While the Randy Blythe/Lamb of God situation still continues to play itself out, guitarist Willie Adler has checked in with a statement, saying the band hope to have Randy out of jail in Prague this afternoon. He also stated that he didn’t remember the incident happening.
“It’s been a rough couple of days. All I can say is that I can’t recall that particular show let alone a fan being beaten on the stage. I think I would’ve noticed something like that considering the Dime thing.”
We’re all still here in the Czech Republic awaiting what is to happen. We hope we’ll be able to get Randy out this afternoon. All our thoughts are with him as well as the family of the deceased fan. We’ve no real clue as to what happened to him, but we send our condolences. All we try to do is entertain; the fans are why we’re here. We would never try and harm anyone.”
While nothing’s been announced yet, it would be assumed that even if Blythe is freed from jail today, Lamb of God won’t be making it to the With Full Force in Germany. They’re also expected to play Helsinki, Finland on Sunday, July 1.
[Update] Police spokeswoman Jana Rosslerova tells the Associated Press that there won’t be ruling on whether or not Blythe will be allowed to leave prison until tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon. He was allegedly arrested on Wednesday. Rosslevora said the police believed that Blythe “injured a person who consequently died.” Hopefully some more clarity will come with tomorrow’s ruling.
[via Blabbermouth]
Headbangers’ Brawl is a weekly column where Metal Insider’s contributors take a moment to debate and analyze two opposing sides of a topical issue occurring in the world of metal and/or the music industry.
As you probably know by now, the Metal Insider crew had a blast last weekend at Metallica’s inaugural Orion Music & More. And in case you didn’t know that, then you have some major catching up to do by reading our recaps for day one and two. However, just because we think the festival was a success doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a sure thing that it’ll return for another year. So with that in mind, Bram, Kodi, and Zach debate whether or not Orion will become a regular part of our Summer in this week’s Headbanger’s Brawl. Read more »
It’s been a few months since we’ve discussed Mötley Crüe, mainly because since their tour with Poison was already announced to much fanfare (thanks Supreme Court blog!) and frontman Vince Neil’s Las Vegas strip club finally opened. But just when you think they’ve quieted down, the band pop up to prove just how idiotic they can be, specifically Neil and drummer Tommy Lee.
First off, not content with picking up DUIs on the ground, Vince Neil will be getting his pilot’s license. Neil’s flight training is part of Sennheiser’s “Live Your Dream” campaign and will be part of the PBS show The Aviators this fall. Not living his dream is Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley, the Hanoi Rocks drummer who lost his life in a 1984 car accident in a car Neil was driving. He’s been caught driving drunk two times since then, but apparently, the bar isn’t set all that high for pilots. I’m just saying, given the choice between having Bruce Dickinson or Vince Neil as my pilot, the choice is clear.
And then there’s Tommy Lee. As one of the most popular drummers in rock and roll, you’d think that he’s used to the spotlight and has mastered the art of being in it. You’d be wrong. In an open letter on Facebook, Lee lambasted his fans that might want to get a picture taken with their idol.”I certainly don’t owe anybody anything,” he said in the lengthy post. “When I bought all my Led Zeppelin records and concert tickets, I didn’t say, ‘One day these fuckers are gonna owe me a picture.’ It’s the least they can do for me!…”
Sorry Tommy, but you can’t have it both ways. First of all, as an impressionable Zeppelin fan, if he had an opportunity to get his picture taken with the band, of course he would have done it. Lee is fortunate enough to have been in the spotlight for three times as long as Zeppelin was a band, and he’s likely inspired countless people to pick up a pair of sticks, not to mention plenty of female fans that want to go where Pamela Anderson and Heather Locklear have gone before. In short, because he’s a highly visible 50 year-old millionaire, he totally owes anyone that’s been a fan of his and supported him throughout his career a picture. Sure, there’s a time and a place, but no one’s asking him to be visible, they’re just asking him not to be a douchebag.
