The Lowdown: Chris Adler from Lamb of God

I'm lucky enough to catch up with drummer Chris Adler before their show at the Birmingham O2 Academy.

Altsounds: When did you get into the UK?

Chris: We got in yesterday morning. We nearly didn’t make it at all; there was this huge snowstorm right on the east coast where we live which closed the airport for two days prior to us leaving on schedule, which is very unusual. Richmond airport is made of balsa wood and run by hamsters so if it snows at all it closes down, so we’re very lucky.

Altsounds: How long has it been since your last gig? Are you looking forward to getting back on tour?

Chris: We played December 18th in Australia. Yeah, when I woke up this morning I was kinda giddy like a little kid on Christmas Eve, so yeah I’m pretty excited.

Altsounds: Have you changed anything since the last leg of the tour?

Chris: I’ve rehearsed a couple of different songs and hopefully we can change a few things up so it’s not boring. Tonight I think we’ll just try and make sure everybody remembers the songs we were supposed to play and branch out from there. I think we’ve all been individually rehearsing and doing different things so we’re more than ready.

Altsounds: Have you found that different parts of the world enjoy different tracks or albums?

Chris: Well we had a hard time with our label for a long time in Europe. When we were on Sony, they didn’t release our albums in Europe we found out than mainly none of our songs went over very well! That being said, a good song’s a good song and there’s certain songs that stand out on the album that we don’t know really when we go in. We hope they’re all going to be stand out tracks but certain ones stand up a little taller than the others. Those are the ones that people seem to want to hear all the time. Of course there’s the old tunes in the catalogue that people are always yelling for, we try to make sure we do them too.

Credit: Dustin Middaugh

Altsounds: So the change to Roadrunner has been good for you?

Chris: It’s been incredible. Of course, the new record doing as well as it did in the US, Canada and the UK, that word of mouth definitely helped. It’s odd that being our sixth album we’re only now beginning to pick up momentum in Europe when normally it’s the opposite: most metal bands seem to do well in Europe and takes a while in the US. Our story is the opposite.

Altsounds: There wasn’t a weak track on Wrath, how many songs were up for consideration and do they just get discarded?

Chris: Initially I just wanted to play the entire album, from the back. They were all up for consideration absolutely, I think they all still are. We’ve been touring, it feels like for a long time, but the record’s not that old I think anything can still make it’s way into the list at this point. Nothing fell off entirely.

Altsounds: What tracks do you enjoy playing the most?

Chris: 'In Your Words' is a good one. I think it challenges me a little bit. It’s never quite perfect, well maybe once in a while, but not as often as I’d like so I have another crack at it every night that we go at it, it’s a fun song to play. 'Contractor' is fun, it’s fast. Another one that’s more of an album track but I really enjoy playing is 'Reclamation'. It’s a little longer, it’s a little more proggy I guess than the more straightforward songs so it’s more fun for me, more my style. If you said “Hey Chris, go write a Lamb of God record by yourself” it would be a little more progressive.

Altsounds: It was surprising to see in another interview you said that "Wrath" proved that you can still play the way you used to. Could you explain that more?

Chris: What I was trying to say in that was that we’re all aware that we’re not getting any younger and doing this kind of music relies heavily on endurance and being able to do what you do for an extended period of time, and continue to grow, to evolve and get better at what you do. To be able to push yourself, and on this record I felt that I had captured some of what was on our earlier albums that was missing on the last two. On the last two, I felt like as a drummer I created a voice and created a style that was very unique. You’d listen to those records and know it was me playing it, which is what I always admired about great drummers like Stewart Copeland and Billy Cotton. I kind of fell into that style on those records, but I didn’t want to just rely on that, I wanted to keep pushing and get some of that more raw emotion from the earlier albums back into my playing, so that’s what I was going after for "Wrath" and when I’d done tracking I felt I’d accomplished that.

Altsounds: Did the longer gap since the last album affect "Wrath"?

Chris: Yeah, it definitely helped. When we first started getting together with the material, it ebbs and flows. We had a lot of stuff to start with but it wasn’t the best stuff so the waiting process sort of rubs the rust off and the dust off and the songs kept getting better and better. We were writing literally until maybe three days before the drums started recording so it wasn’t really a complete project until we were up against that deadline. We seem to work well under that kind of pressure. Some of the best songs are written last minute in “we need one more, now!” kind of moments. It doesn’t hurt to have more time, but in the same breath, give yourself a couple of years and everybody gets kinda lazy about it. For us, for me anyway, it’s better to have that something on the horizon to try and push yourself.

Altsounds: You’re on tour until at least August, does it affect you knowing what you’re doing so far in advance?

Chris: We’re on tour until October actually. I think a lot of people would be lucky to have something to do until October, we’re all fortunate that we still have this gig and that people still want to hear what we do and that we continue to travel and do it and not lose money. Does it bother me? Not at all. What bothers me is what happens when we’re done with the touring, then I’ve got to sit at home. That isn’t bad, I love my wife and my kids, I’m not trying to complain about that but I’m very motivated to be out here and playing, writing and doing that kind of thing. This is what I love about this job so it’s hard to sit at home.

Altsounds: You’re very accessible to your fans. Are you aware of how important the band is to young metal bands?

