thanks Katharine, very nice job - what the hell is this church doing owning the Forum anyway?

Ya I dont think this is right, There's bands with worse names that have probaly made that venue. This sucks, Lamb of God is a really good band. They put on a tremendous show. I saw them in vancouver performing with Fear Factory and Children of Bodom. Its a shame thats all I can say..... fÜckin too religious sons of bitches..... "Say who gives a fÜck!!!"

Bringing Billy Graham in? Good question.

Katharine,

I promoted this review to Advance.net. That means I put it here (and these places) where it could potentially be read by another few hundred thousand readers.

- Thank you for the post. Temple Stark

beats me as to why a church owns the Forum. I have to say I find it eight shades of amusing that Lamb of God will be playing here in the heartland but not in L.A.

I only know a little bit about their music, but I like what I have heard, but, if these guys were naive enough to calll themselves Lamb of God and not think they were offending someone, well, they're smarter now, maybe.

It's not like they couldn't find somewhere else in L.A. of all places, to play.

Here's the thing, just because you are offending someone doesn't mean you have somehow revealed a hidden truth and that is why they are offended; it's because you are offensive. In free speech, you can say what you like, and those who disagree can be equally vocal in disagreeing, grow a thicker skin or be less offensive, simple, right?

If the Forum is fully privately owned, they don't have to allow anyone the use of the facilities.

Eric - as to "why the hell does a church own the Forum?", if I had to guess, my guess would be this is one of the newish urban "megachurches" that holds services in giant arenas because those are the only spaces big enough to hold their giant congregations. And so they bought it (or secured a very long-term lease), and it's theirs now.

As to the story in general: Nothing to see here, move along.

This is a publicist, jumping in with both feet to try to fan the flames of controversy, generate some press and make chicken salad out of chicken shit; that is to say, her client has lost a major revenue-producing gig, and she feels like at least there might be some decent press coverage in it.

Which is fine. It's a free country and all that, and God knows (pardon the expression) that I'm not on the side of the self-appointed censors and bluenoses. However, "News flash: even in big cities, the Church Ladies don't like that heavy-metal devil music" isn't much of a story, in my opinion.

No law requires the owners of a private venue to make it available for an act they don't like, and making sure that you've secured good locations for your performance is a basic job for every tour manager.

Bottom line: the band's management chose the site for their LA gig very poorly, and now, to try to salvage the situation, they are trying to seize the moral high ground and get some publicity. It's working, too: a Google News search this morning indicates that 60+ news organizations besides Blogcritics have written stories based on this press release.

interesting angle Barry, but they were part of a package tour so I doubt the band had full control over the venues that were booked. My take would be it the church is going to rent out the venue to metal packages they are pretty obviously taking on more or less all comers and should therefore operate as a venue raher than a "curch-owned" venue. That would seem more consistent to me.

After all the sports teams moved to the Staples Center, selling the Forum to a megachurch was probably a way to keep it from being torn down.

It looks like Motley Crue is playing there in March. I guess that kind of draw buys some tolerance.

I would imagine that the church that meets there on Sunday would be less concerned about a clearly secular act (Motley Crue) appearing there on some other day (it is the Forum, after all!) than a band whose name might suggest that they were somehow related to or associated with the church itself.

In case I wasn't clear: I doubt it is the content of the music to which the church is objecting, it's the choice of religious imagery in the name of the band.

This reminds me of a personal experience - I was part of an excellent quiz team in college called "Mustafa & The Fat Bottomed Girls" - all guys, obviously inspired by Queen (not friends of Dorothy).

We were very very good - won many quizzes, ranked. One quiz in a college, we settled in, took the preliminary set of questions, zipped through them in no time at all, handed them in and went off to browse the other cultural offerings. When the answers were announced, we had scored full marks. You can understand our surprise when our name was not in the list of finalists.

We stormed up and questioned this - we were told our team name was too vulgar. This cracked us up, and it took a lot of cajoling and reference checks before we were allowed to enter the finals as "Mustafa and the FBGs".

Maybe Lamb Of God should go in as LoG

"it's big, it's heavy it's wood
it's lo-ogg, it's lo-og
it's better than bad, it's good!"

E - Give credit where due...

"...By Blam-o!"

I was remiss

Heh, its private property, they can do what they want. Whomever planned the tour was being a bit daft thought, unless of course, they just wanted to make sure the tour got as much publicity as possible. Kinda like when Vader did one of their black metal shows in the Pope's home town and filmed it for TV broadcast.

what a weird venue.

it boggles my mind, honestly.

This is not difficult. If the owners think the band's name is offensive, they have every right to ban it from a performance in their venue. L.A. is a pretty big town. Surely the band can find someplace else?

would be pretty hard to do on such short notice

Bloody
Lamb
Of
God

- all kinds of street-cred.

OK, information superhighway cred.

Someone said booking good venues was the tour manager's job. True. Sounds to me as though due diligence was not done as thoroughly as it could have been.

Has the venue rejected any acts before? Otherwise how would the management know not to book them into that hall?

didn't motley crue play around wit hthe satanic imagery though? Maybe the owners assumed that they were Shouting At The Devil on account of they were mad at him. "Look what you did, the devil! How am i gonna get this cleaned? And in the hall, of all places! I'm dissapointed in you, the devil!"

Maybe that's what it is.

I believe Cradle Of Filth did a show in vatican city, and were all the suprised in the world when their Jesus Is A C**t t-shirts got them in trouble with the law.

Yep Aaron that happened, I believe they were arrested for it too and booted out of VC.

i'd have booted them out for crimes relating to pretentious nonsense.

I have always thought that CoF were rather lame.

First of all, I'm a huge fan and this blows. They are a great band and in their songs, they don't speak things really harmful. Plus they don't do satanic rituals or anything like that.

Second, sorry katherine, but the main reason why they were kicked out is not because they're name is Lamb of God. Because that doesn't sound too bad. It was actually because of what they used to be called. Their name used to be "Burn the Priest". But they changed it a while ago. That is what got those priests mad. I just thought everyone should know that.

Thirdly, they weren't arrested. It was just something that happend. I hope that doesn't happen at the allstate arena. Cause I'm gonna go see them and I wouldn't like for them to be kicked out of that show.

Alex Garcia, thank you for the correction about the name. And, speaking of names, my name is spelled Katharine not Katherine.