{"id":35462,"date":"2015-07-15T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T00:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=35462"},"modified":"2015-08-30T01:00:50","modified_gmt":"2015-08-30T01:00:50","slug":"feature-d-randall-blythe-07-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-d-randall-blythe-07-15\/","title":{"rendered":"D. RANDALL BLYTHE – Still Echoes (July 2015) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

D. RANDALL BLYTHE – Still Echoes<\/strong><\/span>
\nAnthony Morgan<\/span>
\nJuly 2015<\/span><\/p>\n

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Randy Blythe<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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\nOn May 24th, 2010, a 19-year-old fan named Daniel Nosek rushed the stage during a concert by Richmond, Virginia-based metal group Lamb Of God. The concert in question took place in Prague, Czech Republic, vocalist Randy Blythe pushing the fan away in order to protect himself. Unbeknownst to the ensemble, the young man hit his head on the floor when he fell, and later succumbed to his injuries.<\/p>\n

Two years later on June 27th, 2012, Lamb In God arrived in Prague to perform once more. Randy was arrested at the airport, and incarcerated in Pankr\u00e1c Prison on suspicion of manslaughter, charges which carried a prison term of five to ten years. He was released on bail 37 days later to await trial. The trial began on February 4th, 2013, concluding on March 5th following a five-day trial. Randy was ultimately acquitted, and has since opted to document the whole saga in book format. The resultant effort is Dark Days<\/em>, which arrived in July 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision to document what went on in a book…,\u201d Randy ponders. \u201cWhile I was going through the whole process, even from the beginning \u2013 while I was still in Prague, in prison \u2013 I thought from time to time \u2018Man, this is crazy. This\u2019ll make a book, a hell of a story.\u2019 I even had a fan write me a letter in prison, and he was like \u2018Dude, this is gonna make an awesome book.\u2019 When I got out and everything was done and I was exonerated though, the last thing I wanted to do was write a book about the whole thing. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy booking agent Tim (Borror) was calling me and leaving me messages, like \u2018Hey, dude. I\u2019ve got this literary agent who wants to talk to you.\u2019 I blew off the calls from my booking agent for as long as I could, until I started feeling guilty because he\u2019s my friend. It was getting to the point of rudeness, because I wouldn\u2019t call him back. I finally called him, and said \u2018What is it, dude?\u2019 He was like \u2018Look, will you talk to this literary agent?,\u2019 and I was like \u2018Yes, but man… I don\u2019t wanna write about Prague.\u2019 That\u2019s all a literary agent would want to talk to me about at the time. <\/p>\n

