LIFE LESSONS
RANDY BLYTHE
The Lamb Of God frontman reflects on the highs, lows and personal battles that went into forging more than a quarter-century of heavy metal brilliance
WORDS: RICH HOBSON • PICTURES: TRAVIS SHINN
FROM HIS ORIGINS
as a punk rockloving kid in Richmond, VA in the mid-90s through to establishing himself at the forefront of the burgeoning New Wave of American Heavy Metal movement at the turn of the millennium, Randy Blythe has never shied away from fighting his corner. With a new live record just out and more than a quarter-century with Lamb Of God in the rearview mirror, Hammer caught up with the firebrand frontman for the pearls of wisdom that have seen him through his darkest hours.
FRONTMEN ARE BORN, NOT MADE
“People might not like this, but I do think it’s true! I don’t mean that as a frontman you can’t get better – singing and interacting with the audience are both things I’ve had to work on a lot. The main requirement to be a great frontman is the willingness to get in front of a group of people and make a complete idiot out of yourself again and again until you get good at it! It’s a personality thing; I’m very willing to make an idiot of myself and people clearly saw that because it was like, ‘This guy, he’ll do it.’”
JUST BECAUSE A SHOW IS BIGGER, IT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S BETTER