LAMB OF GOD Drummer: 'No One Ever Expected Us To Get This Far'

ChipRitter.com recently conducted an interview with LAMB OF GOD drummer Chris Adler. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

ChipRitter.com: When you are off the road what is your rehearsal schedule like, and do you warm up before rehearsal?

Chris Adler: "Right now we rehearse as a band 5 days a week for 5 hours a day. I stick around for another 90 minutes — 2 hours to go over things or do projects not related to LAMB OF GOD. Normally I exercise for 2 or 3 hours before we get together for practice, so I'm pretty well warmed up by the time I show up - as for drum warm ups, no – not now in rehearsal. When we are on the road, I'll spend 60-90 minutes warming up before the show on my practice pads."

ChipRitter.com: Do you have a practice routine? Such as: exercises you might do to build your double strokes within double bass patterns?

Chris Adler: "Never have. In fact, my practice is far more stretching and getting the blood moving then practicing anything in particular or for speed. I'll keep a simple 120-140 double roll with my feet and just tap around with my hands — nothing specific at all — just get a little sweat going and get in the zone mentally of having to get up in front of a lot of people. It also makes a fair amount of noise when I warm up so usually the guys leave me alone to do this — another benefit."

ChipRitter.com: A producer was involved on "Ashes of the Wake", Machine, can you describe from a drummer's perspective what it is like to work with a producer? What does a producer bring to recording a band's music in your opinion?

Chris Adler: "Machine was the first producer that we have worked with that changed our idea of producers. In the past, Steve Austin and Devin Townsend had done their best to make the band sound good and get good performances out of each of us. Machine did a great job at all of that, but in addition he came into the project weeks early — recorded us multiple times in our rehearsal space, set up click tracks and suggested ideas within songs. 'What if you played that part one more time at the end?' 'What if your fill was longer on the end of this section,' 'What if we sped up/slowed down this part.' Initially you are very defensive about someone coming in and trying to change any part of what you are doing — you question who the hell could possibly know these songs or this style of writing better than us — the guys who wrote it — but once you let someone from the outside in, the perspective changes. What we learned was that when you are so close to the project, so intimately involved with every detail of a song, that you tend to lose sight of the overall project. Having an outside opinion from someone you can trust is incredibly helpful in taking that step back and being able to enjoy the view. We spent a lot of time on the drums — from getting sounds to practicing with clicks. Playing songs and parts of songs over and over, focusing on how the drums would sit within the songs and within the overall sound of the record. Machine was great at grasping how we wanted things to be, then taking it all a step further than we expected."

ChipRitter.com: What does 2006 look like for LAMB OF GOD? Plans? Hopes? Goals?

Chris Adler: "We are currently neck deep in writing and recording the new LAMB OF GOD record. We're hoping to begin tracking in April and have it in stores around August. We're looking at being on the road before it is released, both here in the U.S. and abroad. We're planning on hitting Japan and Australia early in the record cycle this time as well. The goals grow as the band does. No one, including us, ever expected us to get this far and the important thing from here is to never stop raising the bar for ourselves. You see a lot of bands get to about where we are and start getting lazy – maybe the songs get slower and don't sound as inspired — maybe a lame ballad makes an appearance — the ticket prices and t-shirt prices start getting outrageous — the shows get kind of boring — those are the things we fight and challenge ourselves to not allow now or ever. This year we feel it's important for us to put out a very heavy record and to put on the biggest, most inspired shows of our career. No one involved in this project from the band members to the fans deserve anything less."

Read the entire interview at ChipRitter.com.