Over the years I have seen good music DVDs and bad music DVDs, but I cannot say I have seen a lot of music DVDs. Lamb of God's latest DVD, released this past July, falls in the good category. It may even be a great DVD. Whatever it is, it is an absolute must have for Lamb of God fans, and fans of heavy music in general. I went into it not sure what to expect, only to find it a fascinating look inside a metal band on the rise.

I must admit to not being a huge Lamb of God fan. It is not that I don't like them, I just have had little exposure to them. What I have heard, I really like. My first experience with them came by complete accident. It was a few years ago at a concert, I do not remember who. CDs were for sale, I blindly bought one thinking it was for a band playing that night, it turned out to be a copy of As the Palaces Burn.

It was a pretty wild disk. I was suitably impressed, but paid them no more mind. A few years later, Sacrament comes out and the band seemingly blows up and rises to to the top of what I have read is called the New Wave of American Metal, although that sounds more like marketing buzz more than anything else. Still, I took my time getting a copy of Sacrament; I shouldn't have. It is an excellent collection of metal tunes put down by guys who know what they are doing. I guess you could call me a fan at this point, but I still wasn't going out to get their other releases (at least not yet).

Sometime later, I believe it was last year, I received a drumming DVD featuring performances and talk from a couple of award winners, Jason Bittner from Shadows Fall and Chris Adler from, you guessed it, Lamb of God. This opened me up to something else, paying a lot more attention to drumming, and to the eloquence with which Adler presents himself. I am not one expecting metal musicians to be dumb brutes, but Adler carried himself with a lot of humility and intelligence, and I found him to be an interesting person.

Fast forward to now, I have Walk With Me in Hell in my hands and I have watched both disks of this expansive set. What I have witnessed is nothing short of excellence. It is not the music, it is not even the people, it is the insight which we are given into the lives of these five men, musicians, friends, and family.

You see, this DVD is not a collection of on the road videos, nor is it a concert DVD, it is an actual documentary. This is no Voluminal (Slipknot) nor is it Volume 1 (Mushroomhead), this is an actual documentary.

The two-disk set kicks off with the centerpiece, a two-hour documentary that takes you inside the band and on the road during the build up to Sacrament and on through the aftermath. The timing of the DVD is a little odd, considering the high regard the band has coupled with the fact that this happened two years ago. Still, it could be seen as a nice placeholder until a new album comes.