1150: Randy Blythe | Making Peace with the Wars Inside His Head

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Get 20% off by going to vitalproteins.com and enter promo code Jordan at checkout. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. 2010 we were in australia on tour with metallica

And I woke up one day, and I looked out on my hotel room balcony, and I was like, I don't want to live anymore. It wasn't like I was suicidal. I just wanted to be erased. from existence. James Hetfield and some of his guitar techs who I knew were sober. They had talked to me, dude, you might want to dial it back a little bit. And then I was like, maybe. Do stop drinking and doing drugs. Your life might get better.

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Randy Blythe joins me here in studio. I'm not much of a metal guy, but Randy has quite a story from his upbringing to his music career, the way he views the business, creativity, touring, recording, merch, and more. He's battled addiction, the music industry, even a murder charge that landed him in a Nazi prison castle in another country.

Which, well, yeah, we'll hear about that. It wasn't necessarily a fun time. However, this conversation was fun, it's insightful, and I think you're really going to enjoy it, even if you don't listen to music that's loud enough to break your car windows. Alright, here we go with Randy Blake. 30 years in the band. That's an objectively long time for any project, but I think for music, it's got to be top.

percentile of we haven't killed each other yet i'm just astounded by constantly i realize that we're heading into the legacy territory and it's super rare A lot of the great bands that I listened to when I was younger lasted five, six years. Yeah. It's surprising when you read that, you go, wait, what? That was seven years? But they're eternal in your mind and in your sort of emotional connection to this music. because it's so important to you

What genre would you say it is? Because everyone has their different sort of... Just extreme metal. Just descendant of thrash or whatever. Just extreme metal. Do you guys all get along pretty well? Yes, that's important. Better now than we ever did before. That's impressive. And it's rare. That's another thing. Grievances add up over time. I think every human knows that. I think we started as such a sort of... cantankerous group of gentlemen, combative, and over the years we've learned

I mean, not 100%, but we've learned more and more to shelve the ego. This is my way. I want this. And really think about the greater good. So we have a saying in Lamb of God, which is... Better is better. That's a hard pill to swallow if you've written something that you think is genius and everybody else is... I don't know, dude.

But an old saying from writing, often attributed to Tennessee Williams, you must be willing to murder your darlings. I was just going to say the same thing, kill your darlings, right? Yeah, I think you mentioned that. I listened to the, um... Was it the James Patterson episode? He was talking about that. I love that. You really understand it when you... do something. I'll make a joke that I think is hilarious or something.

And then my producer will go, I took the liberty of deleting that terrible, unfunny, somewhat offensive joke. And I'm like, not that one. That was gold. What do you think? Show notes guy. And he's, oh, that doesn't strike me as something that you should say. And I'm like.

Actually, these guys are looking out for me. I'm just coming off this almost month-long spoken word tour for my book. And I was telling stories, not in the book, but that relay the main theme of the book, which for me is perspective. And I practiced very hard before I left, and there were certain things. It's not a stand-up comedy show, but it's close at times. You have to deliver a story. Stories, yeah. I'm a pretty good storyteller.

And there were parts that I was like, this is so funny. This is going to kill so hard. And it did not land one single time. I'm friends with some professional stand-up comedians. I'm like, dudes, what is going on? They're like, sometimes stuff just doesn't land. It's only funny because of your unique personal experience and context with that particular story, and when people hear it, they're like, oh, that was the punchline?

Okay, yeah. Or perhaps stuff that I find funny other people find horrifying. But theoretically, your fans are also some of those people. But yeah, if you get zero laughs, it's like... You start crossing stuff off the set list. And then you're chasing laughs. I found myself after the first show, you're chasing these laughs, this validation coming from people. Yes, I'm funny. Yes, what I'm saying has an impact. Speak the truth and hope it lands.

Lamb of God got popular over a longer period of time. This was not like one album, oh my gosh, these are the greatest played on every radio station. No, no, no, never really any radio play. We're rather extreme for that. I worked a straight job for the first eight or nine years of the band. What did you do? I was a restaurant cook and also a roofer. Okay, that's, well, my guitar player Mark and I both roof together for a while. That's not an easy job.

You do go into some kitchens and hear crazy music going on in there. And you see the tats, especially in LA. You're like, that guy is at the Viper Room tonight. Sure, absolutely. Yeah, it's a bunch of pirates. The restaurant business allows you flexibility to go out on the road. Most of my bosses, I'm like, look, I'm going to go on tour for a little bit. And they're like, I'd give them, you know, a few weeks notice or a month or two notice. And they're like, okay. And then when you come back.

Hey, you got any shifts? You pick them up. Yeah, man, that's got to be tough. Ending a tour and being like, I'm on top of the world. And then you go back and they're like, yeah, you can have the crappiest hours. And also, the chef is still an asshole, and the tips are still not shared with the back of the house. There's this...

There's this massive, I wouldn't even call it a deceleration process. It's just an impact. You're on tour and you have this schedule and everyone's happy to see you. And we are working straight jobs while touring in tour buses. which people see a tour bus and they think it's this magical vehicle that indicates...

you're just rolling in cash, but you come off, you're signing autographs, you're playing in front of people who love your music and they're excited to see you, and then it's, okay, I'm back to washing dishes. Boom. Yeah, exactly. What is this stuck to my, never mind, don't answer that. I don't want to know what I'm cleaning off with my bare hands right now. But as you said, it was a gradual process.

I'm fully prepared for it all go away one day. That's an interesting way to look at it. That's a very sort of Ryan Holiday, who I know you know. He's a good friend. Mutual friend of ours. That's a good way to look at it. He's got that Memento Mori thing, but he's also got the kind of... Stoicism where it's you're the emperor today and tomorrow you're sweeping the streets. Yes. We talked about how your band grew slowly-ish over the 30-year period.

Do you think that was healthy for you guys? 100% I'd be dead if not. Because Overnight Fame is not good for anybody, but you see these bands where the kid's like 21 or 20, and you go... wow, there's no human on earth that's equipped to deal with this, and your brain's not even fully developed yet. Yeah, it's not done yet. And you're like an A-list celebrity. You're never going to recover from this. No. I've seen that. I know people in our world. who got pretty famous.

at 21 years old, and some of them are still trying to recover from that. You're not equipped to deal with that stuff at all at that age. And our quote-unquote fame has been very gradual, steady, incline. We're grateful for that. Every new thing that happens for us, we're like, wow. just cool to be grateful for it yeah but yeah that's an interesting way to look at it it probably keeps you

Thinking about how lucky you are to be in the position that you are. I don't come from money. I started working my first job when I was 12. Who fires a 12-year-old? A bookstore. I got paid like $2 an hour, and I found out what the 18 and over people were making, and the owner was like, what are you going to do? Yeah.

I was like, oh, screw you. I could report you, but then I probably wouldn't be able to keep my job. Then I'd be a snitch. I love working at the bookstores. I wound up just mostly doing lawn work after that, making better cash than sitting in the bookstore.

To be fair, that guy was doing you a favor by paying you at all. Yeah, he was. How useful 12-year-olds are in any environment, generally speaking. I was really surprised. I was 12 or 13, and I started running the cash register. Oh, okay. So that's real work.

yeah alright he was maybe it was a mutual exploitation yeah sure and a lot of music of course and especially it seems like a lot of metal bands there's an act it's a performance like most people on stage and you've been in the band for 30 years and i wonder if there's any difference between Randy Blythe in person and Randy Blythe on the stage? Because eventually that stuff blends together. I would imagine after 10 years, you're like, it's the same guy.

Sure, I am the same guy. I think being in such an aggressive band, and there's this idea about people in bands as aggressive as mine, whether it be metal, hardcore, or punk. That are quote unquote angry bands. Those of us in those bands. And people in the community that go see these bands. To the outside eye, it may look violent and chaotic and crazy. But again and again, you will hear from people who go to a metal show with a friend for the first time. They're like, everyone was so nice.

And I think as far as the person on stage, And the person in front of you, they're the same person. But the onstage person, I'm allowed to release. a lot of energy, a lot of aggressive energy in a controlled environment. I don't go running down the street screaming in people's faces. Why not? It's LA. You could get away with it. Yeah. Then I'd just be a tweaker, right? They do that downtown. Yeah, they do that. So... For me it's an aspect of my person.

I don't sing about dragons and fantasy stuff. I sing about real things, mostly things that concern me and upset me, sociopolitical issues, environmental issues, and things like that. And that's stuff that really gets my gears grinding. On stage, I can release that in that manner. It's a release valve. And the people that come to the shows.

that engage in this very physical act of viewing this music, whether it be banging their heads, moshing, or just jumping up and down, it's a release valve for them too. You know, I was really surprised. I went to, this is 25 years ago now or something, but my friend worked for our student newspaper back in Michigan, and we went to go see Disturbed, I think it was. And it was really hot in this crappy little venue down in Detroit.

These guys are like, yo, you gotta mosh with us. And I was like, oh, these are really scary guys. I need to get away from these guys. They're really aggressive. And I was like,

no thanks man i'm just watching it oh okay no problem yeah and i was like oh i thought we were like about to get our like punched in the face by some aggressive psychopath and he was like oh it's like a sport it's like you're not playing you're not playing but if you're playing like you run into each other at full speed and it's just

part of the game. There are jerks every now and then, but there are jerks in this building somewhere right now. You're talking to one. Two. Our community tends to self-regulate itself. That just unrestrained aggression to try and purposely hurt someone, it gets dealt with. I was also surprised by how nice the staff was nice. We went to the tour bus. To interview.

not super familiar with that band and it was a long time ago the singer the lead singer yeah david dream and he looked really scary like he's got metal in his face and all that stuff and he's talking to us what's up guys and he's taking these giant like metal horns out of his face and stuff and putting them in a little container He was so patient with what had to probably be the most surface-level college student, never done this before interview in the world.

And his girlfriend was like, all right, I'll be back there. And he's like, okay, go take a shower. I'll be done soon. He gave us all the time. And when we were done, he's like, okay, is that it? You can take all the time you want. We're like, oh, well, you're probably tired. It's fine. And we're like, oh, so this super famous, really doing super well, successful guy not only invited us into his tour bus when he could have just talked to us outside for two minutes.

He was in absolutely no real hurry. And I just thought, wow, if I ever get really famous for anything, I got to be cool. This was really surprising. I know those dudes. They are a very big band. They did a cover of The Sound of Silence. Draymond has a beautiful voice. He's a great singer.

