Lithium Magazine spoke to LAMB OF GOD‘s sticksman Chris Adler the other day and they spoke about a variety of things including the new album ‘Resolution‘, the meaning behind the band’s lyrics, political views and Randy standing for US president (see here for more info). You can read an extract from the Lithium interview below:

Mike: Resolution certainly shows Lamb of God progressing as musicians. I feel like Wrath and Resolution rank amongst your best work, and not the other way around. You are putting out progressively better albums and resting so heavily on your laurels.

Chris: Well, thank you very much for that. There was definitely a concerted effort to be better musicians. Going into Resolution, that was very much in our minds. Not that we could just rest on our laurels, but that we really wanted to try and come up with an album that could break that barricade with our older fans. Even for me, the bands that I love; I love their first few albums and then they seem to trail off somewhere that I just don’t understand. And I think this may have a lot to do with the time in my life that I caught onto the band and maybe for the bands in question, the things they meant to do in their beginnings weren’t how they wanted to be in their later albums. There is evolution in everything, really.

For us, I wanted to try and create something meaningful. I pushed the guys and they pushed me throughout this recording to make something that a fan COULD say, “Oh yeah, I love that band. Their seventh album is the best one.” That’s a pretty daunting task considering what we have done before – six records that we are all very proud of as a band. There are very few things that we would go back and change about those older albums, so when you have something already that you really like, the question really becomes, “How do you improve on it?”

We were starting at a pretty high spot for this album. It was tough to do and it took us a little while to do. There were some hurdles for us all to jump on Resolution. Being friends, we were able to talk to each other like, “That’s a great riff, bro, but it sounds like something we would have done on this record or that record. How can we bring this forward into something that is even pushing you as a musician?” That was very much on our minds throughout Resolution.

Mike: Interesting. We talked by phone at the end of the touring cycle for Wrath, and I can remember you saying that you felt that if the material for the seventh album wasn’t shaping up to be something exciting, then you weren’t real interested in doing the album. You wanted it to be a challenge and a step forward even before you started to write it.

Chris: Absolutely. I didn’t want to be one of those bands that just did a maintenance album. I know we could have done that now and just made a placeholder album. We could have even just not done new records at all and just opted to tour until we are too old to do so anymore…we COULD do that, but I don’t want to be that kind of band or that kind of musician.

I want to be innovative. I don’t want to repeat myself. At the end of the day, when I’m talking to my kids or my family, and I am retired or whatever…even if we had to cut it short after Wrath or after Sacrament, I would want to know that our body of work didn’t get compromised by that notion; that we could do something less just to keep Lamb of God going.

Click here to read the full interview.

Point your mouse in this direction to pick up a copy of LAMB OF GOD’s new album ‘Resolution’.