Novinky.cz, the Czech news source that broke the news that Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe was arrested yesterday on manslaughter charges in Prague, says the singer could face 5-10 years in prison for his alleged involvement in an incident that left a fan dead. “For bodily injury resulting in death under section 146, paragraph 4 of the criminal code threatens Blythe five to ten years in prison,” the site says.
The band’s PR company, Adrenaline PR, issued the following statement:
Lamb of God Management will be issuing an official statement on Monday regarding the charges made against singer Randy Blythe. As no formal charges have yet been made and the case is only in the investigation stages, it would be premature to make an official statement filled with false truths or innuendos.
Having said that, management wished to address today one false piece of information that has been included in many of the news stories released so far. Under no circumstances was there a fight of any kind involved. This incident deals with a fan that three times during the concert jumped the barricade and rushed Randy during the performance. It is alleged that the third time, security was not able to reach him and that Randy pushed him back into the audience where supposedly he fell and hit his head.
Again, until the investigation is concluded this weekend, nothing more will be released, but clarity and the facts needed to be addressed on this one reported point which is totally inaccurate.
Mark Blythe,” Randy’s brother, told Richmond’s WTVR that the charges are “Bogus and outgageous and will be dropped immediately. Tomas Fiala from Czech booking agency Obscure Promotion calls the altercation “an unfortunate incident,” and says they’ll be preparing a statement.
According to WTVR, “those who know the band heard the intruder may have been struck with a microphone before the security team forced him from the stage.” Sources say that the fan died of a brain hemorrhage several weeks later in a hospital. Novinky points out that the club the band was playing, Abaton, usually has a barrier preventing fans from getting on stage. We’re obviously not legal experts, , but it seems to us like the club might also be at fault for this unfortunate incident. There’s a degree of self defense involved here, and if a fan jumps onstage, they should expect to be removed. There are still a lot of details to be sorted out, but we’d hope that Blythe’s legal team is working on this, and are hopeful that the truth comes out.
Well, this is upsetting. When we first heard the news yesterday about Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe being arrested on manslaughter charges in Prague over an incident that happened in 2010, we were skeptical about it for several reasons. First of all, the incident wasn’t really described in any detail. Also, wouldn’t there have been footage of the incident, given all the videos from the 2010 show that are online? Well now, there’s an eyewitness account corroborating that something took place at least. The Gauntlet uncovered a Czech blog, Sicmaggot, that spends a paragraph talking about the incident. This is translated, so it’s a little spotty:
Randy behaved exactly as I expected from him. Fucker, who pisses on everybody. This was confirmed by several pretty fired up fans. Very bothered when someone decided to visit the podium. Maybe the first one got hit by Randy quite a bit, who jumped after him and held him down while he continued singing. When the fan got up Randy took him by the hair and threw him down quite quickly. It was a good thing the gentleman was so dazed that felt nothing. The second but ended up a shade worse, a little longer wrestled with it to get your breath back. That’s enough to Randy , does behave quite pretentious, but the performance was important.
There’s no further account of what happened. If indeed the above happened and the fan died as a result of it, you would think that the band, the show’s promoter and others would know about it and have either dealt with it beforehand or, if they were trying to avoid prosecution, skip Prague. Last night, Lamb of God’s twitter account tweeted “Free Randy Blythe.” We’re not sure what extradition processes are like in Czechoslovakia, so there’s no word on Blythe’s release yet. The band are scheduled to begin a North American tour with Dethklok and Gojira starting on August 1.
According to Czechoslovakian news source Novinky.cz, Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe has been arrested in Prague and charged with manslaughter over an incident that took place in 2010. The band had been set to play tonight in Prague at a venue called Rock Cafe with Skeletonwitch and All Shall Perish. The show is still taking place, and will go on without the headliner.
According to Novinky, a fan got onstage at a Lamb of God show on May 24, 2010, and got involved in a physical altercation with Blythe, and later succumbed to his injuries. The spottily-translated article reads as such:
“We have arrested singer year 1971, which was accused of a crime of bodily harm in the 4th paragraph, thus resulting in death, “said Prague police spokeswoman news Kropáčová Eve with the fact that the police will be more things to say.”