They're at the point where my mom, who's met lots of my... scary friends and it's always like they're so nice yeah southern woman but she's like randy do you know this band disturbed i'm like yes mom i do and she's i just love their cover of sound of silence And I'm like, I'll tell David Singer. My mom loves your music. But those guys, he's patient with you. Those guys come from a DIY background. They're from Chicago. And they used to have these parties.

where they would throw these parties in warehouses to promote their music. It's like a metal rave. Yeah, exactly. It's not like the record label gods were... swooping down upon them and making them huge. They were promoting themselves for a long time and that's the world we come from too. That whole gorilla, make it your own, that's way more popular and common now because you have social media. Sure. So any sort of niche, if you can get traction.

you're good but yeah back then it was like handing out tapes out of the back of the car oh that's the whole hip-hop scene yeah the whole hip-hop scene exactly you do seem and you have a reputation as a down-to-earth guy Isn't being the front man of a successful band kind of like gasoline for an ego? How do you keep that in check? Sure, that could be a problem. We call it LSD, lead singer's disease. For me, I think, no offense to the city of Los Angeles, but I don't live in Los Angeles.

I don't live in New York City. I don't live in an epicenter of the music industry. In Richmond, where I'm from, a lot of people, except for the younger people, they're like, oh, that's Randy. He used to be a line cook at Third Street Diner. That dude made me pancake. And they were terrible. They were great. I'm very egotistical about my pancakes. We, as a band, are pretty cognizant of the dangers of that and act very purposely to not be jerks. and to stay right side.

It's got to be tough, though, because, dude, when you start believing, people are like, you're awesome. You're a God. I've had tons of people, and I know it's an expression. They say, you're a God. And I'm like, you need a better deity. I suck. I'm fallible. Even just saying that is reinforcing that in the back of my head.

And once you start believing your own hype that you're this awesome thing, I find that's when your talent tends to abandon you. Yeah, why do you think that happened? Drew Carey said something similar on the show earlier. He said comedians get decidedly less funny. as soon as they start making money.

His rationale was comedians are griping about everyday things. So if you're taking your private jet with your assistant and they're going shopping for you, you just get less material that people can relate to. But with a band, why is that happening with music, for example? It's a matter of purity of expression. And I sing about things that matter to me. And things generally that upset me a lot of the times.

Because I make a decent living. I'm not a multi-bazillionaire. I don't have a Rolls Royce and all that other crap. Would you ever buy a Rolls Royce? No, dude. I drive a 2006 used Toyota 4Runner that I've had since I bought it used in like 2008. Okay, why do you do that? Because why? Not a car guy. It's got 258,000 miles on it, I think. I surf.

boards fit on top and i'm gonna have to buy a new car soon because it's getting more they got air conditioning now you know that right yeah mine is real dude the heat didn't work on this winter but it's not important to me Mine is dented. It's got scrapes. I don't care. It's liberating to drive something like that, isn't it? Oh man, it's a tight parking space. Whatever. I have a rental car out here and they gave me this Audi.

Like with this spaceship screen and I'm just parking in the garage, the below ground chair and all that's beeping and all this other stuff. And I'm like, ah, don't scratch this thing. It's not mine. I know what that's like. It's the more. crap you have there's this phrase like possessions own you or something like that. You're a prisoner to your possessions after a while. Whenever you get, like if this is an aura ring, it's a sleep tracker. I know what it is.

I've lost two. You've lost two? Okay. Shout out to my buddy, Patty, the surfer. He got me on it, so. They're fun. When you get one, you're like, oh, it's pristine. It looks so nice. Yeah. And then you hold a fork and you're like, oh, did that just scratch that thing? And you get mad for a couple hours and then you realize, now I can scratch it a hundred more times. It doesn't matter because it's no longer...

So once you get over that hump or you never had it because you bought the car used, you just don't have to worry about that. And it's very freeing to be like, yeah, this is the phone that has a crack in the side already. So it just doesn't matter. Sure. I am going to buy a new car because this car is.

starting to repeatedly need to go to the garage, and I just want something reliable, so I'm going to buy a brand new car for the first time ever. What do you think you'll get? A Toyota RAV4 Hybrid. There you go. It carries surfboard. But I'm going to be a nervous little nanny about it. Like, oh, my God.

The trick is to get it, kick a dent in the door with your boot the first day. Yeah, there you go. No worries. Yeah. There was a show, Californication, where David Duchovny was in it or something. He buys a new Porsche. He looks at it. scowls and he whacks one of the headlights with like a metal rod and breaks it. And he's like, all right, it's some sort of metaphor or whatever for the show that I probably didn't pick up on. But I was like, oh, I see what you did there.

Make sure it's no longer pristine. There's a viral video of you trying to go backstage. I don't know where it is, but this is blood stock. It's a big festival in the United Kingdom. Yeah. And the woman stops you and someone's like, do you know who this guy is? and It was one of the reasons I booked this interview because you handled that so well. Do you mind telling us a little anecdote? Yes, we were headlining Bloodstock in England two or three years ago, I guess. It's a big music festival.

We were the main act because we do very well in the community there. There's 40,000 people there, I guess. When you walk on stage, you have a laminate most of the time. Like an ID card? Yes, exactly. It's a tour laminate. And I did not have mine because... I'm a sweaty mess. When I go on stage, I'm afraid I'll lose it. Or if I leave it, someone will take it. People see tour lamina and they're like, oh. so normally i give it to my guitar tech Or I just leave it locked in the dressing room.

On this night, I was like, I probably won't need it. We're the headliners. So I walked up without my laminate. And you have to show your laminate to get on the stage. We're getting ready to play. And this young lady...

doing her job, looked at me and said, excuse me, I need to see your laminate. I'm like, i'm sorry i'm an idiot i don't have it and someone's like no no no he's the singer and she's like oh i'm so sorry and i'm like no don't be sorry you're doing your job right i could be anybody i like you and It's my fault that I didn't have my laminate. I didn't want to be inconvenient. So why should I be mad at this woman for doing her job? That's patently insane. She's there to keep me safe.

Yeah, I think a lot of people said, whoa, this guy's super down to earth and really cool for not... That's how low the bar is, though, right? Which was so surprising to me. I'm like, this is not like some sort of... triumph of altruism. This is a decent human being, man. It's not hard. Yeah, that's how low the bar really is. Or they expected less out of you, Randy. Yeah, maybe. I guess I look like a mean person, but my girlfriend says I have a mean demeanor. Rest in jerk face.

Not really. When I'm walking around, I guess you should look mean. I don't know if that's okay. It stops you from getting mugged. Yes, I'm a really nice guy. But when that came out, I've talked to a lot of security people. And they're like, dude, there are banned guys. Don't you know who I am? No, I just work here. I don't listen to this crap. I just work here, so for me, I always like to poke fun at myself and say, don't you know who I think I am? That's great. Having worked venue security...

Do you know who that is? No, I'm literally wearing headphones because I don't want to hear this shit. We played a few, like a year later in Bristol, England, and someone told me yo, I think her name was Sarah. They're like, she's working tonight. And I'm like, oh my God, the same lady. I got to see her and give her a big hug. And then we did this whole like,

skit where I acted like I was security and she was trying to come backstage. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, I need to see your ID. And my band is, you jerk, don't you know who she is? It was pretty funny. She's a very sweet girl. That's what people loved about that. I think it was a wholesome...

By the way, what happened? He had so many dreads. Then I looked you up and I was like, oh, that's not the same guy. No, it's the same guy. We played a festival in Milwaukee a couple of years ago, Milwaukee Metal Fest, a friend of mine puts on, and I got a kink in my neck. from swinging them around and it wouldn't leave for like two weeks and I was like okay that's it. It was constantly hurting my neck. I surf too, and they get really happy when you surf.

How does that even work? Because soaking wet giant mop of dreads that's got to weigh like 30 pounds. Yeah, it sucked. And also I'd have to tie them up. They come undone sometimes. Do you surf? No, but my brother-in-law and all my friends. So when you... paddle and then pop up you put your hands at your rib cage to pop up and sometimes my hair would get underneath it and then I'd just eat crap yeah why can't I put oh right because I'm holding myself down my buddy he surfed

He ended up with... Have you ever heard of surfer's myelopathy? It's a super rare disease, a rare thing. No, don't scare me. You're not going to get this. Apparently, every case has been Asian men because of where their nerves are located in their back, but I guess that some...

thing where you put your hands on the board and pop your spine like that cobra yoga position yes that's a pop-up that can pinch nerves in your back but again only in like asian males or something generally and he got that and what it does is it makes it so that you can't really walk because it's some sort of impingement of a nerve. You can't really walk, and then he couldn't pee. So he goes to the hospital, and he's like, I have to pee super bad, but I can't relax whatever muscle that is.

And they're like, okay, this is going to be uncomfortable. They put a catheter. And he's like, it was actually like the best, most welcome. Because imagine having to pee. worse than you've ever had to be in your entire life. But you can't do it. Your bladder would eventually explode and poison you. I suppose. That's what has to happen, right? So where the muscle gives out and it just dribbles out. What do I know?

The awkward transition, but what happens if you're playing on stage and you really have to go to the bathroom or something? Are you just stuck? Yes, but if it's an extreme emergency before you go on stage. Every person is going to the bathroom as much as possible to get it out. What I do before the show, but I still end up taking a break in the middle of having to go to the bathroom. Sure. But, dude, there have been some close calls with not just peeing.

Because when you go on tour, you have to be pretty much dead to not get on stage. All of us have gotten on stage after suffering food poisoning where it's like, ah. It's coming out. You know? And. I remember we played in London one time, and my guitar player, Mark, had gotten food poisoning, had been up all night long puking and coming out the other way. And he just stood in one place. I couldn't really do my job because I was so worried he was going to fall over. He was gray.

And I was just trying to... stay near him so he can hold him up but we've definitely had trash cans backstage before because if it's gonna go it's gonna go oh man yeah that's interesting because you think okay you can empty your bladder say okay no drinking an hour beforehand but then you're dehydrated dehydrated then especially if you're playing outside in the summer and it's 95 degrees in the shade You have to deal with that. And yeah, being sick.

What happens if a band your size has to cancel a show? What is the process like? Do you have to refund everybody? The last time we canceled because of illness was because of me. I had sushi with a friend of mine in LA and then we went to Vegas. for the next show at House of Blues. And I woke up and I walked off the bus and I was feeling great. And then all of a sudden, I wasn't feeling great. And then all of a sudden, it all started coming out everywhere.

