LAMB OF GOD Drummer Is 'Very Proud' Of Band's New Album

Joshua Bottomley of Hails And Horns recently conducted an interview with drummer Chris Adler of Richmond, Virginia metallers LAMB OF GOD. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Hails And Horns: How would you compare "Resolution" to LAMB OF GOD's back catalog?

Chris: It's always hard to compare. They're like different kids, almost. You always want to do your best, but you never know how it's gonna be perceived. All we really have to go on is how we feel internally about it. You see a lot of the bands that have been around for a long time and their older material gets weaker and weaker. Rarely do you ever hear somebody say, "Oh, I thought their seventh album's the best." So for us, it's a real challenge to try and make that seventh record the best one. In my opinion, this record is as good as anything we've done before. In many ways, we've done some different things and expanded on what we've learned from the last record. I don't want to call it better, because that's very subjective, but I'm very proud of it.

Hails And Horns: You've said that "Wrath" was an aggressive answer to the more commercial "Sacrament". Is "Resolution" more diverse as a reaction to the heavy handedness of its predecessor?

Chris: This one is a little more dynamic and shows a little bit more of the different sides of the band. "Wrath", we wanted to make an aggressive album. We wanted it to sound good, but we didn't want to go the route of overproducing, adding a bunch of keyboards or vocal melodies and all that stuff. We wanted it to be much more straightforward, kind of a band in a garage sounding good, but still just a band. Every record has been in some way a reaction to the record before it. Either the response that we got or what we internalize that we didn't like about it. So "Wrath" was kind of the answer to our self-concerns that maybe we had stretched out a little too commercial or overproduced ourselves. And on this one, we weren't very reactive. We took all the albums that we've done and put them together. We really covered a lot of area and there wasn't any one direction that we pushed harder than the other. I think that opened a lot of doors where we would say, "Well, we can try it, sure." And every time we tried something new, we liked it more and more. It just kept pushing it in different directions that we didn't even expect because we weren't driven to do it a certain way. Everything was really allowed in. We weren't censoring ourselves.

Hails And Horns: Why did you decide to bring ["Wrath" producer] Josh Wilbur back to produce "Resolution"?

Chris: When he came and did the "Wrath" album, he wasn't really on the radar for anybody, as far as metal goes. He wasn't necessarily a metal producer. But he really wanted to do a metal record. He was involved in some of the drum tracking on the "Sacrament" record and he agreed with us that it was not time to go any further in that commercial direction. That it was time to speed things up and get nasty. So for "Wrath", he was really very helpful. He was young and hungry and really wanted to push us in that direction. When it came time to do this record, Josh had established himself as a metal producer. We wanted to continue that working relationship, without the push to just make an aggressive record. Josh didn't want to sound like ["Ashes"/"Sacrament" producer] Machine on "Wrath". Now we got Josh to just be himself. We're not working with an opinion of, "I'm going to do what Machine wouldn't do." Now Josh is letting himself do anything he wants to do. And we were into doing whatever we wanted to do. Honestly, we work very well together. So it seemed like a very natural choice.

Hails And Horns: The ominous album art and title seem to elude at a closing of the circle, so to speak. Could this really be the last LAMB OF GOD album?

Chris: It's tough to say. I don't want to. I feel that this is in my blood. But it's very much possible that we're not able to keep up at a certain point. I think we need to be honest with ourselves about that. I don't know when that's gonna be. I don't want it to be now. I don't want it to be today. I really believe that there are parts of this album that's the best stuff that I've ever done. I stopped drinking and probably got myself in the best shape of my life to write and record this record. And I feel like I am able to play better than when I was 21. I'm sure everybody says that or everybody thinks that, whether it's true or not. But I genuinely believe it of my own playing. And I think the guys have really stepped up everywhere. So I don't want to say that this is the last one, but we're not getting any younger. It certainly could be. We all know that someday this is gonna end. If we can't put something together that is somehow an evolution or is somehow better than what we've done, then we should really just stop, because the albums that we have done are all good in their own way. We're very proud of [the band] and we don't want to water down whatever legacy there is.

Read the entire interview from Hails And Horns.