Burn The Priest

(Sony)
by Martin Popoff

Back in 1998, Lamb Of God were called Burn The Priest; Randy, Chris and crew emerging out of Richmond (via Steve Austin in Texas), with an indie debut that should’ve dented more industry heads than it did. Forsooth, these pure-of-heart walking encyclopedias of metal had on their hands a debut that was incredibly hard, very technical, well-recorded (Chris was very particular about his drum sound and eventually triumphed, ending up with a Vinnie Paul-type cut ‘n’ dryness), distressingly underground, and fully indicative of where Lamb Of God would take metalcore. Now onto their fourth album, Lamb Of God are improbably on a major and doing rather well, so here we have the even more improbable circumstance of the band’s indie debut coming out on Sony, with great notes by Austin, and a video of the album’s lead track, the thrashy, near Relapsecore “Bloodletting,” recorded for the recent Killadelphia video. When (if?) the band get even bigger, I fully expect to see this out yet again, as a Lamb Of God record, cos without a doubt, it’s up to the almost super-human standards Chris and Mark place upon on the band. I dunno, 14 tracks (though short ones, totaling 40 minutes!) of Randall screaming his head off can be a bit of a chore, and his is only one signal of same-iness to this thing. But nonetheless, one comes out of the experience enriched, given the virtuosity, conviction, and distilled potency of the eerily destined band at hand.
(www.burn-the-priest.com)