And eventually it would not stop. So we got a doctor to come to House of Blues and give me a shot to stop the vomiting. Plug you up. To plug me up. And then I got in my bunk and I just, I couldn't barely move. And I remember.

My tour manager opening the bunk and he's like, do we need to cancel? And I'm like, yes, I can't move. You could wheel me out and lay me on the stage. I could just lay there and vomit and shit myself. It wouldn't be much of a shit. It's performance art, people. Exactly. We... Came back. I can't remember how many months later I made that show up, but if people couldn't make it up, obviously they're going to get a refund. Oh, man. It's also when you cancel a show.

Fans get so mad. Sure, they flew in and took a week off. Yeah, absolutely. And I understand that. That's why we don't cancel unless something is severely wrong. But for us, it's not good either. Because... When you cancel a show, we still have to pay our crew. We've already paid the bus. We've paid for everything. And that's built into the budget. So you don't make money on a tour until a lot of times the last third.

of the tour. I see. Because everything else is catching up with the initial output. Oh man, you need like startup capital. Yes. Oh yeah. So we reserve that in our bank account to start a tour. But if you cancel shows... You lose money, and I love playing music, and I love playing for the fans, but it's also my job. I'm not out here to lose money. So when people cancel,

I don't think fans understand that sometimes they're like, he just didn't want to come here or something. Yeah, diva. No, dude. This is how we make money. God, and your bandmates would be pissed too, because look, if you're dying from food poisoning, they understand, I would assume. But nobody wants to go, oh, he's a little tired, let's cancel the show. Hey, that's my $15,000 and your $15,000. Each of us are.

Chipping in for all the deposits. And we're paying for everything else. This is my kids' college tuition money. Exactly. A lot of my guys have kids. And the band dudes are the last people to get paid. Sure. Of course. Always the last. Yeah, it's got to be for a damn good reason. Oh, yeah, let's go out for sushi. You know what? Actually, we're headlining tomorrow. Let's not go out for sushi. I have learned the hard way. I don't really do sushi. I don't eat.

spicy Indian food anymore. At all or just before a show? Okay, yeah. My tolerance for spice has gone down. Really? Sadly. I feel like mine has gone up. Much like you needed the headphone volume turned way up, I need my Spice volume turned way up now that I'm 45. No, mine has sadly gone down. I can't do it the way I used to. But it's wise, right? You have to think about what you're going to eat. For me, it's before a plane ride or a big interview. Hey, do you want to have this questionable?

oyster omelet for breakfast? Right, sure, sir. Oh, I think we're gonna do some sausage and pancakes. No, I don't do raw oysters on tour. I won't do mussels. One wrong mussel, to quote Anthony Bourdain, and you're shitting like a mink. Whatever that means, I always just thought it was a great expression. Definitely true.

The only times I've had food poisoning has always been like, I will have the seafood pasta. Oh, that one tasted funny. The rest of it was fine. And then the next day you're just like, cancel everything for the next four days. No bueno. Done.

You guys can't make too many mistakes on set. Like, I can go, uh, what else do I want to talk about? Oh, we already talked about that. And then they'll just edit it out and make it look like I know what I'm doing. Surely there are mistakes that happen during shows, and then what do you do? When that happens, we're very self-critical and there are mistakes that happen during shows, but our band is so tight. We're one of the tightest bands out there. So for us, a mistake.

that will really bother one of us is something completely unnoticeable to the average listener. So it's got to be a huge train wreck. And I think one time in the last 10 years. We had a total train wreck on a song.

And then I'm like, you just laugh. Yeah. You laugh at yourself. It's refreshing. It's like an outtake at the end of a comedy movie. We're like, oh, they screwed up the line in that scene. That's hilarious. We're humans and we don't play to a click. We are a live rock band. And as such. mistakes happen, but not often. No, we don't run tracks except for like during the intro. There's an intro.

or whatever. There's no vocal tracks, no guitar tracks, none of that crap. Do you guys do pyrotechnics and stuff? I haven't seen a live show, but I assume. Yes, we started doing that a few years ago. What do you think about that? It was, I love it. It's cool, right? It's very cool, but it was very scary at first. And the first time we did it was in 2021, I believe. It was the first tour we did coming out of COVID. And we started it in Austin, Texas.

There's a venue at a racetrack, a Formula One racetrack out there. And it was in July or August in Austin. and we had a pre-production day where we ran the whole set including the firework oh yeah yeah and i'm on stage and it is i think it was like 110 degrees outside we need more fire i'm like why did we do this But it's awesome. It's amazing to have a pyro guy, bro. It's like having your own personal wizard. He just presses a button. I am the mother of dragons.

Because you see it now with lasers and lasers are cool. They're super cool. There is something missing when there's no explosion. Maybe I'm just old fashioned into it. a primal thing. Fire is very primal. The feeling of the explosion going off is also absent when you just have a laser thing or drone thing.

I mean, when you think about it, you're sitting around with people. If there's a fire in someone's backyard, a fire pit, people gravitate towards that. That's right. They sit there and they look at it. It's primal. It is. It's in our DNA. And now your ears will ring from the explosively good deals on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

This episode is sponsored in part by Aura Ring. I've been rocking the Aura Ring since Gen 1, back when it looked like some sort of gadget from the future. Now we're on Gen 4. I've got to say, it just keeps getting better, sleeker, more comfortable, smarter. I wear mine 24-7 without even thinking about it.

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It helps keep us aware of how we're sleeping, how we should be sleeping. It's made me way more conscious about stuff like rest, recovery, going to bed on time, not just powering through exhaustion like some sort of hustle culture maniac. So if you care about how you feel, start with how you sleep. Give Aura the finger. Learn more at auraring.com slash Jordan. That's O-U-R-A ring dot com slash Jordan.

This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. I gotta give a shout-out to Brian McDonald, who listened to the show and absolutely hooked me up in Vietnam recently. Brian runs A Taste of Hanoi. And I had this lair over in Hanoi, and he's like, I got you, set me up with one of his guides for a motorbike food tour in Hanoi, which was awesome. Now, if you've never been in the back of a motorbike in Vietnam, it's something, man.

You're weaving through scooters and traffic like a video game where you can actually die. And then all of a sudden, we're inside someone's house. Literally inside. We rode the motorbike. I'll tell you here. The guide pulls into what looks like an alley, okay? But it turns into a hallway, and then he turns around, grins, and goes, okay, put your hands on my shoulders, duck your head down, pull your knees all the way in. The next thing I know...

We're riding through someone's living room, not even kidding, like actually someone's living room to get to this little courtyard kitchen where this auntie is making pho that'll just ruin your life. know if I will ever taste as good, and Vietnamese egg coffee upstairs on the balcony, I don't even know how to describe it, it's like tiramisu and espresso had a beautiful caffeinated baby.

Short trip, chaotic, absolutely incredible, and I can't wait to go back and bring Jen next time because I know she's going to love it. And next time, we'll put our place on Airbnb to help fund the adventure. You can too. Airbnb makes it super practical. It doesn't take a lot of effort. You set it up before you leave. And then boom, your house is earning money while you're on vacation and making memories. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host.

If you're wondering how I managed to book guests like Randy Blythe, it is because of my network. These always come through warm intros, folks. It's not just falling in my lap for no reason. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free. Now, I know you're probably not booking for a podcast, but...

Everything that has come through in my life and business, including meeting my wife, has come through this circle of people that I know, like, and trust. So I don't care if you're retired. I don't care if it's your first day of work or you're still in college. These are skills that are going to pay off for the rest of your life, professionally and personally.

The course is not cringey. It's not the sort of stuff you see on Instagram. I don't want to get into too much detail about that. It's not silly. It's not going to make other people feel gross, make you look dumb. Six Minute Today is all it takes, and many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to that course. So come on and join us. You'll be on Smart Company where you belong. You can find the course, again, it's all free, at sixminutenetworking.com. All right, back to Randy Blythe.

You had a bout with alcoholism. Yeah. If you want to call it that. Yeah, sure. 22 year knockdown drag out Olympic level brawl with booze and drugs. Yeah. I would love to hear about that because It sounded like your life revolved around boo.

for that. It's the center of my existence. Ten years sober now. Fourteen. Fourteen. I don't know where I got ten. It's a nice easy number to say. It's probably in your book and I was like, oh, time has not evolved since I've read this piece of thing that he wrote four years ago. I started drinking when I was about 18. And the longer I stay sober, the more I realize how different my drinking was from the beginning. Whereas...

Everybody drinks when they're young, at least in our age group. Sure. My friends would drink, and most of them, even on the weekend, maybe get a hangover or whatever and then go on about their life. But with me... And when I drank, strange things happened. I wound up in weird places with weird people doing weird things at times.

That was even before my band. So once I joined a band, you can get away with a lot of stuff when you're in a band that you can't. He's an artist. It's normal for him to have whiskey for breakfast. Yes, exactly. And... When we finally signed to a major, I'd been in the band. nine years at the time i guess when our first major level record came out and

We didn't get millions of dollars a piece or anything, but we had to make a decision when our first major label record came out. Like, okay, are we going to devote ourselves full time to this? Or are we going to continue to weaken Warrior that... and work when we can and tour when we can. It was a very scary time in my life. I've been working since I was 12.

Oh, so you're like, should we burn the boats? Yes, burn the boats. Time to do this. And the odds of success, particularly given the nature of our band, are not good, right? They're not. We're never going to deliver a radio hit. You're not writing pop songs for Taylor Swift. When I quit the day job and the band became full-time, I no longer had any sort of restraint.

Except for when I was on stage or in the studio. There's nothing telling me not to drink every day. Right, I see. And I had some money in my pocket for the first time in my life. My alcoholism just progressed. And I think it was already there, like in retrospect and looking at it, it got worse and worse though.

And particularly in our culture, I think it's changing now. I think the paradigm is changing. I think kids are smarter now. I don't think they think it's cool to be a drunken train wreck anymore. But we did. From the heavy metal world. And our band is from that. And even in the more punk rock scene I come from, there's a long history of junkies and so forth. Who was it? Sid Vicious, who died of heroin when he was like 21? Yeah, he was 21 years old. That's like a child.

Yeah, and he was a hardcore junkie. Yeah, so that sort of... Mythos. I bought into that. Of course, I drink. I'm in a heavy metal band. Yeah. It's beneficial for my voice to smoke this cigarette nonstop. And being a train wreck kind of was expected. So it got worse and worse, though. My band was doing better and better, and I was getting worse and worse until finally.

