage. There's always a good time with him and he is a big nerd. So like me, we like to be comic book guy, but didn't like superheroes. No, but we talk about books a lot. Okay. Yeah. And, and, uh, he recommended some really good books to me. So yeah, missing me is a good dude. Great dude. Well missed. Yep. Well loved. Oh, yeah. Well, the time. The heavy music boom. We're in a new boom. Are we 22 and on? I feel like like it has the post COVID live music boom. People were dying to just go see some live. Oh, dude. Rock. Yeah. The first two were back. Yeah. Did you see, did you notice it? Oh God. Yeah. People were fucking stoked. Yeah. Because it's medicine. Yeah. It's like where we come together and let it out. You know, um, but yeah, when we finally got on the road after several false starts and we actually made it to the end of the tour without having to cancel, we were one of the first tours to do it, I believe. But the whole time it was just, it was still weird. This people were still wearing masks and like distancing and distancing and all that shit. But it was like, it was still weird. And I was really, as a singer, paranoid about it. Because I did get COVID on one tour and we did have to cancel. We had had some people fill in for me and we had Mark from Chimera fill in a gig. Wow. And then we had the singer from fit for an autopsy fill in like on like one day notice. So they did the best they could. And then Mark was supposed to fill in the rest, but he got really sick. So we had to cancel one gig. But I had COVID. I remember I woke up, we played in Jacksonville, Florida, started feeling weird. And then all of a sudden I started getting really sick. Yeah. And I separated myself from the band and got a rental car, drove and drove by myself. Full sniffles. Just driving by like out of my mind. Sick as shit. There had been no way I could have performed. So when people were like, oh, COVID, it's fucking, don't be a pussy. It's like, dude, you get up there and try and scream like this, you know? Especially the OG strings. They seem to have decreased in severity. But like the Delta wave, that one took me down. Finally, I got to fucking Chicago and posted up at a hotel outside the airport there. Oh, hair. Oh, hair. And I got prescribed. What is this? It's an antiviral that you can get relatively. Oh, ivermectin. No, that's the horse one. No, no, a real one. Whatever the real is, not the horse paste. Apple. I forget what it is, but I got it in like somewhere in Indiana, where you couldn't get it anywhere else. And I went, they just gave it to me. They're like, yeah, nobody here will take it because they don't believe COVID. So I got it and hold up in a hotel room outside O'Hare for like three days until I tested negative and then rejoined the tour in South Dakota. Oh, wow. Was it the Hilton in O'Hare, like in the middle of it? No, no. That's a good one. That's a little ways out. I like that one. Into oblivion. And our tour manager's wife was so kind and brought me food and legend because he's from Chicago. Come on. Did you eat meat? Yeah. Are you a Portillo's guy? Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, yes. This is my culture. Beautiful. I went there the last time I was in Chicago. Beautiful. So did I. You got to pray. You got to go to Temple. I got to pray at the altar of what's his name? Dick Portillo. Yeah. Into oblivion. Yes. Here we are. Album 10. Yes. You recorded vocals at Total Access. And Redondo Beach. How cool was that? Amazing. Oh, cool. The SST Records. Yeah. Our producer did very well in finding that place. Josh knows me. Our producer Josh Wilbel. He's like, you're going to love this fucking place because when the owner started that studio, Greg Ginn, obviously from Black Flag, owner of SST came to him and he's like, okay, if I give you this much money, how many records can I get done? Kind of like a group rate. I see. And he gave the owner this money and then the fabled SST producer Spot came in and did a lot of those records. So when I walked in, they have all the records they've done on the wall, there you see Black Flag, My War, and you see the descendants I don't want to grow up. And you see Husker Dews in Arcade and you see the Minutemen. And it's just like, I walked in, I'm like, I fucking love this place. You know? Yeah. And the owner is super cool. He's had it since it began. And he would just like bug him for old school punk rock stories. Yeah. About shit that had happened there. Some hard lore, if you will. Yes, some hard lore. I got some real life hard lore. Some crazy stories about Henry Rollins. Like being on the roof of the fucking studio one night on acid, just freaking out, howling at the moon, you know? And then neighbors being called like, what is going on? That was the Henry Warfield days. Yeah. I'm going to cut you guys in on something. We've heard the record. Song number four, The Killing Floor. Banger. That's a good song. That's good to hear. What was the, what are you writing about? What's the approach in 2025? Oh, obviously the... How awesome the US is. Yeah, how the ongoing disintegration of the social contract here in the United States of America and the broad reaching geopolitical ramifications