MARK MORTON Names His Favorite LAMB OF GOD Album

In a new interview with U.K.'s Gear4music, LAMB OF GOD guitarist Mark Morton spoke about the band's tenth studio album, "Into Oblivion", which came out in March via Epic in the U.S. and Century Media in Europe. Asked if LAMB OF GOD's musical evolution on the new LP was "just an organic part of the composition" or "a deliberate thing", Mark responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Yeah, there's so many ways to answer that. Of course, it's deliberate. Everything we do is very intentional. There's not a lot of accidents. I mean, there are, but it's, like, you hear something, you develop it. So there's so many stages to writing and recording a project like that. So, it's certainly very deliberate and intentional.

"I think we really rallied around this notion of re-engaging into — being willing to step out of comfort zones and that kind of thing a little bit compositionally and maybe creatively," he explained. "And for my part, and I've said this in other interviews and it got picked up, but it's really true, I went back and kind of started listening again to the things that I was listening to when I was helping to write those first few albums. So a lot of early 2000s metal was just kind of making it back into my ears and just sort of revisiting that stuff and remembering what inspired me about it and that kind of thing. So maybe some of that showed up."

Morton also talked about the LAMB OF GOD compositional process, saying that songs "always [start] with the riff. It starts with guitar riffs. Willie [Adler, fellow LAMB OF GOD guitarist] and I are pretty much always writing, collecting riffs just on our own, and then we'll get together and start comparing notes and that kind of thing. So it's always and forever has been, starts with guitar riffs, and then we start building songs around that."

Asked to name one LAMB OF GOD album that he likes more than the others, Mark said: "'As The Palaces Burn' [which came out in May 2003 via Prosthetic Records]. Because I just think there's something really unique about that record. It's really the sound of the band just kind of getting its legs up under ourselves as songwriters, just barely. And it's naive and abstract at the same time, and the way it sounds, it doesn't particularly sound very good, but it sounds on fire. It sounds sonically like... Someone told me very recently that, a good friend of mine said, 'That record sounds like the colors that are on the cover.' And I was, like, 'Yeah, it's like really burning bright red and yellow.' And these are all very abstract reasons to pick this thing, but that's why. I just think it's just a very early representation of the elements of what LAMB OF GOD would eventually develop and refine. You can really listen top to bottom on that, and every song kind of has its own character, and it's an interesting — kind of simple, the instrumentation and the production [are] very simple, but real cool, man."

This past February, Mark was asked by The Downbeat Podcast, hosted by STRAY FROM THE PATH drummer Craig Reynolds, if it was a conscious decision for him and his bandmates to bring back some of LAMB OF GOD's earlier sound on "Into Oblivion". Mark said: "So I'll tell you, and we all come into these things with our own perspective and mindset. LAMB OF GOD is very collaborative, and there's no meeting before we get going about what our premise is gonna be or anything like that. But I do think collectively we were having conversations about, 'Well, what is it that we've gotten away from?' Not because anything was necessarily wrong, because some of the more recent work we were feel really excited about — 'Ditch' is a monster, from the last album; we play that almost every night. And 'Resurrection Man' — those are all new songs that are big in the live show and we're into. 'Memento Mori' was massive. But it's, like. what have we gotten away from that was really at the genesis of this thing that was really the cornerstones that we built it on?"