In 2010, we were in Australia on tour with Metallica, and I woke up one day, and I looked out on my hotel room balcony, and it was a beautiful day in Australia and Brisbane, and I was like, I don't want to live anymore. It wasn't like I was suicidal. I just wanted to be erased from existence. Shut the machine down. Yeah, done. And then I was like, maybe you stop drinking and doing drugs. Your life might get better. And it did. Yeah. So how did you stop? I stopped. And I talked to...

Some of the dudes who were out on that tour who I knew were sober, James Hetfield and some of his guitar techs and stuff, because they had talked to me. We were on tour with Metallica for about a year over the course of two years back then. And every now and then they'd be like, dude, you might want to dial it back a little bit because I partied across America, Europe, then on into New Zealand, Australia.

And I knew those dudes were sober. So I went there. I'm like, please help. They're like, just breathe, dude. We were wondering if you were going to have this conversation. Exactly. I spent my first month. Sober in Australia on tour. Did you have withdrawal symptoms and everything? My metabolism is so fast. I processed it out. I was sweaty and couldn't sleep very well a couple of nights.

But there's only two substances that can kill you from withdrawals, and that's alcohol and benzodiazepam, Xanax. and withdrawals from alcohol can kill you. seizures and all that stuff. Luckily, it just didn't happen for me. I guess it just processed it. I got lucky. That is fortunate. I had a friend who drank himself to death at age 23 years old.

Died on his bed, cursing his parents. They were coming to see him, and he couldn't barely even speak anymore. Oh, that's terrible. They took the alcohol away from me, went to the hospital, and his internal organs melted. Just horrific. He was built like me. Like a tall, skinny dude. You never know. It's an individual thing. Yeah, jeez. Again, it depends on your organs. Did you get fat during this time? Because I'll cause a shitload of calories.

I tried my best to get a beer gut. Didn't happen to join. Oh yeah, I have a six pack now because I've been eating too much fast food. I get a gut when I eat. But it's not like a fat gut. It's just distended six pack. And then two hours later, it's gone. Man. It makes my girlfriend really mad. Yeah. You eat whatever you want and I gain the weight. Yeah. That's nonsense. Nobody likes you for that.

You said in the book, no one is more educated about your beliefs than yourself in theory. And then I'm paraphrasing here, but you go on to say, but if you don't question or analyze these, or look at your beliefs critically, you just take them at face value, then you're driven by fear. Can you expand on that a little bit? The precise quote, the word that's missing is, if you are unwilling to examine. If you sit there and you're like, if I think, okay, Jordan Harbinger.

really doesn't like me. We're going to do this podcast and he's going to... ask me some gotcha questions, and then... try and submit this to the music press and make me look like a total jerk. That is my plan. Yeah, I know. I can tell you're very Machiavellian. So, if I have these beliefs for some reason... If I am unwilling to say, why do you think that, dude? Like, why?

no matter how cherished that belief is, if I'm unwilling to do that, then I'm scared to look at myself and look at my method of processing the world. And I think this... is something that a lot of people experience. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance going on. I believe that. We live in such a divisive society, not to get into any sort of political party or whatever, but people are so binary now almost. Black and white thinking. At least online.

In person, things tend to go a little bit smoother, but online there's this group thing. You're A or B. And the group is comforting. Human beings have a herd instinct. Of course, this is the way to think. Everybody else thinks. Everybody else in my bubble agrees. Exactly. And it's reinforcing your biases, your already existing biases. But if you aren't really willing to sit there and look.

at why you think the way you think and ask yourself, do I believe this because I believe this or because it's been yelled at me by a bunch of other people? then you're just scared. You're scared to look at yourself. And I think as an artist, at least, For me and a lot of my friends, that's one of the great things about being an artist because it involves a lot of self-reflection, creating honest art and questioning myself and my beliefs.

Some of my beliefs are the very same as they were when I was 16. And I hold them up to scrutiny. And it's uncomfortable. But some things I have to let go of. A friend of mine, she asked, why I eat meat. She's a vegetarian. And we were hiking, so I had eight hours to think about the answer. I was like, let me get back to you. And at the bottom of the mountain, I said, I think it's because I'm a hypocrite.

And she's, what do you mean? And I said, I would never let anybody eat my dog just because they eat dog in their culture or whatever. But I will eat chickens and cows and lambs, and I just don't care. You get hungry enough, you'll eat your dog. Of course, I understand if someone is starving and they steal my dog, I can empathize with that, but it's not like I would butcher my own dog because I'm just... too lazy to go to the grocery store. But then you go,

Yes, I know these animals are mistreated, but I'll still eat them. And the only... honest answer is because I just am able to compartmentalize it and not look at it and not care. Absolutely. And it's hypocritical to do that. Yes. And you just have to accept that about yourself. And it's not comfortable to be like, yeah, I have beliefs that don't make sense because they're convenient. Right, 100%. And that's the whole thing is it's uncomfortable to question your beliefs.

With the meat thing, I eat meat myself. That being said, the factory farming system is atrocious. It is. It's really gross. It is horrifying for me in my life. I've been trying to buy, it's much more expensive, especially these days, ethically sourced meat, cage-free eggs.

All that stuff. It's expensive, yeah. It is expensive. But it's the little thing I do. But when I'm on tour, you're not getting cage-free. I'm not doing that. So it's hypocritical. I think we can only do the best that we can do. Yeah. Once you have kids, it's even harder, man. I gotta tell you, like, I looked at my electric, I used to be one of those guys, turn off all the lights, wash clothes once a week.

I looked at my electric bill. I go, is that lying us? And she goes, no, that's the line of how average people, our house size in our area, their electricity that they use. And I was like, what's the giant line that goes all the way across the page? That's our house.

How do we use 300% more electricity than other average people in our area? And she's like, we work from home. We have two kids. Your parents come over every night. We have an electric stove. And this is, horrifying but what are you gonna do have your kids sit in the dark wear poopy clothes yeah and you have to just eventually go damn I'm not this good person that I thought I was or I'm not this environmentalist that I thought I was.

I am constantly turning off lights. I am constantly recycling. I'm constantly doing all these things. Please. I'm going to buy a hybrid car next because I know that will reduce gas usage. But the batteries were mine by children in Africa. Exactly, and it's just, oh god, there's so much.

and I think that if you're a socially or environmentally conscious person at all you can't concentrate on everything you lose your mind because you begin to feel helpless and without agency And I think that feeling of helplessness and lack of agency... causes some people to just say screw it yeah i'm gonna just do whatever and that's not the answer so for me just try man i'm trying just to do what i can and i know i'm not perfect but don't

give up hope on doing the right thing just because it's difficult. I agree. I got a little derailed there, but you said in the book, my head is a bad neighborhood to get lost in. Yeah. What do you mean by that? I mean that I'm a great catastrophizer. That means that I start. with something. relatively minute maybe that has gone wrong or more likely that I have screwed up and my mind immediately kicks off like an English soccer riot and draws an entirely logical sequence of events.

that ends in the worst possible outcome. Complete destruction of your life. Everything, my friend. I'm from the 1970s, a child of the Cold War. And the worst logical outcome is global thermonuclear warfare. I forgot my laminate. Dot, dot, dot. Exactly. Thermonuclear warfare. So I forget to... stop by the grocery store to get yogurt from my girlfriend like I promise and next thing you know Putin's invading Ukraine

The sky is on fire and everything's dead but cockroaches and Keith Richards, right bro? So this happens all the time. I need some adult guidance. I should not go wandering around up in my head without some adult guidance. So that's why I do things like... read philosophy, and talk to people who have more experience. I used, when I was younger, try to figure everything out myself. Why am I so upset with the world? Why are people jerks?

Why can't they put the grocery cart back in the car? It's 10 feet away. And I get so mad that I'd have to change my perspective. And the best way I found to do that would be drink. and then you're just possessed by impotent anger, it's okay to be anger about some things, but if you're not doing anything with that, or it's not inspiring any sort of action whatsoever,

then you're just sitting there mad, and nobody likes the mad guy. He doesn't get invited to parties. Were you an angry kid? That is after a certain point, yeah. Did something start that? Yeah, absolutely. I don't come from money. I didn't grow up in a dirt shack with no electricity or anything. My dad and mom lower middle class and upper lower class lower middle somewhere there somewhere in there and when they split up when I was in like the end of third grade

My father and my brothers and I moved to Virginia from North Carolina. My mom stayed in North Carolina to go to college. Shout out, Mom. I love you. Good for her. She went to college after having a bunch of kids and stuff? Yeah. She just had three kids. Not easy. No. So. She went to college and my parents are great friends to this day. That's good. The separation was not what like really made me angry. Okay. Because they handled it. They never weaponized.

my brothers and I against them. We didn't know anything was wrong. That's how well they handled it. That's very impressive. They're beautiful. Both of them are beautiful people. I love them both very much. Learned a lot from both of them. But when we moved from... North Carolina to Virginia I went into a new school I did not fit in I did not have the right clothes I did not live in the right neighborhood

I was not interested in the right things. Like sports. Yes. Yeah. Oh God, I can relate. I want to read books. Yeah. And I want to go skateboarding. And this is in the eighties. Yeah. And skateboarding was not cool. Skateboarding wasn't cool in the eighties. No. Oh, man. In Michigan, it was like the coolest thing. Not in the broader sense that it is now. Sure.

Like, you were a weirdo punk rocker most of the time. Really? You were a skateboarder. Yeah. Wow. And I lived in a little tiny redneck town. Maybe that's why. So it's like, you're a fag, dude. Remember when people could just freely say that? Yes. How horrible is that? Yes. to the point that was in the culture so much that I don't know how old I was.

I managed to eradicate that from my vocabulary because it's something I used to say. Of course. Because I was raised around it and didn't mean like her. homeless. It wasn't a slur. We were just using it as a random insult until your friend goes, hey, by the way, that's a slur. I had a friend who was like, I'm gay and that's a slur. And I was like, oh, come on. And he's like, no, it's like the N word for gay. And I was like,

Oh, I should just not say that anymore. I didn't know any gay people until I got older. You did, but they didn't tell you. Now I have some very dear friends and it's like embarrassing to me. It is embarrassing. I'm like, oh my God. I was like, even though. These people called me that word.