Metal Sucks, who originally reported the news stateside, points out that there are a lot of videos online from the show, none of which appear to show the incident happening. Furthermore, if or when someone was attacked by Blythe, judging from all the clips online from the show, you’d think that any altercation would have been captured on film and on the internet within minutes of it happening. Lamb of God’s longtime publicity firm Adrenaline PR commented that Blythe has been “wrongfully accused, lawyers are dealing with it, and we expect him to be fully exonerated.” Obviously, this is developing, and we’ll continue to bring you news as it happens.
Why should major label bands be the only ones who get love? Unsigned & Streamed is a column where we stream a song from an unsigned band we at Metal Insider really dig.
This week on Unsigned & Streamed, we’re proud to expose Unkempt as they cut a swath of death and destruction through the swamps of Florida. Formed in Lakeland, FL in 2002, Unkempt started breaking loose in 2006 with the first of three independent releases, helping them grow into an intimidating local presence in the Tampa-area metal scene. The band has played in a supporting role on the Summer Slaughter Tour and Thrash and Burn Tour, gracing the stage with everyone from old-school death stalwarts Obituary and Six Feet Under to the new guard of American metal in Darkest Hour and Whitechapel. Unkempt’s lethal combination of harmonized dual-guitar leads and extreme aggression holds a lot of similarity to A Celebration of Guilt-era Arsis, with a touch of both their region’s famous deathly brutality and Between the Buried and Me’s progressive song construction. Now that we’ve thoroughly teased you, check out their latest song “Pigs Get Fat, Hogs Get Slaughtered,” the opening cut from their self-titled four-song EP, after the jump.
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After completing pre-production of their newest tracks, Unkempt will be entering the studio later this summer to unleash a fresh release by the end of the year. You can stream the Unkempt EP and keep up with the band’s latest activites on their Reverb Nation and Facebook pages.
If you’re in an unsigned band and would like to participate in Unsigned & Streamed, email a link to your band’s music and a brief bio to tips [at] metalinsider.com for consideration.
If you’re going to Portland OR’s East End’s Third Annual Block Party on July 8 to see Repulsion, you might want to make alternate plans. The band have pulled out of their appearance due to “an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
House, not boarded up
photo: Jimmy Hubbard
As this past weekend’s Orion Music + More festival kicked off, the first band to play the main stage of the festival was Baroness. The bigger stage was more than a little metaphorical, as their forthcoming album, Yellow and Green (due out July 17 on Relapse), should bring the Savannah, GA band to the next stage of their career. The double album is more experimental and melodic than the band’s first two albums, and should gain them an entirely new audience in addition to the sizable one they already have. Following their performance, Metal Insider contributor Alex Rudisill caught up with guitarist Peter Adams and bassist Matt Maggioni to discuss why Y&G is a double album, why they went worked with producer John Congleton again, and who they were looking forward to seeing at the festival.
What can Baroness fans expect of Yellow and Green?
Peter: Everything on it is a little different than Red and Blue. Yet at the same time, it still is exactly what Baroness does. I guess if I could kinda sum it up, its what we do slightly striped down. We really just took a bunch of riffs. What Baroness does is, here’s a ton of parts all mashed up. Riff, riff, riff, riff, riff. And that way, you’ve cut half of those riffs out and we focus more on the song itself. What does this song need? Does it need a million notes? It doesn’t need that. Some songs do still have a million notes in them. The main difference is vocally, John (Baizley) and I, singing in harmony more. Over the last year, through the writing process and really through the last two years of touring on Blue, we discovered that we know how to sing, at least with each other well enough. We wanted to treat that like another instrument in the band. Its never really been a big focus, in fact its been an afterthought.
Matt: I think its a pretty big expansion of instrumentation all around. We’re progressing vocally and adding some keyboard parts as well.
Peter: Like I said, it was more of like what the song needs. That was how we looked at it. We thought “hey this song could use some keyboards.” We never really did that before where we were like, “man this song needs that!” Maybe we never wrote anything that required another instrument that we felt we needed to add. There’s a few new tricks.
How do you think you guys have progressed as band?
