Lamb of God, Machine Head, and Gojira Were Awesome

It’s hard to believe that Lamb of God have made it big. Singer Randy Blythe, who’s 17-year-old band spent most of its history known as ‘Burn the Priest’ and has recently seen an appearance on ‘Late Night with Conan O’Brien,’ expressed this sentiment looking over the crowd of his band’s March 22 show at the Roseland Ballroom. An engaging frontman who works the crowd without rock-star showboating or getting too verbose, Blythe was bewildered that his band had sold out the venue. He wasn’t the only one; I paid, literally, for my inability to believe Lamb of God couldn’t sell out Roseland when I ended up getting my ticket from a scalper.

Lamb of God are one of the heaviest bands to ever score a Billboard top ten debut, and while they haven’t reached the mainstream success of Slipknot or Pantera, Blythe’s band has precious few peers in metal who more than 100,000 music buyers have caught up t. Not that Lamb of God have compromised their sound at all, abandoning thrash for trash. Rather, just as when Master of Puppets went platinum without any mainstream coverage, the rest of the world seems to be catching up.

If there’s any justice in the world, the world will soon catch up to Gojira, the French-prog thrashers who opened up the show by setting a high bar for the rest of the evening. Playing songs off their excellent recent album, From Mars to Sirius, Gojira proved themselves to be a dynamic force onstage, giving their songs even greater energy and enjoying a well-received cameo from outspoken fan Blythe. If you still needed a reason to ignore Bill O’Reilly’s “Boycott France” farce, surely this is one.

Gojira were followed by Machine Head, Oakland-area thrash metal vets who’ve clearly been around long enough to know how to please a crowd. The band ran through a fast-paced set, mixing volatile songs off their new album, The Blackening with fan favorites that had the front of the venue shouting along. Save for a moment taken to serve a potshot to a conservative rag which had taken a swipe at the late “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott,, Machine Head clearly enjoyed themselves as much as the packed room did. I will be picking up my first-ever Machine Head album sometime this week.

The next act, Trivium, brewed a melodic, singsongy brand of metal not unlike the artists parodied in Brian Posehn’s widely-circulated “Metal by Numbers” video. Live, they were passable but unremarkable, and their position as the night’s odd band out was apparent, both in the audience’s booing audibly fighting the cheers and in Blythe, whose calls for the audiences to pay respects to the openers played along the lines, “A great band which you’ll be hearing a lot from in the forthcoming years, GOJIRA!! A legendary band which we are honored to play with, MACHINE HEAD!! The band that played before us, TRIVIUM!” The last name was greeted with boos—Trivium sells, but who’s buying?

Lamb of God quenched the energized crowd’s anticipation with a blistering set. The band came out swinging with Ashes of the Wake’s Hourglass, and tore through tracks from their Burn the Priest days up to 2006’s Sacrament. Their catalogue, while not as consistent as, say, Mastodon’s, is undoubtedly large enough to fill the evening with great music while the audience screams for more. The band also never succumbs to the musical showiness that plagues many metal bands, with much credit due to guitarist Mark Morton and drummer Chris Adler. Coupled with bassist John Campbell and guitarist Willie Adler, the band proves their musical capabilities by focuses on the songs themselves, which erupt with relentless force onstage. Part of the band’s onstage explosiveness may stem from tension within the band—In 2005’s Killadelphia DVD, Blythe and Morton engaged in a fistfight now infamous on youtube.com. Whatever animosity may occur between bandmates, thank Ozzy they keep it together long enough to partake in shows like this.

The only halt in Lamb of God’s set came when the sound blew out, causing the composed band to leave the stage for several minutes. Roseland’s sound problems also caused Marilyn Manson to temporarily leave the stage during his most recent New York performance, and infamously accounted for Fiona Apple’s onstage meltodwn several years ago. Shouldn’t someone have done something about that by now?

“Redneck,” the band’s propulsive, Morton-written single off of Sacrament, was appropriately dedicated to former Death and Iced Earth Drummer/Howard Stern cohort Richard Christy. As the song ended, Blythe led into “Black Label,” bellowing, “This next one is our last song. We don’t believe in encores.” There was no reason for the disclaimer; if anyone came to Roseland believing that Lamb of God was capable of such pseudo-spontaneity, the thought should’ve been stomped out by the time they took the stage.