I'm still throwing it around. What a jerk. So it's a process. Thank God we didn't have social media when we were kids. Can you imagine all the crap that would have been filmed of us doing? Oh my God. Dude, I say that so many times. I'm like, thanks.

God, there were no cell phones when I was a teenager. I did and said so many dumb things, even through college, everything. Oh, yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah, absolutely. You and I would not be able to have careers because they'd be like, here's a tape from... 10 years ago where you were saying all these different, yeah, but I was just drunk at a party. Yeah. We don't care. You're a racist. Yeah. Not really though. Yeah. I think that.

a problem with children today though too. We're joking about it. Thank God we don't have this. But they do have it. There is a frothing mob of iPhone wielding documenters. waiting just to catch her every screw up. And like, that's gotta be pressure. The only saving grace now is in a few years, you'll be able to go, that was AI. That's fake. That wasn't me. Yeah, yeah. It's getting real scary. Look, here's the full video. And then the kid starts flying through the air just to make a fake one.

By the way, you taught me something in your book that I've never heard, which is also really scary, that you can rip your larynx if you hold back a sneeze. This is true. One, how did you learn that? And two, that sounds terrible. Do you know anyone who's done that? No, I do not. Oh my god. But I was writing that part. about how the future is unknowable no matter how advanced our technology gets.

People are not good with uncertainty these days. We all have these cell phones, which I call the pocket Jesus. You look to it for all your answers. But some things you just don't know. Uncertainty, you just have to deal with it. So I was writing about how if someone were to say I'm not going to sneeze two years from now or whatever. It doesn't matter how much you study sneezing. Every allergen you remove from your environment, you could be the boy in the bubble. You might be ready to sneeze.

The Boy in the Bubble. There's a reference of people who are younger than us who are not going to understand. Yeah. Look it up. That was John Travolta. It might have been. I think so. Actually, you might be right. Wow, that was. Seriously old man. So for people who have no idea what we're talking about, there's a kid who, based on a true story, had autoimmune disease. Or like no immune system or something? Yeah. He had autoimmune disease, which basically meant he had no immune system.

Basically, he had to live in the equivalent of a big old fish tank kind of thing with a fan blowing the air. And when he left, he had one of those ball things that hamsters roll around in. Terrible. I've read about... people with that to this day. But yeah, the whole point of that is I was talking about how the unknown is unacceptable, and then if you say, I'm not going to sneeze, that's a ridiculous statement. And by the way, don't try and hold back sneeze.

Because you can rip your larynx. I also have read, and I'm very careful when I'm driving if I have to sneeze. very careful when you're driving yes so you don't slam on the accelerator so that you actually see what's going on because most of the time when you sneeze you're just and driving is not the time to blame like time is like

And I very purposely keep my eyes open. Yeah. Gotta clean the windshield afterwards, I guess. I put a hand over my mouth. I'm not a savage. And then you touch your steering wheel again. Yes, of course. And spread my germs all over. Spread it everywhere. Do you have vocal damage or anything from years of essentially screaming?

My voice gets deeper. I think everybody's naturally does. You don't have nodules in there? Maybe. It doesn't sound like it. Sometimes you can tell. Like when Steven Tyler's got something going on. Yeah, that's vocal damage. I don't think he always sounded like that. He can still sing like high notes and everything. It's just there's one segment of his larynx or whatever that's probably shredded up, you know, consistency. And you go out on tour and a guy with a voice like that.

He wants to deliver. People want to hear that. Dream on! Yeah, like, perfect. They want to hear it perfect. And if he can't hit that, he doesn't. You know, I understand. If it ever gets to the point where I'm like, I'm going to be okay, it's time to hang it up. Is there a range that you can't sing? Like, do you ever go, oh, I'm going to sing to my nieces and nephews and go, oh God, I can't actually do the Frozen soundtrack.

At all. The more I sing, the better I get over the years. But certain falsetto... stuff. I'm a bass baritone, so it's a little difficult for me. You give him the Lamb of God version of... I know, I try not to do that around children. The gold never bothered me anyway.

Do you have, is it tinnitus, the perpetual ringing in your ears? It comes and goes. I see. Do you actually have hearing damage from? You know, amazingly enough, the last time I had it tested, it was okay. When I get done recording or I come off tour, I lay down at night. and it goes away after a couple of days. Every now and then it'll just come really high-pitched, but I do not have it like, per se, William Shatner has it. William Shatner got it on the set of the original startup track.

Remember when they'd be on the bridge on Star Trek and things would be on fire or whatever? The pyrotechnics exploded unexpectedly close to his ear. while they were filming one day. And so Shatner has tinnitus so bad almost that he was considering suicide. Yeah, it's terrible. It was driving him crazy. So I think he's done some work with foundations to research.

Yeah, that's one of those scary things. There's no cure for it. And you think, oh yeah, mild annoyance. But yeah, multiple people have told me that when they have it... beyond annoying. It's like they consider... making it all end because there's no way to stop mine has not been that bad generally what I'll do if it's at the end of a tour and I have a little bit I'll make sure there's a fan running some sort of white noise and tell it

I heard you don't actually like recording music. You just tolerate the recording of the music. I don't like recording Lamb of God. Why is that? I think that probably confuses people. Because it is physically painful. What do you mean? When I record, I need everything in the cans ear bleedingly loud to... help emulate the sort of vibe I have with my band. Because we're not a quiet band. Right. My ears go... Oh, that kind of physicality. Yes. I have a headache.

My throat hurts after you've done it. I wake up every day. My voice is naturally pretty deep when I'm recording. It would be great for sexy voiceovers. And I will hear... a fragment of a lyric that I recorded the day before. When I lay down to sleep, I'm hearing the beep, and then I'm also hearing my own voice. screaming a part of a lyric again and again and again. Like when you play a video game for too long and you go to sleep and it's in your head? Yeah, it's not good.

It's a physical process for me. It really is. I don't enjoy it. Yeah, and also, you don't want to record it at classical music volume and find out it doesn't sound quite right at 11 or whatever. I always have a hard time. Getting my voice to do what it does live until one day my producer was like, let's try a trick. And he put a filter on what I heard. and my ears and not what was going to tape, but the filter that I was hearing my voice.

He made it sound like a crappy club PA because that's the world I come from. And then all of a sudden my voice went bling. Oh, that's funny. You tuned it right away. Yeah. Also because most of the time when you're recording an album, our last album were recorded here in LA at Henson Studios.

And a lot of it was live. Where the Muppet was? Oh, that's cool. That's got to be kind of a cool place to do something. Yeah, it's a legendary studio. Charlie Chaplin owned. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. So... We did it. We had a great live room, and I wasn't in the room with my guys while they were playing, but I was in a booth. And I could see them, and there's an energy that happens between us. Alive.

It's just so much different. Now, if I'm singing to a tape, my dudes aren't there. I don't feel this. visceral connection to them and the music as it's being made that I do on stage. I really feel it, and it makes it, I don't know, it makes it just so much better. I hate singing to tape. Do you feed off the crowd, too? Oh, 100%. Even with the lights where you can't see anybody, or is that not happening?

your kind of shows the lights can definitely blind you but i'm very well aware of the audience i'm hyper aware of how the music is going over with the audience it's my job to make sure to facilitate the audience's good time. Sure. As a front man. Not to be egotistical, but it's your job to... make sure that these people are enjoying the music. Yeah, that's what they're praying for. It involves encouragement at times. So I'm very much aware of the audience's status.

You know what's better than doing time in a Nazi Czech prison castle? The great deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Audible. People always ask me how I manage to get through so much content, especially since I prep for every interview. I'm talking two to three books a week, and it's all thanks to Audible.

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What is this Czech prison story? I know a little bit about it. Stacey, who's out there, who I think is maybe my boss. I'm not sure. Basically, if the company had to choose one of us, they would choose her over me. But anyway, she was like, you got to ask them about the Czech prison story. and I thought it was going to be like some hilarious night out that ended in you going to prison. Not really the case. No, no, no. Not really the case.

That's what my first book, Dark Days, is about. It's a 500-page book, but basically in 2010, Lamb of God played a concert in Prague. Their security was non-existent. Kids were on stage off and on the whole time. Very dangerous. Small club. Our equipment was ready to fall on people. We played that show. We're like, thank God that's over. We came back.

Two years later, we flew from Norway to Prague, landed in Prague Airport, got off the plane, and they diverted myself and my band into another room. And in the room, there were five or six dudes in, like, masked balaclavas with machine guns and stuff. Three big, huge, like, Slavic meathead. Yeah. They look like Dolph from the Rocky movies. Yeah, sure. These plainclothes detectives. And then this woman, this woman who was the head detective, handed me a piece of paper.

saying that I was being charged with the equivalent of manslaughter because a young man, they said, I purposely crushed a young man off the stage, attacked him, he fell, hit his head, went into a coma, died a month later. And we had no idea anyone had been hurt. At the previous show? No clue. And the American government had been contacted about this by the Czech government. two years previously. And the American government said, this is nonsense. We're not going to cooperate.

But the American government never let me know. I was going to say, they just didn't tell you. No, not alone back there, obviously. I would have gone back there to handle this. It's not a parking ticket. Yeah. So I'm in total shock. what are you talking about? This makes no sense. I thought it was a mistake. Then I went to a prison in Prague for... 37 days. Oh, shoot. So this wasn't like a long weekend. No, no, no, no, no, no. And so they granted me bail, which was almost half a million dollars.

We borrowed that from the record label. And then unlike America, where when you pay bail, you're free to go. There, we paid bail. The prosecuting attorney did not like it, so he objected. So they doubled the bail. So we're pushing towards half a million dollars. I see. Luckily, some rather wealthy friends of ours were like, we'll loan you guys the other half, which they did. Yeah.

And then I got bailed out, and I went back to America and immediately went on tour in order to pay for all the lawyers. And then six months later, went back to trial in the Czech Republic, and I was found not guilty. So I'm sure that everyone said, Hey, don't go back there because the trial could go out anyway and you have no control and they're not going to extradite you. Yes. Especially if the U.S. government said this is nonsense, they're not going to cooperate. So why did you go back?

Because the family of this young man who died. They never attacked me in the press. The Czech press attacked me. Particularly this one tabloid newspaper painted me as this marauding... american viking come to murder people or whatever they said printed all sorts of nonsense they said i'd kicked a woman to death in the head all sorts of just made just made up nonsense and then

Just paying me as a really bad guy to the point where my attorneys had to threaten to sue the paper. My check attorneys did. But the family of this young man who tragically died, they deserved answers. All they knew is that their son went to go see my band. He was injured somehow, and he died a month later. That's horrible as a parent. That's horrible. In my first marriage, I lost the only child we had. She died shortly after birth due to a heart defect. And...