Peter: In touring on Blue, we realized that we were playing these extremely dense sets. All the Red material and all the Blue material was just like pounding it out. What we’ve done to progress in out live set and in our sound in general, we’ve actually given it a little more breathing room. Now our set is a little more dynamic. What we wanted to do was focus on putting it all together.
You returned to John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, The Roots) to produce the new album. Do you think having a producer with more of an indie background affected the production process?
Peter: Absolutely. One thing’s for sure, when we found John to do Blue, we didn’t want a metal producer. We just didn’t want that one volume, total compression, which we could have easily done and it wouldn’t have been a bad thing. There was one record in particular that we could all agree on as a band which was Black Mountain’s In the Future. That record is awesome. Its just amazing: the sound of the drums and that whole atmosphere that John was able to create. It was a toss-up between a few guys and we decided on John. When the discussion came back up about using John again for Yellow and Green, we were all for it. First off, I just wanted to work with someone I was comfortable with. We had so much material and we knew that guy would give it the right treatment.
Why was now the right time for a double album?
Peter: We had a lot of ideas, a lot of things we wanted to do and we wanted to get them all out there now, instead of wait til the next record. We were just on a writing spree from the beginning of last year, starting from January 1, 2011. We just let all the ideas come out and tried not to snuff them out. “Well that’s too mellow or weird.” We wrote all these songs and had all this material so we decided to make a double album. Its something that not a lot of people are doing any more. We get too used to record-tour-record-tour-record. As a band, that’s what we all do. You get into that groove. We had time to write an album and we just wanted time to focus on the music and the record, making it more of a bigger project.
You guys just got done touring with Meshuggah and Decapitated and you toured with Animals as Leaders earlier this year. Do you think you’ll continue to tour with heavier bands?
Peter: We’ve done a lot of support tours over the last two and a half years. We wanna start focusing on our headlining set. We’re gonna go out this summer to Europe, do the festival thing, come back, and start doing our own headlining tour. Right now, there’s nothing in the books. If something awesome comes along, we’ll talk about it.
Is there one date on your European tour you’re most looking forward to?
Matt: I think everybody is pretty excited about Roskilde Fest in Copenhagen.
Peter: Its been around for a long time. My big sister went a long time ago.
Matt: Dour Fest (in Belgium) too.
What does it mean to you to be here today? To have been personally invited by Metallica to play this festival?
Peter: It’s pretty awesome and we got this cool introduction (by Lars)! It is quite an honor to come, be invited and even kick the whole thing off.
What other bands are you trying to see this weekend?
Matt: I really wanna see Roky Erickson, Red Fang and Metallica man! I’m so excited they’re playing Ride the Lightning.
Peter: Oh! I’m gonna see Fucked Up!
Matt: The Black Angels are playing tomorrow. Those dudes rip.
Peter: Torche is playing tomorrow and Sepultura.
Favorite Metallica album?
Peter: Can I just say Kill ‘Em All through …Justice? But most definitely Master of Puppets. That record just does it for me all the way through, every time and it just keeps getting better.
Matt: Favorite song has to be “Battery.” That shit is incredible.
Peter: I’m gonna have to say “One.” Always gives me chills. Always has, always will.
You can’t put a price on the best metal album of the year. Actually, you can, Amazon just did, and it’s a lot less than you might expect. You can buy a download of Gojira’s new masterpiece L’enfent Sauvage for just $5 on Amazon.com. Sure, there’s been a lot of hype around the band, but fans and critics can agree that this has more . It’s currently #3 and rising at metal radio, and Pitchfork just gave it an 8.1. Sure, illegal downloading isn’t going to stop any time soon, but $5 for a legitimate high quality version of the album is a price point that many should be able to pony up, especially for a legitimately great album that will probably find itself at the top of many’s year-end lists.
via [Metal Sucks]
While the Randy Blythe/Lamb of God situation still continues to play itself out, guitarist Willie Adler has checked in with a statement, saying the band hope to have Randy out of jail in Prague this afternoon. He also stated that he didn’t remember the incident happening.
Posted by Bram Teitelman on Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Crime, Updates