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.
Article comments