\u201cI called the agent \u2013 this guy named Marc Gerald \u2013 and I gave my whole spiel. I was like \u2018Look, I think there\u2019s some stuff that could be helpful to people. My experience might help some people, and I think I can tell it well. I\u2019m a good enough writer, but I\u2019m just not ready. I have this journal that I kept, and I have these really sharp, visceral memories of the whole situation, and I\u2019ll write about it one day. One day I\u2019ll write about it. I remember everything; I have these memories.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cMark spoke to me, and said \u2018Yeah, but those memories are gonna fade.\u2019 From going through a trial where so much of it was hearsay and so much of it was dependent upon conflicting testimonies, and where people had vastly different memories of what happened, I realised that the memory is a tricky thing. The human memory is a very fallible thing, so I was like \u2018You know, you\u2019re right. My memories are gonna fade, so I better get \u2019em down while I have \u2019em.\u2019 So yeah. It was from there that I decided that if I was gonna write it, I was gonna write it now while it\u2019s still fresh in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journal entries were invaluable as a reference source. \u201cThe journal was an immense, immense help in writing the book,\u201d the frontman concurs. \u201cI\u2019m not a disciplined journal writer outside of prison (laughs), but I was pretty disciplined in prison because there was nothing else to do. I\u2019m so glad I was disciplined in there though, because I\u2019ve tried to keep a journal before. Usually at the beginning of a tour, I\u2019ll start writing, and then I\u2019ll get distracted by something and it\u2019ll fall to the wayside. Luckily… There was nothing lucky about my situation, but luckily the prison conditions were conducive to writing in a journal. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I sat down and started looking at the structure of this book, which of course was provided to me by my experience, I didn\u2019t have to think \u2018What happens next?\u2019 I knew what would happen next, because I lived it. When I\u2019d sit down and think about the structure, I\u2019d look through the journal. Even with it being fairly recent, I\u2019d have to re-read things and think \u2018Wait… What am I writing about here? I thought this happened in a different order.\u2019 In fact, because I had written it that very day, it happened then. So, it was a huge help in keeping things clear, and clarifying the whole situation \u2013 especially the chronological order, the way things happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dark Days<\/em> chronicles Randy\u2019s incarceration in Pankr\u00e1c Prison and so forth of course, but that would arguably be too simple a description. \u201cI appreciate you saying that, because I feel that that would be too simple a description,\u201d he judges. \u201cThe story of me going to Prague \u2013 the plot of it all \u2013 that\u2019s the mechanics that carried the book forward. That\u2019s the vehicle I used to carry sort of… I suppose the point I want to get across, the sort of message I want to get across, which is one of personal accountability. Suppose you were to take the whole Prague thing out of the equation and just put it in a one-minute elevator pitch or something though, I guess I would describe the book as the story of someone trying to do the right thing in very scary circumstances and succeeding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u2018very scary circumstances\u2019 the singer encountered were comprised of a wide variety of difficult topics, although which was the most difficult is difficult to pinpoint. \u201cI\u2019m not sure,\u201d he muses. \u201cDude, there were various parts of everything that was difficult to write about. Within certain chapters, there were things that were hard to write about, and within the same chapter, there was stuff that was really funny. I can\u2019t really nail it down to one particular part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapter 16 documents the loss of Randy\u2019s baby daughter, seven hours following birth, the event taking place when the man was roughly 30 years of age. Of Dark Days<\/em>\u2019 various chapters, the aforementioned chapter would rank high among a list of difficult topics. \u201cThat was hard to write, but as I wrote in the book, that\u2019s something I don\u2019t really care to discuss with anyone,\u201d he stresses. \u201cI put that in the book on purpose. So yeah, that was hard to write about. Even that though, I don\u2019t know if that was the most difficult thing to write about. The whole situation was really messed up \u2013 the whole situation. It\u2019s hard to write about seeing… <\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote about the court case, how the father of this young man who\u2019s dead walked in there. I had to remember how that made me feel; seeing the father of a young man that I was accused of killing. That was hard to write, man. It was a dark place to go back to. That was one part, but there was a lot of difficult things. I can\u2019t give you a pat answer, and say \u2018This section was the most difficult.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Albeit incarcerated in a foreign prison for 37 days, the musician\u2019s sobriety as a recovering alcoholic was never troubled. \u201cNo,\u201d he states. \u201cNever. When I got sober… And I know some people on the outside were worried about that. They were like \u2018Oh, he\u2019s gonna go do this\u2019 and \u2018He\u2019s gonna start drinking again,\u2019 but it was the last thing on my mind, dude. Just like being in a band and touring in a tour bus, and being on a tour around a bunch of drunk people all the time, people are like \u2018Isn\u2019t that hard? Isn\u2019t that hard for you to be around all of that stuff?\u2019 I\u2019m like \u2018No.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t tempt me. It makes me not want it even more, because I see what it is. It bums me out, but no, man. I could\u2019ve got screwed up out in prison; if you can\u2019t find drugs out in prison, you aren\u2019t a very good prisoner (laughs). You aren\u2019t gonna last long there if you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, so no. I had been sober for a couple of years by the time I went to prison. It didn\u2019t want to make me drink, or do drugs, or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there was a time a recovering alcoholic would want to drink and take drugs… \u201cLet me ask you a question,\u201d Randy responds, cutting the comment short. \u201cAre you a recovering alcoholic?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer to that question would be \u2018No.\u2019 \u201cThen you have zero chance of understanding the mind of the alcoholic, and the reality of the alcoholic,\u201d the lyricist argues. \u201cThe alcoholic who has stopped drinking will sound a different way. There\u2019s no way you can put yourself in my shoes or in any other person\u2019s shoes, because you don\u2019t understand what it is to be completely insane (laughs)… For a long time, and then come to your senses. You\u2019re looking at things as if \u2013 when you\u2019re telling me this \u2013 there was ever a time when a recovering alcoholic might want to? That\u2019s your perception. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor me \u2013 and I\u2019ll tell you this \u2013 I don\u2019t worry about trouble, like me drinking again because I go through something tough. I don\u2019t worry about that at all. What I worry about is me getting complacent, and me going out to dinner with my friends. That someone\u2019s wife is drinking one beer, and it looks good, and I\u2019m like \u2018Oh, I\u2019d just like to have one beer like a normal person?\u2019 You know what I mean? That\u2019s how sneakily it\u2019ll get to me \u2013 stress isn\u2019t gonna do it. I already know if there\u2019s trouble, that my old coping mechanism was alcohol. That doesn\u2019t exist with me any more, but that doesn\u2019t mean my alcoholism isn\u2019t sneaky. That doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s not gonna sneak around the back door, so I worry more about the good times than the bad times. I know that that doesn\u2019t make any sense to someone who isn\u2019t an alcoholic, because it can\u2019t. Because you\u2019re not one of us (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

