LAMB OF GOD Drummer: We All Believe That RANDY BLYTHE Will Be Proven Innocent

Charlie Steffens of KNAC.COM recently conducted an interview with drummer Chris Adler of Richmond, Virginia metallers LAMB OF GOD. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

KNAC.COM: When is Randy's [Blythe, vocals] trial? (Blythe is facing the possibility of conviction and a long-term jail sentence after a 2010 incident in which a fan attending a LAMB OF GOD show in Prague, Czech Republic died almost a month later, allegedly from injuries sustained when he was thrown off the stage.)

Adler: He's out on bail. The trial is set for January. He's fully intending on going back and we fully support his decision to do that and believe that he will be exonerated, believe that he is innocent, so for the moment, he's out on bail and yeah, the spirits are high. We're really excited to have the opportunity to get back to work. The situation really reminded us how fragile and special it is — what we do. So we're looking at every night as another great opportunity to do what we do. I don't want to say that we took it for granted before, but it had become somewhat routine in a career, 16 or 17 years now, to do what we do and have it possibly end forever— in a blink of an eye — was pretty scary. We're a little more awake about how awesome it is that we get to do this.

KNAC.COM: The letter Randy wrote while he was incarcerated expressed a lot of humility. So, the band stops working, which is a bummer from a professional standpoint, and your friend Randy's stuck in a Czech prison to boot. That's quite an ordeal.

Adler: Of course. The priority was our concern for our friend and our bandmate and to make sure that he was safe and that we had an opportunity to defend ourselves and get him the resources necessary in order to do so. That was first and foremost. From there, Randy let us know, like, probably in the letter you read, that he was doing well, making use of his time, and really wanted to be able to answer any questions that the family might have. First priority was that someone had lost their life at our show, and that was where his head was as far as trying to make sense of that. Not being responsible for it, but being able, or willing, to answer to it. We all very much felt the same way, but, obviously this was being put on his head, so we certainly supported him in that. And, like I said earlier, we all believe that when he does go back he'll be proven innocent and it will also give him and possibly the rest of the band the opportunity to face the family and express our sympathies.

KNAC.COM: In regard to audience participation and the "Wall Of Death," how are you going to approach things now at the shows?

Adler: We thought about that — if there was anything we could do differently — or if there was something that we had done that may have somehow created this situation. In and around 2004, 2005, we had met a kid that had broken his leg during the "Wall Of Death," and after that incident Randy decided that he was no longer going to call for that. That hasn't stopped it from happening, but Randy's not orchestrating it in the same that way we used to back in the day. Obviously, in hard rock, people get bumped up and bruised around and that's certainly nothing unusual. I don't know if there's anything that we could do differently that would have stopped this random set of circumstances. I think from the very first show that I went to as a kid, the very first hard rock show, there were people stage-diving. And that has not changed one bit in 30 years. I don't think that if we had made everybody come through the door and sign a waiver and put on a bubble suit and filled the club up with foam — this probably would have eventually happened at some point. I think it was just really a terrible series of random events that led to this. I'm not sure that we could have fixed it.

Read the entire interview from KNAC.COM.