I have empathy for those parents. I know. what it's like. Probably even worse for them because he had lived... How old was he? 18 or 19. And my daughter only lived less than a day. Sorry to hear that, though. Well, you're a parent. So the only thing these parents knew... was that their son had gone to see my band. And then this sort of rumors of me attacking him and all this other stuff. I felt honor-bound to try and give them.

the answers that I could to the best of my ability not to hide in America like a coward. Sure. Because Their son is dead. That's horrifying. And B. Although I know I was sober that night. I know because I've been writing about it. in a journal also memory is a tricky thing and memory it's not like people think we have this hard drive that all you gotta do is press a button and everything is replayable that's not how memory works

It's like recreating a puzzle almost every time you remember something. I learned a lot about the science of memory during that. So I needed to make sure that if I was, in fact, culpable here, if I had done something... that I did not remember or had falsely construed in my mind, if that came out in a trial, then I need to be held responsible for my actions.

I ran away from my problems for so long and alcohol. But I was a sober man then. If I am not willing to... take responsibility or at least look at the possibility to examine myself and what may come out evidence I'm unaware of then I am not being accountable in my life and if I can convince myself

that I am not accountable, in this one area just because it's scary because it's scary then it's only a hop skip and a jump for me to convince myself that I'm not accountable in all sorts of areas and from there it's very easy for me to Be like, you've been sober a long time. Maybe you can just take a drink and it'll be all right. I see. And then if I hadn't gone back, I'd be dead now one way or the other. Really? Yes, because I would have either drank myself to death. I know it.

Or I would have killed myself because I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. That's fascinating that you can draw a line from that too. just being dead, essentially. Yeah, that's fascinating. I was not really expecting that. That's quite fascinating. What is Czech prison like, dare I ask? Have you been to a jail in America? Sure. I've been to the drunk tank a few times. What's Czech prison like, comparatively?

The prison I went to was called Pankratz Prison. It's in Prague. At the time, I believe it was 100 and... 27 or 137 years old oh wow so it's like a dungeon or something like that well it was for the first half of it they put you in one tier to see if you're depressed and suicidal.

Supposedly. We're going to put you in the most depressing place. Exactly. So they put you in the basement. Oh my gosh. And if you're not suicidal, you're going to be when you get out of here. I talked to this one guy who spoke English. He's a look. The doctor is going to come for psychological development. When they ask you what you think.

Do not tell them you do not like it here, because they will keep you in the basement longer. He told me that when they asked him, what do you think of the presence of Arctic, what the... Pardon my French. What do you think I think about this? It sucks. And they're like, you're depressed. Maybe you ought to stay down here in isolation a little bit longer. So it was very heavy. I love the history, just these walls, the stories they could tell. The stories that President can tell are from...

1939, I think, to 1945. And the Nazis had it. Oh, geez. They were putting Czech dissidents, black marketers, some Jews, I think. political undesirables there and they were executing them by firing squad and that got too expensive. So they started hanging them and then that took too long. So they installed a guillotine. and so in about a year

and a half. They executed over 2,000 people, I think it was, by the guillotine. The guillotine was down the hall from me. It was still in there? Yeah, I didn't get to see it, but they keep it there because at the end of the war, the Nazis took it. and threw it in the Valtava River in order to hide the evidence of their atrocities. But the Czech divers went and got it and brought it back. And the head executioner of that prison... Maybe it was even in the 2000s.

applied for his retirement benefits from the German army in Germany. Oh, my God. Because I served in this and this, and they're like, what did you do? He's like, I was the executioner at Pancrat's prison. He wrote the government. I need proof so I can get my government benefits. Yikes. From killing thousands of you. And then the German government gave it to him. They have to. Okay, we had to do this work for us. We don't like it.

Are we then going to also stiff you on the payment? What an awkward situation that is. So being in that prison was like being in a misfit song. I don't know if you know that band. Of course, yeah. It is. It was crazy. You've had bandmates say, like, I hate touring. This is prison. Are you sure about that? Yeah, yeah. My guitar player, Mark, said that one time. I was just like...

This is like present. I just looked at him. I'm just like, nah, dude. Not really. Nah, bro. Let's think about this. Wow. Yeah, the Nazi prison that was then probably like a communist gulag or something. Sure, and then you go straight into the history of the Eastern Bloc. The communists came from Russia and from Poland and Czechoslovakia at the time. And Prague is a beautiful city. It's beautiful, but that's only since...

what they call the Velvet Revolution, 1989. Their first president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, I believe that's how you say his name. He was a big rock and roll fan. I didn't know that. Yeah, and The Velvet Underground, one of his favorite bands. Very important political writer. People do well to read his stuff right now. But he was the first president, and he had done time in that prison I was in. Oh, wow. He was the first president of the Czech Republic.

You go to Prague now, it's beautiful and colorful, but I talk to people, including a lot of my lawyers and people my age who remembered growing up under a communist rule in Czechoslovakia, and just... gray. The buildings were gray. You go to the grocery store lines. All they have is potatoes. Just grim, grim, grim. And I recommend anyone to go to Prague. Beautiful city. Great food, but it wasn't that way. Have you been back since the Quiddal?

Is that no thank you, or is it like, oh, we just haven't had a tour there? I will go and play Prague if the conditions are right, meaning that, A, it would be for charity. and B, that the family of the young man who passed gives me the blessing, but they have suffered enough. And if I went back to play the Czech Republic, it would be a huge news story. I see. So you don't want it to come out and they're like, oh, we're reliving this now. I don't want my face.

My existence and my band's existence have caused them immense pain. I don't wish to do anything further to hurt them. Yeah, that's understandable. You're very passionate about this charity, Be The Match, which is funny because I've done this. And I'm waiting for my... Call so I can pat myself on the back for saving someone's life, but I just thought oh I'm gonna get a call like next week after it's been like 15 years

It's not like a blood type thing. No, it's much more specific. And that is the two bookends of the story of my book. It starts with the story of a fan I befriended during the last couple of months of his life who was dying of leukemia. And I wrote a song in his honor called The Duke. And around the release of that, we released it as a single we did.

fundraising thing where we raised almost fifteen thousand dollars for the leukemia and lymphoma society but we also raised awareness for the be the match which is now called the National Bone Marrow Registry. Okay. But if you go to be the match org, it'll still carry you. We'll link to it in the show notes. Because people should do this. All you do is spit into a vial. Yeah. So we wrote this song and we put it out and there's an awareness campaign.

to register for this. Particularly, not that if you're white you don't need to do it, but particularly for ethnic minorities. Because blood marrow types are highly specific, as you're saying. And I think... Black or African American people are the most underrepresented. group on the bone marrow registry. If you're white, I think you have

70% chance of matching with a bone marrow donor. If you're black, I think it's 20%. Oh, that's significant. Yes. So they need more from black people, Hispanic people, native people, Asian people here in America. So... We did this awareness campaign because it's free. All you got to do is spit in a tube. And I have a friend from another band who beat leukemia because he had a donor.

And then Lamb of God's old merch girl died of leukemia. She was diagnosed and a week later she was dead. I didn't even know you could die that fast. That's terrible. Yeah, it was awful. So... Pretty passionate about it. I can't even wrap my mind around it. I don't know. I'm like, oh, I'm feeling tired. And then it's like, you're just dying? Yeah, and then she was dead, I think, seven to ten days later. Evie Carano, I miss her.

So that's the beginning chapter, and it's pushing towards awareness. And the chapter is about mortality, basically, because this young man who died, I befriended. faced his own mortality with such grace and a very stoic demeanor. And I learned a lot from his inspirational guy named Wayne Ford. Six years after or so that song came out, we're in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nobody's touring. Nobody's doing anything. And I'm walking one afternoon over a bridge.

in richmond virginia and i'm like what's going on with my life this is crazy and i checked my email And I get an email forwarded to me from our old publicist from a dude who's like, hey man, because of your song, I signed up for Be The Match. And I match. With a patient. It's the late 60s.

person and i'm gonna donate and i immediately emailed this young man his name is todd seaman from arkansas we're great friends to this day And eventually when the time came for him to donate his bone marrow, I went up to D.C. where he did it and documented it, a photographer as well, and hung out, and it was two days before Christmas.

wonderful. It's like the best Christmas gift ever yeah you know i felt like this song and my friendship with this guy who had died and a fan we're doing something he donated And because of HIPAA laws, you can't know what happened to your donor. Oh, that would drive me nuts. So after a year, you can write a letter. After a year, the recipient...

will make the decision whether or not they want to contact you. Okay, that would drive me crazy. Yeah, me and my buddy Todd, who donated there the whole year, we're like, I hope with this person. Because we were told he survived after a couple of months, but we didn't know how long or whatever. So we were talking about it, and we'd joke, too. We're like, what if he's, like, the Grand Wizard of the KKK or something? Like, just a total jerk. What if we did the wrong thing? We'd joke about it.

But after a year goes by, shortly after a year, my buddy Todd hits me. He's like, dude, I heard from him. He's 69. He lives in Denver, Colorado. He's a photographer, not in a clan. He's a photographer. He's an old rock and roll musician. He's awesome. And so he went and surprised this man. His name is Michael in Denver on his 70th birthday. That's pretty cool. And a few months later. I came to Denver on tour, and I met this man who lives to this day.

and spent the afternoon walking around Denver taking photos with him. I love this. Because of this song. So, be the match. We'll link to it in the show notes. And I know a lot of people say, I'm scared to do it because they have to drill into your bone. No. You don't have to do that anymore. No, they use what is called an aphoresis machine. It's very interesting. You sit there, and you have to take this medicine a week before, and what it does is it basically makes your bones leaky.

They leak white platelets. It doesn't hurt. No, it doesn't hurt. I want to make it clear because I don't want to scare people off. No, it doesn't hurt. There's white platelets that come from your bone. and then they put it into this machine, which is like a centrifuge. They draw the blood from you.

