Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe believes his Czech prison drama wasn’t the most defining moment of his life.
And although it was a “really serious situation,” he says it’s a “misconception” to believe the experience dominates the lyrical content of upcoming album VII: Sturm Und Drang.
He points out that he’d made significant changes to his lifestyle before his 2012 arrest and 2013 acquittal over a manslaughter charge.
Blythe tells Loudwire: “I drank for 22 years and got sober before any of this stuff happened. That was the big thing – when I realised I was taking a lot of things for granted.
“I’m glad to be a free man, but it’s not like I view everything in my band versus the experience in the Czech Republic.”
He adds: “There’s only two songs on the record that deal with that. They were both written while I was in prison.
“When it was time to go into pre-production, I took my notebook to see what lyrics I have. I had those two songs – they just happened to be the first ones.
“There’s very, very little about the whole experience on the album. It was a valid choice to use those, but by the time it was time to record them those lyrics were three years old.
“I wrote a 500-page book about the experience. That pretty much got it out of my system.”
Blythe says Lamb Of God wasn’t at the forefront of his mind while he waited to find out his fate. “It wasn’t somewhere where I was worried about the band and whether or not I’d be able to do this and that,” he reports.
“The band was the last thing on my mind. It was a really serious situation and the band seemed rather inconsequential to it.”
Sturm Und Drang is released on July 24. Blythe’s book Dark Days is published today (July 14). He’s aiming to follow it with a limited-edition photo book based on Lamb Of God’s 2015 European festival season. The band launch a North American tour later this month and tour the UK with Megadeth in November.
