After releasing their single “Still Echoes” in May, Lamb of God released another song about a week ago from their long-awaited upcoming album VII: Sturm und Drang, which is set to come out on July 24. So all you L.O.G. fans, be ready!
VII: Sturm und Drang is supposed to reflect on the band’s horrid journey of going through vocalist Randy Blythe’s 2012 arrest in the Czech Republic for allegedly pushing a fan off the stage while performing and causing injuries that later lead to his death.
Even though Blythe was proven not guilty in the end, he spent a generous amount of time in Czech Republic’s prison incarcerated. Being in prison in your own country seems bad enough, but being in a different country’s prison where no one communicates the same way seems undeniably worse than being in prison itself (even though at the end of the day, it’s all the same).
“Still Echoes” brings back Lamb of God’s signature sounds and rebellious lyrics for their fans. The use of dark, traditional words scream out of Blythe along with L.O.G.’s rapid melodic riffs and drums, as he calls the prison a “tarnished heirloom” and “a shameful house of doom” over and over again. The release of “512” on June 8, along with its music video, is really getting enormous attention and there’s a good reason for that.
“512” was Blythe’s prison cell number, and that is where he wrote this song. In my opinion, “512” can be blasted continuously like some of their previous songs, such as: “11th hour”, “Descending”, “Omerta”, “Hourglass”, “Vigil”, etc.
Randy Blythe’s exclusive gravelly spoken voice starts off the song lyrics saying,
“Six bars laid across the sky
Four empty walls to fill the time
One careless word, you lose your life
A grave new world awaits inside.”
And the chorus repeatedly screams,
“My hands are painted red
My future’s painted black
I can’t recognize myself, I’ve become someone else
My hands are painted red.”
As Blythe penetratingly screams out “painted red!” repeatedly, this song opens the gates for people to really be able to feel what Blythe went through in prison. Also for having to live with the burden of what he experienced for life.
Like many who are in or out of prison, Blythe was forcefully placed into this unintentional murder case. Anyone who has been to a metal show knows that fans are always crowd surfing and jumping on stages, and sometimes shoved off, but somehow one ended up losing their life at their show by Blythe’s own hands, and it was not anyone, he was his fan.
Going through this horrifying dilemmatic episode, will undoubtedly leave a person tainted for life, as the lyrics say, “I can’t recognize myself, I’ve become someone else.” The feelings of Blythe’s turmoil exudes out of this track for the audience to experience like no other.
Not to mention, the music video was released about a week ago as well, and it has caught more attention than the song itself. A slain girl revolves the whole story of the music video, which ends with revenge after the killer is discovered, and even though the music video takes a different angle than what the song is really about, there are a lot of metaphoric similarities with Blythe’s story that resonates through it: death, revenge, justice and psychosis.
“Still Echoes” and “512” are just glimpses of what will unravel on July 24 when, VII: Sturm und Drang, is released. It is also when their North American summer tour with Slipknot begins.
This post is courtesy of Leanna Ahmed
What do you think of the new Lamb of God tracks? Comment below.
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