that may lead us to World War Three. Something from Just Beyond the Light. You said, I am offended by humanity. Yeah. As a quote that you had. That was a note I put. It's one in myself phone one day. I was like, I am offended by humanity. Yeah. Because I find these things years later, you know? And is this something that you pulled from for this record? Well, no, that's just a note I found in there and I'm not offended by all of humanity. Okay. I used to be. Sure. I see. Because I was very angry and very drunk. I'm not offended by all of humanity, but I'm certainly offended by the shift in tone by a segment of our population towards cruelty and the dehumanization of others and the sort of binary us versus them. Yeah. Yeah. Shit that's happening right now. It's unacceptable and not only that, it's unsustainable. So, and as is the wealth inequality gap. So if you look at historic empires, what's happening right now are the end stages of those empires. A few people get very, very, rich and then everybody else gets poor and poor and poor and poor and poor and poor. And then empire falls. Yeah. So we better straighten our shit out. Fuck the billionaires, fuck the fascists. Straight up. Right now, I mean, racism, sexism, homophobia are like the status quo. You know, I will come to a point. I think I don't know if it's a status quo. I think there's been a permission structure been given to people to act out and there's a segment of the population that has had that within them, you know, and then there's sadly a segment of the population that has been raised in this environment and that's being instilled in them, you know. But I do not think that that is the majority of people. I think that most, the majority of people are, I don't know, inherently good, I guess. I think so. I think so. But there right now, there is like a sickness in America. It's an illness. Would you attribute, I mean, with all due respect coming from a small town in Virginia, would you attribute your not getting sick with that same illness to this music we've been talking about for the last couple hours? And having that and having amazing parents, you know, who raised me not to not judge others for economic status or the color of their skin or any of that, you know. And I did grow up in a small town and there were, you know, the stereotypical red necks with that sort of redneck attitude, but there is good people there too, you know. Of course. And there are everywhere. And I think that right now the media, it's fucking chaos every day when you look at the news, it's like, what the fuck has happened, you know? That is by design by these people. Once again, to quote Steve Bannon, flood the zone with shit. It's all a wag the dog sort of distraction, I think. But it's so much input from all this stuff. Everything's crazy. Everything's bad. I think that is the value in coming from a scene like ours because we have human connection and we know, okay, we can come together. This is possible. We can talk. We can talk. Yeah. We may not agree on everything, but we can talk, you know what I mean? When you're on your phone, paradoxically, social media is not social anymore. And paradoxically, these communication tools, which are supposed to bring us together, I think are separating us. They're designed to get you mad so that you engage. Yeah, of course. They keep you together in your bubble, but they separate you from everyone else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like, there's this feeling of separation. I don't think the way things are sustainable. And, you know, I hate to say this, but I think the rest of this year is going to continue to get worse. For sure. I do think at a certain point, there's going to be a tipping point and we're going to start seeing some daylight. It's coming. Any plans to get fiction or world? Yes. All right. That's what I'm working on right now. All right. No kidding. Yes. I've started my first novel. I actually wrote a novel years ago, a really rough one. It just has an exercise for this thing called Nano Remo. Every year, it's 30 days. You're supposed to write a book in 30 days. Cool. I wrote a novel. Maybe I'll revisit that, but this is my first novel that I've started it. I'm not a guy who can write at like the cafe, like an artist or something. I wish I was. No, you need to include. Yeah. And I can't listen to music if there's any vocals in it. Yeah. Oh, cool. And I'll start paying attention to all that. I'm a big ambient electronics guy. Yes. Just noise really. Or like in the winter when it's cold, have you heard Vardruna? Vardruna? Yeah. That's great. The first Vardruna record is unbelievable. Yes. Unbelievable. The white kind of white one is a red symbol. The later ones are a little too produced for me. Yeah. Yeah. But the first one is on. Give me the racket. It's pretty racket. It's the dude, the drummer from Gorgoroth. Singer from Gorgoroth. No, no, no. Gahl was the singer of Gorgoroth. Yes. Gahl was on. Oh, he's in that. Gahl's on the first Vardruna. But the main guy was also in Gorgoroth, I believe. I don't know. I can't remember. Inar is. Yeah. Inar and then Lindy Faye Hella is the girl. Yeah. She's incredible. It's incredible music. It's