It spins it around, and then the healthy bone marrow cells and plasma is separated by the centrifuge, and then they put the blood back into you from the machine. So you're just sitting there hooked up to an IV. You're basically... fancy giving blood playing on your iPhone for hours. Yeah, and it used to be the drill, the painful thing. And in rare cases, it still is. My buddy, though, who did it,

He's like, they drill me. I don't care. Because once you know, dude, if I do this, this person might have a chance. Yeah, you would do it. Yeah. You meet this guy, Michael, and talk to him who's alive because of this stuff. It's like he gets more time with his grandkids. Exactly. you can't put a price on. You mentioned, oh, I hope he's not a Grand Wizard of the Klux Klan. I think, honestly, There would be some rich karma justice in me.

as a jew donating blood to this person i'd write him a letter and they're like yeah i'm a grand wizard of the clan and i'm like i got some bad news you now have jewish blood in a sense he would be jewish now that's right because your dna he takes on in a set He is you. Oh, that's weird. So like people who do this, theoretically, one of them could commit a murder.

and DNA found on the scene of the crime, it would match precisely. Now you're scaring people off from donating them. No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to get caught for murder. But they match. The person who receives this will... Inherent any allergies you have? No kidding. Yeah. Oh, wow. I don't have any. Neither do I. Alcohol. I break out in handcuffs. But he, at 70 years old, had the immune system of a 35-year-old man.

Because his DNA changes. Sometimes it replaces, sometimes it's an additional set. But it would be really neat if you could turn the Grand Wizard into one of the chosen people. Yeah. Boom. Shalom, buddy. Exactly. Oh, man, now you've got to come over for Passover. You can't eat shrimp anymore, bro. Exactly. Remember all those guys you used to make fun of? You're one of them. Now here's your hat. Tell me about punk rock guilt. This is such an interesting concept. It's essentially like...

you make money by doing something that's great, and then you're like, oh, I gotta feel bad about this now. Yes. In the punk rock scene, at least in the scene as I came up, I'm not talking about just... Pop punk stuff you might hear on the radio singing about boys and girls. There's a strong anti-materialistic, anti-authoritarian, anti, I don't know, pursuit of riches vibe.

You've got to live in the gutter and got that metal spike bracelet. That can be, if you take it the wrong way, but it's more this sort of... consciousness, being like some sort of rich, famous person. Why would you aspire to that? And the thing with the punk rock scene is When you come up in that and the bands you love, most of which, amazingly enough, I'm friends with now, the bands that I listened to in high school. All of them. I know them all, basically. They're alive, yeah. So...

When you come up in that scene, there's a very anti-rock star mentality. You are a regular person. So when you come to see, like the first show I ever saw was ZZ Top, right? I saw ZZ Top when I was 12, I think, at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. And there are these gods on stage, and they have lasers, and all that's cool and stuff. But after their show's gone, poof, they're gone. They're disappeared. They're these magical creatures. These exalted, creative types that are rather otherworldly.

In the punk rock scene, you go see the bands that you like, and then you want a t-shirt, and you go to the merch table, and the bass player's selling the t-shirt. Right, right, sure. Yeah, the drummer's loading the equipment. So there's this sort of... purposeful erasing of the barrier between audience and performer and that's the world I come from and as my band got bigger and bigger and bigger and I'm not in a punk rock band I'm in a metal band with

punk rock roots in parts so I'm not in a strictly punk rock band as the band gets bigger and it goes away from the sort of home croc touring environment and stuff and you actually start making a living and stuff and being able to support family there's this strange guilt thing It's a strange thing. In some ways, I think it's good because people could be a bit more conscious. About, I think, the things that they view as valuable or things to aspire to. Being a super rich dude.

Does not interest me. I can relate. It does not interest me. I'm not allergic to making money. Don't get me wrong. But having money for the sake of having money to sit around and buy designer things is zero interest.

it doesn't seem like a worthwhile goal. No. At all. No. And that is not something that I aspire to. And I think with the youth once again and social media and influencers and all that stuff you gotta have this you gotta have this no you don't that doesn't say anything about your worth as a person And you don't need to have money to have worth as a person or the latest Jordans or the fanciest car or any of that crap. You don't need that.

You're a good person no matter what you own. So in a sense, I think Punk Rock Guild is good in that it makes you keep it real and not forget where you come from. But in the other sense, it can be counterproductive. Because punk rock guilt, the reason why I write about it is because I have a reforestation project in Ecuador. And I bought this property at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when things had gone just sideways in my life personally and for everyone. It was a nightmare.

And my job had disappeared because I am a glorified traveling black cotton. salesman. That's how musicians make their money. T-shirts. Black cotton salesman? Okay. That's right. Black cotton. I'm a black t-shirt salesman. The taxes say musician. In reality, I'm slinging merch. So, I bought this. Catalan. What's a Catalan? Catalan. Oh, Catalan. Pardon my southern name. Catalan. Is that like a catamaran? Catalan, boy. Got it. But I bought this because I have...

Ecuadorian friends who are doing a lot of the same things. And I was like, I'll just make my money back once I go back on tour. But that didn't happen! So I didn't go back on tour because COVID. And we live in Richmond, Virginia, where expenses are not what they are, although it's gotten much more expensive in, say, Los Angeles or New York or wherever. Cost of living is comparatively doable. But even not making any money, I need to make this money back somehow.

And this company, Cameo, who, quote unquote, celebrity greetings, which I don't think of myself as a celebrity at all. They had been bothering me for years. You need to do this. You need to do this. And other friends of mine had done it. One of my buddies did it to pay his back taxes.

I finally, I'm like, okay, I need to make my money back. I don't have any other way of making money right now. And I don't know when my job is going to come back. I better start singing some happy birthday. Yeah, exactly. One reason why I didn't do it is because punk rock killed. For so long. Who do you think you are? Do you think you're Elvis? The dudes in Black Flag never sang Happy Birthday for $20. I also used it for charitable purposes.

I raised money for respirators in India at the beginning of COVID-19 because our guy who books us in India. And another girl I know. They're burning bodies on the sidewalk outside. So gross. That's post-apocalyptic. Yes. post-apocalyptic and sent me videos and I got video of

people on fire on the sidewalk because it's wild. Ecuador was a crazy place, man. Isn't that where they shot the presidential candidate and then the TV station got taken over by gangsters? That was like a Batman movie. Sadly, yes, they did. This is cartel activity. and Ecuador, which was formerly known as Isla de Paz, I believe that's how you say in Spanish, island of peace, in between Colombia and... Peru, I think. Two big cocaine-producing nations. Ecuador was not part of that.

And over the last... few years it's gotten worse since I've been there the cartels have moved in also the Colombian crime syndicates who are producing the cocaine because it's a shipping lane they aren't really producing cocaine there but it's become a really valuable shipping win, and also the Armenian mafia. Very strange. That's a weird joke. Very strange. Armenian mafia, Colombian crime groups, and Mexican cartels are there, and it is now a contested...

shipping lanes. So there's violence. It's gotten a little bit better recently. They had a young president come in who did some no-nonsense like El Salvador type of stuff. I'm just going to arrest everybody. Yes, that kind of stuff, which is bothersome for human rights, but The other thing is that my friends there, dude, like, bodies hanging from bridges. Scary. And the cartels did come into the national TV station during broadcast and with guns to tell the politicians to leave us alone or out.

That was crazy. People should look this video up. It literally is, oh, is this a Batman movie trailer? No, no, no, no. It's very real. And the last time I was there, one of my homies was driving me and my girl. to a village where I have some property, a surfing spot. We were getting on the outskirts of the village, and I saw a motorcycle accident on the side of the road, and people were gathering around. I'm like, honey, don't look. This is...

going to be bad. Motorcycle accidents are not pretty. We get up closer and I look and this man was laying on top of his motorcycle. That's not how motorcycle accidents happen. We get a little bit closer, back of his head is blown off. So they know me there. I ask some questions of people and they're like, he was handled. He was a bad person. And the locals... Oh, I see.

Just one of those where nobody saw anything. Yeah, that's right. He got handled. And that's how it is there. But it wasn't like that, man. It's gotten better now. But the cocaine trade has made it bad, man. Friends of mine. Not good things happen. Not good things happen so people can...

set up snorting crap and talking insincere shit all night long. And I've done enough Peruvian marching powder to keep this whole block of Los Angeles awake for a year. So I'm not an angel. Gotcha. But I've seen the human cost of this up close. And people need to think about that. It's hard to ethically wrap your mind around that. And now you get a... single grain of fentanyl in there and you're dead.

So it's not worth it anymore. Dude, I have friends who are dead because I'm in the music business and I'm not seeing people still party and... Look, man, stick to your MDMA or whatever. You can't trust anything now. You can't trust anything. Because I loved pills. So did my guitar player, Mark. He's six years clean and sober now. Wrote a book about it. I'm not talking out of school, but he got real bad on opiate.

Luckily, I quit before this happened, but now there's counterfeit prescription pills. That's really scary. They have their own pill presses and it's fentanyl. It's not even all drug addicts. I read an article about this. It'll be like... Let's say that you don't have healthcare, you're an undocumented person or something like that, and you are existing off the good graces of your grandkids who are giving you $100 a month, so you get your prescription for your back pain.

This is $300. Oh, no, there's a guy down the block that sells it for $50. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it looks the same, so why not? But it's counterfeit. Juan's making it in the kitchen, and it's got a gram of Fentanyl is mixed in with a thousand grams of a real whatever. Or it was fentanyl diluted so that you could take it orally. Oops, I misread the dosing and the decimals moved over one place. Good night, grandma. You know, when people go to get cocaine and stuff, and I was asking. Why is there...

Fentanyl and the cocaine. Why? That makes no sense. Cocaine makes you go up. And someone's like, oh, to make it more addictive. And I'm like, I don't think that really makes it. Just an accident. Just sloppy. Sloppy mixing. And sometimes machines, they use that to process fentanyl. They're not going to clean their pill press in a way that's sterilizing it. And they're just going to.

throw the cocaine in after the fentanyl and oh well the first batch is a little gross whoopsie but whatever yeah typically somebody making drugs in their kitchen is not going to be the most terrible conscientious supplier of our medical devices pharmaceuticals

Man, you said you look at everything in your life as building blocks for a potential song, as fuel for a creative reality. What's that process like? Do you have an example of like, oh, I'm going to make a song out of this particular... thing that I saw or learned sure when I was in the Czech Republic waiting trial I love history and I learned a lot about the history of the Czech Republic during World War II. further in and it was Czechoslovakia then.

Then through the communist era. Did they let you read in there and stuff? What did you do in prison? I finally got some English books. I wrote a lot before no English books. I read my insurance card like a million times over. That was really cool. And then my lawyer finally brought me some English books. But no, I did not do much. I worked out and read and wrote. But anyway, World War II, the Nazis obviously invaded and took over, and the...

