Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God has yet to shy away from a tough conversation, even more so in his newest interview with Sam Law of Kerrang! in the UK, as he addresses one of the age-old adage, “keep politics out of music.”
Both Blythe‘s political commentary and people’s distaste of that commentary really came to a head this past January when Blythe published a personal essay to his Substack, Randonesia, that in short all but referred to the Trump administration as one of extremist authoritarianism. In detail? The most notable paragraphs from “All The Horrors Happening Around Us” have been italicised at the end of this article, and it ain’t exactly pretty – but really, is anything anymore?
This caused a racket of people to ruffle their feathers as they regurgitated the same phrase that a majority of the population would now roll their eyes at, saying to keep political commentary away from entertainment. However, this event was only intensified by the fact a few days before Blythe posted his essay, Kerrang! published their first interview with Blythe in which the frontman pretty bluntly voiced his displeasure with the state of the world when prodded about the inspiration for Lamb Of God‘s newest record due out at the end of this week.
So, in this most recent interview with Kerrang!, Law follows up with Blythe about the commentary that’s been circulating since he began using his voice. Blythe tries to wrap his head around the sheer rage that his own comments have made, “How do I rationalise that? I don’t. It’s a fucking cult. Cognitive dissonance is a motherfucker. It’s disheartening to see that for a lot of people it isn’t the point where they will draw the line, but I do believe that a lot of other people do see how truly fucked up all of this is. Also, it’s exposing the levers of power that are being pulled. Once again, those are things I can’t believe are sustainable.”
Ultimately, “to those people, I say ‘Go fuck yourself.’ I’m an American citizen and a world traveler. More than that, I’m a human being. I’m not some dancing monkey put here for your entertainment. If you have any sort of moral compass at all, it’s irresponsible to not exercise your right to speak up. If people are willing to compartmentalize something like a child sex trafficking ring because they think it might better their bank account, they’ve lost a component of their humanity. They’ve lost an integral part of what it is to be a righteous human being. At that point, it’s time to stop and reassess and reevaluate. You’re not going to be able to carry your money into the grave, motherfucker, but you will be able to carry the memories of silently going along with people that enabled child sex predators. How are you going to feel about that on your deathbed?”
He continues with the fact that “there is an apocalyptic side to my nature. I will admit that, and plenty of our lyrics reflect it. I have to watch myself with that. I have to acknowledge that that possibility exists. But I don’t need to sink into glorifying it. It’s okay to pay attention to what’s going on and be worried, but you need to do your best to change it,” he admits, “Everyday citizens in a functional democracy have a right to vote and they need to not become apathetic. I have a lot of problems with our American system. There are things that are archaic such as the electoral college, which should be abolished. But that is the only system we have right now. And if I do not engage in it and do my best to be a force for positive change, then I am abdicating responsibility and handing what little bit of control I have — my agency — over to someone else.
“In general, I see that fatalist, defeatist attitude in people and it bums me out. Like, ‘Oh, it doesn’t make a difference…’ Well, you’re right, because if you don’t do anything, then that won’t make any difference at all,” he explained. “So please carry yourself to the voting booth and do what you can. I don’t understand politics in the U.K., but I do know that you need to vote. Don’t just be an apathetic slug and complain when everything turns to shit.”
From “All The Horrors Happening Around Us” – Randy Blythe
“Like most of you… I am tired, y’all. So goddamned tired. The open moral collapse of all three branches our government is utterly exhausting. But it’s not just the fact that the current President of the United States is a man found guilty by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman, not mention 34 other felonies involving hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels (may her name echo eternal in the Halls of Liberty as an unlikely-but-true American hero for standing up to this vile impersonation of a real man.)
“It’s not just that that same deranged man now slumps like a giant rotting shrimp over the Resolute Desk in the gaudy faux gold-leafed remains of a half-destroyed White House as he fully embraces his bizarre Marie–Antoinette-meets-Liberace redecorating phase.
“It’s not just the fact that we have a perpetual failure of a business man cosplaying as some sort of national financial father figure, hell-bent on destroying our economy with his foolish tariffs and endless trade wars, raising the cost of groceries and health insurance and every single other thing under the sun all the while enriching himself to the tune of at least 1.4 billion dollars during his first year back alone.
“It’s not just because this poorly spoken buffoon, holder of the highest office in the land, flies to other countries only to publicly insult and demean our historical allies in endless slurring word salads of nonsense on the world stage, going so far as to threaten utterly pointless invasions of their sovereign lands in the name American national security, places like Greenland that we already have full access to through long-standing treaties.
“It’s not simply because this draft-dodging rich kid, who against all common sense is the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces, has moved beyond threats and into action by invading another sovereign nation, kidnapping its admittedly terrible dictator in the name of stopping drug trafficking while leaving that dictator’s even worse second in command in charge, thereby changing absolutely nothing except millions of American tax payer’s dollars squandered.
“It’s not just that the ‘leader of the free world’ was for years best friends with the most notorious child sex trafficker in modern history, Jeffrey Epstein, and is currently in the middle of a blatant cover-up in order to protect the interests of rich and powerful pedophiles (not to mention having made super-creepy pedophile-esque statements himself about his own daughter’s physical attractiveness.)
“It’s not just the fact that masked men now roam our streets, Gestapo-like, terrorizing the populace, openly killing two American citizens, shooting them in the face in broad daylight as their fellow citizens film these executions, then post videos of the killings to the internet, videos I cannot stop watching again and again.
“A video of a smiling 37 year-old mother’s last words, words she spoke to the man who murdered her…‘That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.’ A video that concludes seconds later with this masked thug calling her a ‘fucking bitch’ as her dead body slumps over the wheel of her minivan.
“A video of a 37 year old man, a beloved ICU nurse at a Veteran’s Affairs hospital, as he struggles on an icy street to shield a woman with his own body as more of these masked goons pepper spray him, throw him on the ground, batter him, disarm him, then shoot him in the back like the cowards they are. Cowards.
“Videos of the women of Minneapolis screaming; screaming, again and again on a snowy street… ‘What the fuck did you do? WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DO?’ The pain in these women’s voices, the horror in these women’s voices… it is burned into me. All the horrors happening around us.
“If you are a citizen of the United States and have not watched these videos, do so. Do not turn away. Do not ignore this, do your best to move on and put it out of your head because you keep telling yourself you just can’t handle it anymore. Do not be a coward. This is your country, and this is what is happening here right now, despite the blatant lies the President and his assorted cast of cartoon villains tell you to your face.
“‘Domestic terrorists’… do not let their lies make you despair of your sanity. You have eyes to see the truth of the horrors happening all around us. You have eyes to see the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. No, my friends, you are not crazy. Things are bad. Really, really bad. This is not normal.”