incredible music. Big fan. Where do you live? Van Nuys, California. Oh, Van Nuys, yeah. It doesn't apply. Yeah. Chicago though. Chicago. Walk around in the snow. No, no, no. Turn on the Haga. It is 83 today in January. We simply don't have time. Yeah. One of my favorite quotes that I saw in the book Just Beyond the Light. I want to read it so that I make sure I get it right. Yes. You have to engage in the creative process to become an artist. Yes. I think that is beautiful. It's true. It almost seems as obvious as better is better. Yeah. You know, but it is a succinct, identifiable way to distinguish an artist from a participant or an artist. From journalism. Yeah. From journalism. Yeah. You talk a lot about photography, which is obviously an art form that you love. Yeah. You talk about surfing. Yes. Which is kind of an art form, I would say. Yeah, it is. It's like a physical art form. It is when really good dudes do it. I'm a mediocre server, so it's a to it's an experience. It's an expression. Yeah. Artistic expression between man and nature. Yeah. It's top of the head. Good shit. Are there any other things besides writing besides photography, any other artistic creations, artistic endeavors you're into? I mean, I've done a little acting. I'm a very bad actor. It's very hard. It's tough. It's very hard. I thought I would be like natural at it. You know, because I'm kind of a clown performer. Yeah. Performer. But it's very hard. I've done a little and that's fun. You know, I wouldn't mind doing some more of that. But no, man. I mean, like I do music. I've composed music on my own and worked with some people. I did some music for the Richmond Ballet. That's cool. Yeah. A good friend of mine choreographed some pieces for them. He's a professional ballet dancer. And then I do my band and various other things. I've kind of wanted to try to paint. Yeah. I don't know if I would be any good at it. I think that's why I liked photography so much because I'm not very good visual visually. I took a Bob Ross class. Yeah. It was pretty. I'm dog shit, but it was pretty good. Give it a shot. You'd be surprised. Yeah. Pretty good trees. The gorgeous trees. Let's talk about draw a pretty little four. Floor punch. That'll just be it. Exactly. That'll be our little secret. They're all the gorgeous little spin cake. Happy Mark Porter and the barn. Let's talk about the thing that binds all touring people. Diarrhea. Diarrhea. This is the cause of it. How do you get there? How do you get to Diarrhea? Step one. Food. A delicious meal. That's right. Excuse me. What are your spots? What are you? This is a question we ask every guest. What are my spots? I'm in Chicago, Portillo. That's right. God damn right. Let's say you're in a mythical place where they all exist in one place. Every chain and every anything. I try to avoid the chains. But we all know. Yeah. Dude, on a day off in the middle of nowhere outside Boise, Idaho, in the Walmart parking lot, you got to go somewhere. Where are you going? Well, A, I'm going to go to Starbucks. Okay. Start the day off right. At least get a cup. Well, I make coffee on the bus, but then I'm going to go to Starbucks after I've had my two cups. And then you get a medium-ice mocha, no whipped cream, and I'm going to get a double-smoked bacon sandwich. That thing is good. Yeah. Interesting. That's the croissant bread one. Never. I've never partook in. Oh, that one is good. If I got to go fast food. Yeah, you do. I do. We really do. Or accelerated food. If I have my druthers for fast food, I'm going to go to Arby's. And I'm going to get a dark horse. He's got the most. Perhaps the darkest horse. I'm going to get a double beef and cheddar. Really? Slather it in Arby's sauce. Dude, Arby's sauce is going to be sloppy and the cheese is going to be running down my arm. Arby's sauce is one of the only proprietary sauces that I've ever had. Because it's not creamy. Yeah. You cream guy? No. Really? No. No, no, no, no, no. No, don't say that word. Really? I'm the same way. It's a morally reprehensible condiment. It's egg and egg on. It is fucking disgusting. It's two of the best things whipped together. Yeah, but you get really sick if Mayo sits out too long. I never have. I never have. You get sick multiple times a day every day. You can serve mustard. Mustard rules. Mustard rules. It's a superior condiment. I don't have to choose though. I'm a man of excess. It's the land of plenty. You're a man with a faulty palate. It's what you are. I mean, it's faulty in many ways. Manay's is foul. Yeah, sour cream. I get angry when I think about it. I wrote about it in the book. How do you feel about it? That's fresh. That's made there. It's just garlic, Mayo. There's a... You can make it. How about yeah, sour cream, ranch, all that shit? Sour cream I can do. You can do sour cream? Yeah. Not him. I mean, you can't do it. I'll do all creams at once. I prefer it. Really. I feel sick. You disgust me. You're a foul creature. No, I'm a good guy. Let me ask you something crazy. It's not that crazy of me actually. Maybe crazy of him. Have you been a pretty haunted part of the country, so let's say. Yes. Do you have a belief in the supernatural? Have you seen