With LAMB OF GOD‘s new album WRATH due out later this month (23rd FEBRUARY to be exact) more and more folks are checking in with the guys to get the lowdown on the album and the bands upcoming touring schedule.

KNAC.COM spoke to guitarist Mark Morton recently about the tour with Metallica, the upcoming tour plans and the album itself:

KNAC.COM: Since this is your fifth album, and the last two have done pretty well, do you have any aspirations for the new one to get you “to the next level,” as everyone likes to say?

Morton: (laughs) With us it ends with writing and recording the songs and being satisfied with them creatively. First of all, a band like us, we’re not a hit single band, we’re not a radio band, we don’t necessarily expect to top the charts or anything like that. Our last album had an amazing first week, #8 I believe on the Billboard chart, and was nominated for a Grammy and all these wonderful accolades, that was fantastic. But those things happening are out of our hands. So we don’t have any expectations there.
Furthermore, in this day and age, the record industry is in a free-fall, as is the economy in general (laughs), and it’s getting easier and easier for people to steal albums than buy them. So my expectations were that the five of use would write some killer songs and make a really, really exciting recording with them, and those expectations were reached, in fact they were surpassed. So from there I’m just excited to turn it loose on people and give the fans some new music and give the band an excuse to go around the world a couple times and play the songs in front of people.

KNAC.COM: Did you go into this album with any kind of game plan, or does spontaneity work better for you guys?

Morton: We went in knowing that we wanted to strip things down a bit on a production level. Our last album was very epic sounding, and that worked for that record, but as kind of a rebound to that we really wanted to strip it down and get it back to the raw roots and aggression. And that sort of led into the songwriting and we had a lot of fun writing this record, we decided this would be kind of a free-for-all, do whatever we want record, and it was very collaborative. There was really very little competition, or tug of war, some of those things that sometimes arise among the group when you’re writing a record that are a natural part of being a band. There’s always some of that, people have different visions of how songs should flow, it’s always hard to get five people on the same page all the time. With Sacrament there was a whole lot of that, and you see some of that on the DVD [Walk with Me in Hell].
This time we were all at a stage where we felt like we really should have fun writing a record, being at home for a year with our families, sleeping in our beds, working on our music, and just enjoying that moment, and I think we did. It’s a really rowdy bunch of songs, it’s the sound of us having fun.

KNAC.COM: It certainly doesn’t sound like you were looking to make any radical changes?

Morton: We chose what came the most natural. In the past few years there have been a few situations where we found ourselves a little stretched out, a little bit like wondering whether or not this certain approach or sound was the right fit. Sometimes we took risks that worked and sometimes we took risks that didn’t work as well, and this time we just wanted to do what felt that most natural. If that meant stripping it down, making it little more raw and getting more in your face, then that’s what it would be. It was the time to do what we wanted, not that we didn’t before, but more than ever before, and reconnect with the reason why we started doing this in the first place. And that’s what we did.

CHECK OUT THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE.

LOG tour dates (complete with buy online links) HERE

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