New Music Friday
Huzzah! Lamb of God released their new one to day. So far, it's fire as usual. I've known it was coming and have been listening to the back catalogue to prepare myself. I also then did some googling about them. The band historically had two brothers in it, Willie the guitarist and Chris the drummer. These last two albums have been without Chris though as he had reportedly had a motorcycle accident and couldn't drum anymore. He has recently come out with the truth.
Turns out he was fine after the motorcycle incident within three months. The issue is that he has a condition in his foot with the nerves that cause them to fire backwards once in awhile. He basically had to reteach himself how to lead with this left instead of right foot. Normally, this condition is a death sentence for a drummer so he kept it quiet but started hearing other drummers coming out with it so figured he'd set the record straight.
He got this thing, won a Grammy with Megadeth, and then the band send him an email saying his services were no longer needed. And him and his bandmates, including his brother, haven't spoken since. This is a band that went on for almost 30 years. All the guys are in their fifties and it's just, let's cut this off. I mean, I was immature and didn't handle it well when I left The Criminal Kid (Sorry, guys), but I still wanted to talk to my brother.
But that's what the world is sometimes. It also got me thinking of Between the Buried and Me, In the case of Lamb of God, they just got a new drummer. With BTBAM, their one guitarist got charged with sexually assaulting a woman so they just let him go and didn't replace him. The new album just has one guitar instead of two, even though they've been playing with two for over twenty years. I like the sound. Their keyboards come out more and the guitarist that got fired wasn't the main song writer anyways.
Some bands don't replace people and just take a touring member, but BTBAM was definitely a shift in the base sound. It's still the same band, but a different fullness. I'm sure they'll still get a touring musician for the old stuff. The albums are different. I'm trying to think of other bands that did the same thing. Some happen so early on that they haven't made it big or developed their sound yet, so that hardly counts. So who am I missing.
Comments
Billy Corgan talked a bit about that in a recent interview with Melissa Auf der Mar on his podcast. He talked about how she wasn't just anyone replacing Paz, it was someone in their circle. Long running bands must really struggle to replace people.
It's interesting reading your point of view about leaving TCK, because I've long thought that I was the immature one in that departure. I really didn't want you to leave the band, I enjoyed playing with you. Plus you had just bought one of the coolest guitars ever, it needed to sing. But it didn't take long to understand you were setting boundaries based on your own comfort and expression and after a few months, I had come around and shed any negativity about it. Sometimes the choices we have to make in life are dirty and unpleasant. And sometime our reactions to those things are dirty and unpleasant.
The Lamb of God one seems particularly gross though, it's not like he had a drug addiction or criminal behaviour. He was in an accident that sacrificed his ability to play like he did. Jesus, Def Leppard kept their drummer and he lost a whole damn arm!