Hear & Now: Lamb of God has not been changed by fame

By: Chris Bopst | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: March 24, 2011

The story that hasn't been written about Lamb of God is that they are not idiots. Well, at least not your average heavy-metal idiots. The hedonist extremes they are known for are almost all musical.

What elevates the group above the idiot rebellion most commonly associated with and celebrated by the heavy-metal/hard-rock community is that their success wasn't predicated on any calculated concession to commerce, crass exploitation of mindless indulgence or desire for the adulation of strangers. Lamb of God became successful through tireless effort, commitment and a keen sense of their collective self.

Their success had nothing to do with luck. It had everything to do with sheer force of will.

Not surprisingly, fame has not really changed them outside of having some dough in the bank and not having to work a job when they aren't touring. I can personally attest that they are the same people they were when nobody knew or cared who they were.

Ten years of almost total indifference will do that to you. You become keenly aware of your own intrinsic worthlessness. And that realization, born from their years of playing for peanuts, sleeping on floors and struggling to survive, has served them well.

They know what it took to achieve their success and, as far as I can tell, none of them seems to take it for granted. If you had told anyone in the band (other than drummer/master planner Chris Adler) that one day the band then known as Burn The Priest would release Top 10, Grammy-nominated albums and tour the world with their heroes Metallica and Slayer, they all would have laughed in your face.

Why? Because nobody playing underground metal when the band formed in 1994 did it thinking it would be a good way to make a lot of money and become famous; they played the music for the sole reason that they wanted to play it.

To me, it doesn't get any more Richmond than that.

One of the people who embodied our city's fierce independent streak sadly passed away last week. Page Wilson, singer-songwriter and host of the radio show "Out O' the Blue Radio Revue" on WCVE, shared with Lamb of God a dedication to his craft that bordered on the fanatical.

He didn't call his band Reckless Abandon for nothing.

Though I didn't know him well, it was clear to me that Page was into music for the long haul. Ask anyone who even vaguely knew him. Page was one of the most tireless and thoroughly shameless self-promoters I have ever known. Did I hold that against him? To be honest, sometimes I did, but I never once questioned the sincerity of his commitment or desire, or his unique, enduring ability to genuinely move people with music.

On the radio, he was the ambassador to a world of music most people would probably have never heard if it weren't for his show. That's a rarity these days. Page was a throwback to an era of personality-driven music radio, and listening to him you never doubted his sincere belief in the power of music.

And that's what I will miss most about Page. He had the rare gift to make other people believe in it, too.

To the uninitiated, I can see how drawing a parallel between Lamb of God and Page Wilson would seem odd, but both were conceived from the purest of places: to make music that mattered to them.

It's a musical legacy all of us can be proud of.

Chris Bopst has recorded albums and toured with the Alter Natives, Holy Rollers and Mao Tse Helen, hosted a local radio show, booked and promoted shows, written extensively about music and was a founding member of GWAR. He can be reached at chrisbopst@gmail.com.