Chris: Not really. I guess I see a lot of young bands covering us on YouTube and it always makes me smile to think that somebody thought that much of us to cover our song. I hear it a lot in some of the younger bands that I speak with, like “ah man, you’re the first metal band that I really go into”. It’s hard to really know that. While we’re in it we’re working to a model, trying to make things bigger and brighter for the band. It’s hard to sit back and look at the whole big picture. Recently I have, I’ve been working with the younger bands and some of the guys were in middle school and just starting high school when they first started listening to us so now we’ve been around fifteen years we start to hear those kinds of stories. “I wasn’t even born when your first album came out!” I mean, I guess we’re getting old but it’s nice to know, hearing those stories from people, that we’ve had a bit of an impact on metal music. Not that it was necessarily a goal, but I’m very glad.

Altsounds: Do you think Lamb of God has been affected by current trends?

Chris: Certainly. Me, in particular. I keep up with a lot of things that are going on. The tour that we’re on now, August Burns Red, Between The Buried And Me, Job For A Cowboy. Job For A Cowboy we’ve been out with several times but the first two bands are paving whole entire new roads and I’m listening to stuff like that all the time. Another band from the same place as August Burns Red called This Or The Apocalypse that I’m really hands on with. I’m kind of a freak about new music and I’m constantly listening, constantly picking up stuff so I know that will find it’s way into my playing and our music. The rest of the guys aren't quite as up on the newest things, not that that’s a bad thing. I think most of our musical influence is from things we grew up listening to, but I definitely keep my ears to the ground on the new stuff as well.

Altsounds: The band’s sound hasn’t really softened at all, is that important?

Chris: It’s important to me. I don’t know if it’s important to the overall project but I think when I was growing up listening to metal and when a band got a little bit of success their next album was just never the same as the one you like. Not even just metal bands, a lot of bands follow that route, they have that one successful hit and then the next album all sounds like that. We never really chased the idea of that kinda thing. For me personally, I would rather go out with a really aggressive catalogue than to have softened up at some point along the way and regret it. In the end, I’d rather be a mid-level success story. I’d rather stay there than shoot for something else because we’re good at what we do, the fans that like us like us because we stick to it. There’s really nothing broken in that equation so I don’t want to try and fix it.

Altsounds: What music do you listen to apart from metal?

Chris: Wow. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Police lately. What else have I been listening to? Really a lot of metal. Necrophagia, I’ve been listening to a lot. Decapitated Records. I’m really kind of a big metalhead. I’ve got a little girl so I have to listen to different stuff. I try not to have to listen to kid music, that stuff drives me up the wall but we do a lot of classic rock, David Bowie and that kind of stuff.

Altsounds: When did you start playing drums?

Chris: I started when I was 21. This was the first project I ever tried to play drums to. I’d been playing bass through middle school and high school in different bands, put out a couple of records and did some touring around the US. It was never really a goal of mine as a kid to grow up and play drums but John, our bass player, and I started this project and I’d always wanted to fool around with drums so it was worth a shot.

Altsounds: Have you ever had lessons at any point or are you self-taught?

Chris: No, I haven’t had any lessons yet, other than listening to better drummers than myself and trying to figure out what it is they’re doing and how I can learn from that and incorporate it into my style.

Altsounds: Which drummers do you admire?

Chris: I think the first guy that really defined how I wanted to play was Shannon Larkin who was part of a band called Wrathchild America. He was the metal version of what great drummers in every genre do, like Stewart Copeland, where you create a voice with the instrument that’s not just backing up the rest of the band, where if your part was removed, it would be a significant detriment to the band. That’s not an ego thing, it’s just feeling that your instrument is important to the project and many drummers just sit back and lay down the beat whereas I’m very interested in finding some sort of syncopation or some way to elevate what’s there on the guitar, so the two together are better than one or the other on its own. So Shannon Larkin, there’s this guy who started out in North Carolina called Steve Shelton of was in a band called Confesser that was really great with off-time and crazy cymbal grabs and that kind of thing and I was really impressed by him. It’s interesting because I think a lot of guys only listen to metal and that can really be a detriment to your playing and you can get stuck in a rut, frustrated and not able to grow.

Certainly big influences outside of metal, a guy named Billy Cotton. Stewart Copeland, of course, playing with The Police. John Bonham, playing with more of a rock feel. Those kinds of things, those kinds of influences are the things that help me evolve from other music and build more of a style for myself. I was talking to Gene Hoglan who I think is one of the best, if not the best ever, metal drum players of all time. He told me at one point all he’s doing is playing funk beats really fast. He’s basically a funk drummer that’s incorporated that and made it metal. Those kind of players are celebrated in what we do because they’re open to that kind of thing.

Altsounds: Are there any new, younger drummers you’ve noticed and admire?

Chris: I think Matt in August Burns Red is really great, a kid named Grant McFarland who plays in a band called This Or The Apocalypse. There are guys who are playing absolute ridiculous rings around me right now. Kids that are growing up, writing music on their laptops, sitting down that can play anything, really influenced by Thomas from Meshuggah, where you basically start playing drums by playing polyrhythms which is usually like the end of the lessons. So bands that are starting there and continuing on from there, it’s obviously feeding the evolution of this kind of music. It’s really taking a giant leap forward in the talent of the younger players. It’s fun to watch, it’s fun to listen to the stuff that’s coming out.

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