Lamb of God
As the Palaces Burn (Prosthetic)
by Martin Popoff
Lamb of God‘s New American Gospel debut kicked everyone’s asses around the heavy metal parking lot, and now the determined, upwardly-mobile ones are back after too long (lots of touring ensued, mind you) with an even more lethal follow-up. As the Palaces Burn is an almost ridiculously heavy cross between American thrash, German thrash, and death metal, spiced with the canny stealings of the Swedish from the above trinity of terror-filled metal styles. Add to that wave upon wave of memorable and musical riffs set against a jackhammering production job by Devin Townsend and you’ve got a record that’s both oppressively mechanistic and mosh-maddeningly groovy, sequenced with forethought riptides giving way to mesmerizing swirls at the mid-point, a slashing power epic taking the record out like Bruce Dickinson on crack.
(11664 National Blvd #413 Los Angeles, CA 90064)