LAMB OF GOD Guitarist: 'I Always Wanted Each Album To Have Its Own Personality'

Karma E. Omowale of the FourteenG e-zine recently conducted an interview with LAMB OF GOD members John Campbell (bass),Mark Morton (guitar) and Chris Adler (drums). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

FourteenG: What kind of impact would you like "Sacrament" to make this go-round?

Mark: "I always think that, going from album to album, I always wanted each album to have its own personality and its own character. I also try to think of the overall body of work, ya know? Like, each album has to make sense, in context with all the pervious albums. It's not as much for me about 'one-upping' each album. You always want to get better. It's not competing amongst the albums, it's more adding to the greater body of work. I think 'Sacrament' does that really well because it's a very unique album for us."

FourteenG: In what respect?

Mark: "It's more diverse. It's takes a few more risks, I think. Musically, creatively, and that's definitely helped to keep us interested rather than rehashing 'Palaces' or 'Ashes'. A lot of times that's what the kids want because they get sort of accustomed to a certain sound or a certain style you're playing. But just as artists, we would lose interest if we just did that over and over again."

FourteenG: How do you keep it awe-inspiring for yourselves then?

Mark: "I think we do it to ourselves. Pushing the limits and the threshold of what we're able to do. Technically, musically, fighting for ideas creatively… Randy has definitely, definitely gotten much better on this record. (He says with a look of astonishment). He just continues to hone his ability to control that unbelievably insane voice of his. That's been fun to watch."

FourteenG: Do you guys strategically plan your albums? How you don't want it to sound like previous efforts but knowing that it must fit a particular niche at the same time.

Mark: "I think everyone has their vision of what the next phase for the band is musically or what they individually would like the next album to sound like. The conflict arises when you get five visions in a room, you know what I'm saying? So I think that sort of works itself out naturally. If I were allowed to write a LAMB OF GOD album by myself, it would sound very, very different than if Chris were to. But that's what makes it, his depth. So, to answer your question, no I don't think we have a strategy going into a record but I think after a while you start to see what type of record it's going to be by listening to the stuff. Seeing what kind of ideas are getting put on the table. It starts to make itself apparent what the record is going to sound like. I think with this record, if anything, my mindset going into it was, I always felt with previous records, that there were certain guidelines we had to follow being a thrash metal band and there were certain conventions we had to adhere to. And this time, I didn't want to impose those kinds of rules on ourselves. I thought like we were finally a band that we could do pretty much whatever we want and that LAMB OF GOD is still gonna be metal. But I didn't feel constrained by any 'conventional' metal thinking writing song. That was kind of liberating."

Read the entire interview at www.fourteeng.net.