a ghost? I believe in ghosts, but they don't believe in me. Not a shame. Same with him. I believe in them? No, they believe. Our guitar player, Willie, believes in all of it. Really? Yeah. I should have talked to him. I got him a fucking hat with Bigfoot on it that says I want to believe. Yeah. I get him big stuff. I do believe. He goes to like whenever we're somewhere, like it's supposed to be haunted, he'll go and take pictures. Yeah, catching a rump. Looking for the oars. I told this guy I liked his pickups. I could have been talking to him about this. I should have said I like your oars. He loves all that shit. Like him and his life, have you ever been to Savannah, Georgia? Yeah. Spooky place. They go and do the haunting tours and all that shit. Plantations and stuff. It's creepy for sure. So yeah, I mean, I love that creepy stuff. I'm a big fan. You've never seen one? No, I'm waiting. That's why I talked to him too. I'm like, come to me. Come to me. That's the problem. You want it too bad. They're shy. They're cream based, you know. Ectoplasm? You know what that is? Oil and eggs. Oil and eggs. Gross. Randy, could you tell us your top four Harcore records of all time? Well, yeah, I was thinking about this. Can't imagine why. Yeah. Well, and defining hardcore and what would be considered? Up to you. Hardcore. Number one, I'll just go with Straight New York Hardcore. And I know a lot of these people missing and I don't want to offend anybody. You know, I don't want any beef with any of you motherfuckers. You all know me. Yeah. But the greatest New York Hardcore record of all time, without a doubt, is the age of choral by the Crowbanks. Understandable. Yeah. It's fantastic. Yeah. No more. I love agnostic fry. I love me some mad body. All those guys, man, could, you know, look like something about age. What are you gonna do? You know? Yeah. It's unbelievable. I gotta give some love to Hape Re. Yeah. Which one? No cream. Listen to Good Bands. This is my guy. It doesn't sound the greatest, but satisfaction. It doesn't sound the greatest. You think so? I mean production-wise. Production is underproduced. Well, I mean, it's what was available to them. Yeah. See, that is, you know, I love it. I will say this. If you are going through a hard personal time and the woman is left and you don't, your life is shit and you are crying and you just hate everything, there is only one band that can save you. It's a fact. And that is Hape Re. Crowbar will make it worse. Go Hape Re. Well, there's a time and a place for Crowbar. All of New Orleans. I have great love for New Orleans. One of my favorite bands, I Hate God, you know, Good Friends of Mine. Who you filled in for. Yes. I love them, but there's a time and a place for I Hate God and there's a time and a place for Crowbar and there's a time and a place for Hate God. There really is. And it's the gym in a terrible situation. Yeah, exactly. 100%. Driving alone. Yes. All right, so we got Age of Quarrel. Satisfaction. Satisfaction. Yes. You're on a roll. Which I love the production of, Steve. So I am going to call this hardcore. I like it. And my friend who plays bass in this band may or may not even agree with me. But they're my favorite band of all time. Oh. I'm going to call the Bad Brain, Sororor, Corsette the first 100%. It's undeniable. That's his core. That gets that's core. And it fucking is phenomenal. Yeah. Phenom. You know. Perfect. It does not get any better. No. One more. So the hardest one. Yeah. It is the hardest one. So we got Age of Quarrel, Satisfaction. You're doing really just so good. And the first Bad Brain's, Sororor, Corsette. This is so hard. Yeah, it's fun for us. See, I want to throw a younger band of bone. Respect. And I have to. I have to throw a younger band of bone. The genre is about the youth. Yes. And they're not young young. But I gotta throw a band younger, which includes almost everybody. Younger than Mike. 30 years. Albert Richmond, Virginia. Division of Mines. Dude. Wow. Respect. That's fucking awesome. That's huge. You hear that guys? Lee. Jacob. Number four. Great job. Damn. Wow. Cool answer. Gotta do it, man. You gotta do it. You gotta keep it blue and gotta keep it fresh. You really do. Absolutely. That's what we say. Randy, can't thank you enough for joining us today. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. What a beautiful chat. Yeah. Lovely. Even with the garbage truck. Yeah. Sorry about that. We called the city, but they don't they don't they don't care. They don't. This is real. You know, this is real as it gets. Yeah. We hope you've all enjoyed this as much as we have, which is impossible. So thank you again for joining us into oblivion out very soon, or a few months ago, depending on when you're listening to this, or a few years ago. Welcome back. Hello. Randy, you're the man. Is there anything you'd like to leave the the world with here? In parting words? Mmm. Don't be a dick. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Don't be a dick. It's easy. It's not hard. It's really the easiest thing you can do. Don't be a dick. Yeah. Thank you all. Thank you, Randy. Thank you all. See you next week. This episode is brought to you by Mad Vintage.