Only, I think, high-ranking Nazi official to be assassinated happened in Prague. And his name was... Reinhard Heydrich, I think that was his name. He was known as the Butcher of Prague. Oh yeah. And there was a... group of Czech and Slovakian dudes who had gone to England. They'd already been out fighting by the time the Nazis took over, so they were in England when the Nazis took over. They trained up in Scotland.

guerrillas and paratroopers, special forces. They parachuted back into a Nazi-occupied Czech, went into Prague. And then two of them made an assassination tip on Reinhard Heydrich as he was driving his car to butcher a Prague. And one of them's machine gun jammed, the other one threw a grenade. and it went off beneath Heydrich's car, and they thought they hadn't gotten him, but they did because the upholstery had horsehair in it. The shrapnel pushed horsehair into Heydrich's blood.

And poisoned him. He got sepsis. And he died. He didn't die right away. No, he died. So this group of paratroopers go into hiding. And eventually they wind up hiding in this basement of a church. in a crypt where they buried people and they get ratted out. I can't remember. I think one of them turned and ratted him out. And so for a full 24 hours, something like seven dudes held off. 14.

100 Nazi stormtroopers or 900. They had to flood them out eventually. The Nazis came to the church. They held them up with guns, eventually retreated to the crypt. They were trying to flood them out. They were throwing grenades down there and stuff. Finally, at the end, they ran out of bullets. They tried to dig out through a tunnel into the sewers. They couldn't do that. And finally, they only had a few bullets left, so they shot themselves. This was known as Operation.

Anthropoid. There's a movie called Anthropoid you can watch And you can go into the basement of that church and you can see where they were trying to dig out. And you can see the bullet holes inside of it. Wow. But these were hard men. Yeah. They knew they were going to die. Suicide mission, that's crazy. Yeah, but they went and touched the great butcher of Prague. They're like, ha, we're here. And they gave the Czech people hope.

Even though the Nazis did bad reprisals, they wiped a whole village out of existence. Killed several thousand people. But I wrote a song called Anthropoid. And it's written from the perspective of those dudes. in the basement of the church waiting to die.

that's an interesting way to look at you said once you start to view your life this way things begin to appear very differently in that everything is fuel for a song just how a skater views an urban environment very differently than a non-skater does which i thought was a really good analogy

I'm a lifelong skater. I'm mostly surfing, but I look everywhere. I was doing it yesterday. I saw a bank. I was like, oh, that looks good. Yeah, that's a really cool way to look at things. I always wonder how people get inspired to... write songs when i hear an interesting story it's a pretty easy straight line to would this person make a good interview yes and i just get that story other stories other elements of their life it's not that hard but you're creating essentially

ear-splitting poetry about something that's historical, right? Or something that happens in my life. I never know. I think that is one of the main building blocks of being an artist is just being a noticer. Just noticing something that everybody else might pass by and shining light on it. That's what art is. You described the artistic writing process as boxing with yourself. What do you mean by that?

I mean, when I'm sitting down to write, particularly at the beginning of the process of every day before I develop any sort of flow and get into it, I'm sitting there like... Oh my god, I have to find something worth saying. I have to express this in a sentence that will not make me sound like an idiot. Or a cliche. When I'm working on a book, yes. And lately, more and more, I've been on this book tour averaging.

five hours of sleep on this tour because a lot of that sucks that's a lot of flying and then speaking two and a half hours every night i could not do that so i there hasn't been the room to write but as soon as i get done with this i've been feeling the need to do it But I think people have a misconception about writing that people sit down and write. They're immediately spilling out these beautiful sentences. Yeah. And it's everything is.

Just perfect. Hemingway just sat down and does this. Yeah, this typewriter. Ryan Holiday talks about this, right? He said, write 10 shitty pages a day. 100%. 100%. Pressfield, genius. His book, War of Art. Great book. Don't know him, but shout out to you, Steven Pressfield. And I mentioned him at the book. But for me, it's really about trying to punch above my weight intellectually.

And stylistically, I'm trying to write above and beyond my capabilities. I really am. And I think good writers do that. Not everybody sits around and speaks profound thoughts.

Tell me about it. Tripping off the tongue effortlessly. If they did my job, it would be a lot easier. Not everybody does that. And I think also, I think that's... rather indicative of everybody's need to share everything all the time like dial it back maybe you'll say some smarter shit if you think about it a little bit so like that's what writing is for me it's a process if I have a thought about

your watch and it reminds me of the way a wave breaks and i want to write a poetic paragraph about it i just don't sit down and harbinger's watch curled to the left like the way i would like to surf and it doesn't come out perfectly i have to write and think and look for a path to make it beautiful. What kept you going in the early days when basically nobody cared about your music at all? Nobody paid attention. You guys are on stage. People are just like...

Now's a good time to pee and get a drink while these, whoever this is, finishes up. We want to make music. We didn't start making music for other people, and I say this again and again. Internal motivation, basically. Yes, again and again. We make music for the five dudes in Lamb of God. And it's wonderful that we have fans.

And it's wonderful that they have provided us with this living, which is beyond my wildest dreams. And it's wonderful that our music helps people and it brings them joy. It's all that is great. But that's not the reason why we make music. We make music because we are musicians. And there is a need to express yourself through that chosen medium.

That's why I write, I hear songs all the time, just like I see pictures or think about possibilities for stories. It goes back to seeing things through the eyes of an artist. I can still remember things from prison that I want to put rhythmically into songs. Oh, that's interesting. When I think of things and don't write them down, and I can't remember them later, that is painful for me. I hate that feeling. Yeah.

I can still hear when they would do inspections, they'd bring a stick and they'd come in and you had your metal locker and they would go. And it'll go clink, clink, clink, clink with the stick across the spines on the frame of your bed. So it's always boom, clink, clink, boom, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink. And really echoey, a lot of natural reverb in this prison. I can still hear that.

And I want to put that rhythmically into us. Oh, I see. That's fascinating. This basement prison was made out of stone and stuff, right? This is so... Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like you're in a castle dungeon type situation. That's spooky. That's pretty gross. Yeah. You say in the book, expect to be mocked as an artist. Expect for people to root for you to fail. Never give a crap about anyone's opinion who isn't successful at what you are trying to do.

That's pretty wise, although it's got to be hard to not care about people's opinions. It's taken me 18 years, and I still get reviews, and I'm like, this person is 15 years old, but they're like, I hate your show. And I'm like, I don't take it personally, but it's still in there somewhere. Sure, it's in there. So when you put yourself into something, whether artistic or any project, and someone just poo-poos it,

for no reason because people are dicks. Yeah. Particularly online. On the internet. It's removed this impulsive thought filter. That's what I call it because in real life The impulsive thought filter is there because you might get punched in the mouth if you say some dumb shit. face that negative body language where you've made someone sad and you go, oh, that wasn't nice of me. I've seen that in some conversations on the internet before where someone actually bothered to write back, hey,

That hurt my feelings. Why are you doing this? And a person would respond. I'm just having a bad day. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry about that. But don't take that out on me. So that impulsive thought filter is not there.

That being said, when you put something out, like you put yourself in this, I put out a song or something, if someone doesn't like it and they're just poo-pooing it out of nowhere, there's a little sting. Yeah. There's a little sting, but the way I look at it is it... I come from a band where we were playing on the floor. squats in basements and in bars and stuff. If you've never had a beer bottle thrown at your head while someone yells, you suck.

That puts things in perspective, okay? That's a little bit more real life than I don't like your show on Instagram or whatever. And also, I can't remember. who said this, I've read it a few times recently, why would you pay attention to someone commenting if they're a person you wouldn't take advice from? That's a good point. And I think about the people I would take advice from that I value as... friends, advisors, mentors.

none of those people would ever go on the internet and talk shit. No. And so the trolls and the thoughtless people, I think they're really ultimately only damaging themselves. Because they're unable to deal with conflict in the real world. That's a really good observation. What's this about being caught in a riot in Asia? Oh. I've had a few riots over the years. You can pick any riot you want. I just chose the answer. We were in Thailand.

And we were in Bangkok and there was the red shirts protest, I believe that was going on. What is that? I don't even know what that is. Thailand is a monarchy. And the king and queen of Thailand are very revered. The new king is a weird dude. This was the old king. He was well respected. You don't talk smack on the king or the queen. I have friends. expatriates who live in Thailand. I met them in Bangkok. And when they referred to something weird the king was doing, they called him Elva.

Or if they're like, we don't like that Elvis did this, they don't want anybody to know that they were talking about the king. I see. It's real serious there. Yeah. So... There was some political strife going on to where these people had come into Bangkok, into the financial district, I guess, and had taken it over. and they were drawing buckets of human blood. People were donating blood, and they were throwing it on, I think it was the prime minister's house or something, just buckets.

Gross. In protest, and they were there for like a month. Man. And we landed. In the middle of all this. And I'm like. Very metal scene. Blood everywhere. What's going on? Was Gwar here before us? What's going on? Exactly. Dear friends of ours. And they were still peaceful. It was peaceful. Then we went on stage that night.

And two minutes before we went on stage, the government had enough of these protesters who had taken over all of downtown Bangkok. And they were like, okay, martial law is in effect. and you got to go home or you're going to go to jail. And nobody left our show. We played the show, whatever. And so then I, to my friends, I'm like, I want to go downtown and see what's happening.

They're like, are you sure? Can't get enough of foreign prisoners. This is before I went to the other one. I'm like, yeah, I want to go down there, man. I want to see what's going down. And I went down there. All these people were gearing up and they had homemade armor and like all this crazy stuff. And I got pictures with several of these people. They gave me a red headband for their cause or whatever. They're like, oh, wow. I have it somewhere at home. And then it started kicking off.

As I was leaving, it wasn't too bad the first night, but as we were flying... Out the next day, all of a sudden, like, 37 people were dead. Oh, jeez. Including an American, I think, Japanese journalist. The cops just... Oh, my God. So it popped off real hard. Man, you guys go to some crazy...

I looked you up a little bit. You've managed to get in a little trouble ever since. We are those outcasts, man. Oh, you don't like sports? How about some reading? How about go to another country and get arrested? We have a lot in common, actually. We sure do. And thanks for coming in, man. I appreciate it. It was a lot of fun. All things Randy Blythe will be in the show notes at JordanHarbinger.com.

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