Mark continued: "So two things happened for me. And I don't remember exactly where we were in the writing process, but we did a tour that was the 'Ashes Of The Wake' 20-year tour. So that had us, and me, going into those songs and learning them inside out. Some of those songs — I think a couple of the songs we'd never played live. I don't know the stats on that, but certainly most of them we hadn't played in a long time. So I was digging into those songs. So when you learn something like that and rehearse it so much, you start to understand the patterns that you're not really… 'Oh, I don't really do that move anymore.' You know what I mean? 'But I'm doing it now 'cause I'm learning this thing that's 20 years old.' And kind of jumping off of that, I also — rather than go back and listen to '[As The] Palaces [Burn]' or go listen to '[New American] Gospel', which I've listened to this records from time to time, just [for] nostalgic [reasons]… So, for me, I decided to kind of start going back to the music that I was listening to when we wrote those records. So I started going back and listening to THE HAUNTED and to AT THE GATES and to early MESHUGGAH and all that kind of Swedish stuff that I was so excited about at that point in time. That THE HAUNTED 'Made Me Do It' record, I was burning that thing down. It's so good. And 'Slaughter Of The Soul' [by] AT THE GATES, that's just an absolute classic record. So [I was] just kind of going back there and re-tapping back into my excitement around those bodies of work and then allowing that to inspire what I was doing when I was picking up the guitar again."

Elaborating on the inspiration he has drawn from Swedish experimental extreme metallers MESHUGGAH, Mark said: "'Destroy Erase Improve', that's one of my favorite metal records, for sure. Some of the stuff, they get so abstract that I don't… I'm probably impatient as a listener for some of the stuff that they've evolved into. And that's not a criticism. It just means for me, the sort of essence of the basic groove that 'Destroy Erase Improve' has, that weird groove with an extra angle but it still grooves, that was a big influence."

Morton also talked about the contributions of LAMB OF GOD drummer Art Cruz, who joined the group seven years ago as the official replacement for Chris Adler. Cruz, who had previously played with PRONG and WINDS OF PLAGUE, filled in for Adler on several LAMB OF GOD tours before being named the latter band's new drummer in July 2019. Asked if Cruz " felt more comfortable to spread his wings" this time around than he did on 2022's "Omens" and on 2020's self-titled effort, Mark said: "I think he felt more comfortable. This is Art's third record [with LAMB OF GOD]. So, the self-titled record, I think there was probably a little bit of more intense focus on the drum parts, just because we had such a large body of work with Chris, and that sound, it's the LAMB OF GOD sound. So to change drummers and have the drums be drastically different didn't feel — it didn't feel right for us, it didn't feel fair to anybody, including the listeners.

"The beauty of Art being our drummer is he is such a big fan of the body of work of LAMB OF GOD," Morton explained. "And that's become a resource for us when we're songwriting, because we can get a perspective from Art that we don't have ourselves. He can say things like, 'Well, LAMB OF GOD in 2009 would've done this.' And we trust that perspective, because we know how important the band's music was to him coming up and how formative it was for him. So he's in a unique position to be able to honor that sound and also run with it, which he has done. So I think on the self-titled record, the drums were treated a little more conservative in terms of making big sweeping changes stylistically. And then over the course of the 'Omens' record and now 'Into Oblivion', you see that sort of evolving, as it should."

"Into Oblivion" arrived to widespread acclaim. In the lead-up to the release, LAMB OF GOD appeared on the covers of Metal Hammer and Kerrang!, with critics praising the album's intensity and relevance. The Associated Press featured the album in their weekly highlights, calling it "10 tracks of ferocity," while Brooklyn Vegan noted that "the band spends these 10 songs reminding the world that their reign as New Wave Of American Heavy Metal giants is far from over," and SPIN said the band is "channeling America's unraveling into a ferocious new album."

The album is available now across multiple formats, including various vinyl variants, a collectible "Into Oblivion" CD with a limited-edition companion zine featuring album art sketches, handwritten lyrics and never-before-seen studio photos.

Produced and mixed by longtime studio collaborator Josh Wilbur, "Into Oblivion" was recorded across multiple locations tied closely to the band's identity. Drums were tracked in Richmond, Virginia, with guitars and bass recorded at guitarist Mark Morton's home studio. Singer Randy Blythe recorded his vocals at the legendary Total Access studio in Redondo Beach, California, the birthplace of seminal punk records by BLACK FLAG, HÜSKER DÜ and DESCENDENTS.