For which yours truly is glad. \u201cI\u2019m glad you\u2019re not, either,\u201d Randy seconds. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t wish it on anyone. It\u2019s not a cool thing. It\u2019s not glamorous, it\u2019s not something to aspire to. When they\u2019re little, no-one says \u2018I wanna grow up and be an alcoholic, and fuck my life all up (laughs).\u2019 At least nobody I know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dark Days<\/em> touches upon the writer\u2019s faith in God, although the sentiment isn\u2019t hammered home. \u201cIt was an immense, immense source of help, and I wrote a chapter,\u201d he credits. \u201cI was talking to my publicist earlier at lunch today, from the press company. I wrote a whole chapter, because I mention a belief in God, or a higher power, or a spirit of the universe, or something. I use the word \u2018God\u2019 as a matter of convenience, right? Just as something to describe something that I believe, but cannot perceive. It\u2019s too big for me to really understand, but I wrote a whole chapter in which there\u2019s a question-and-answer with God \u2013 in which God asks me the questions (laughs). <\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s of course very irreverent and sort of facetious, but it was to explain my relationship with what I believe to be a higher being, higher power, the true spirit of the universe \u2013 whatever you wanna call it. Regrettably, there wasn\u2019t enough room in the book, and it didn\u2019t fit the flow. Yeah though, my relationship with what I call God was critical to me in remaining a positive person through the whole situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecuting attorney Vladim\u00edr Mu\u017e\u00edk fell asleep at one point during the manslaughter trial, something that can potentially challenge one\u2019s positivity. Whether one becomes sadder or angrier in such circumstances is anyone\u2019s guess. \u201cA mixture of the two \u2013 it wasn\u2019t an A or B,\u201d Randy offers. \u201cIt was a lot of disbelief in how things were being handled, because also, I tried my best to just deal with each situation as it occurred and take it for what it is. Getting all mad and resentful and angry over the way another human being acts is futile, because people are never, ever gonna act the way you want them to act. That\u2019s only gonna lead to disappointment. Yeah, it\u2019s offensive to me that this dude was falling asleep (laughs)… In the trial, and he\u2019s the prosecuting attorney, and he wants to put me in prison for ten fucking years. Yeah, it\u2019s offensive to me and it irritated me, but I couldn\u2019t let it get to me so much. I had to concentrate on the job at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighting a court case in a foreign land \u201cwas a huge problem,\u201d the vocalist laughs. \u201cYou imagine going to do a trial, and someone speaks a different language. It was a huge problem, and the translation of everything that happened during the trial… I\u2019m not sure of half of what was said at that trial because the translator would have to translate, and I\u2019d have to ask her for clarification. While she was clarifying, whatever they were saying was still going on, so we were missing things. It was a big problem, but I think I got my point across and my lawyers did their job well enough. I don\u2019t know how to quantify that; I can\u2019t say that on a scale of one to ten, it was a seven problem or anything. It was a problem, though. It didn\u2019t make it any easier, I can tell you that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

The language barrier caused Randy\u2019s incarceration at Pankr\u00e1c Prison to be an even lonelier experience, perhaps. \u201cYeah, yeah,\u201d he agrees. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

To pass the time, the frontman read books like War And Peace<\/em> (Leo Tolstoy, 1869), The Hobbit<\/em> (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937) and The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway<\/em> (1987), and Letters And Papers From Prison<\/em> (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1997). \u201cI read constantly, as soon as I could get my hands on books, and I listed a bunch of them that I read,\u201d he tells. \u201cBooks weren\u2019t immediately available to me at all, though. It wasn\u2019t until my lawyer brought me a few books that he had been given, and then eventually I got a box of books when my wife came to visit me briefly. I didn\u2019t have any English books for a good while, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previous to Dark Days<\/em>, Randy\u2019s arrest on suspicion of manslaughter received extensive media coverage. \u201cIt was completely fucked all to hell,\u201d he chuckles. \u201cMetal websites and stuff were generally relying \u2013 through no fault of their own \u2013 on Google translations of Czech newspaper articles. So no, it wasn\u2019t fucking accurate at all. That\u2019s why I had to write a 500 page book about it. I don\u2019t know what the Czech media said much, except for the tabloid stuff. Nobody in America, or England, or whatever… The English language press, they didn\u2019t really understand what was going on, because nobody really had a man on the ground writing bespoke text. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe one guy who provided really accurate English coverage was a guy named Jonathan Crane, who\u2019s an English journalist living in Prague. He wrote for The Prague Post<\/em>, which is an English language paper there. He wrote what he could; he was a wonderful person who did a really good job with the information that he had, but he was just one person. Other than that, it was just a bunch of not really much coverage at all. You call Google translations coverage (laughs)? It\u2019s not much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many within the metal community were worried for the singer at the time. \u201cOf course there was a lot of support, but as far as accuracy or anything, there was no hope of that,\u201d he laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to accurately cover things when you don\u2019t have an accurate source \u2013 it\u2019s really hard. A couple of websites tried their best to sort of figure things out, and I\u2019ve talked to some of these guys who did the websites. I was talking to Metal Injection<\/em> last night, and they were talking about how difficult it was to figure out what the fuck was going on. That\u2019s the overall consensus from people I knew who write for these things. They\u2019re like \u2018We didn\u2019t know what was going on,\u2019 and I\u2019m like \u2018Welcome to the club.\u2019 I didn\u2019t know what was going on (laughs). My family didn\u2019t know what was going on; nobody knew what was going on. It was all happening in Czech. It was just a very difficult situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many observers might speculate that the whole ordeal has changed the musician, although this isn\u2019t the case. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t changed me a bit,\u201d he reckons. \u201cIt\u2019s put a little more sadness in my life. That\u2019s about it, but as far as a human being? No, it hasn\u2019t changed me. I changed when I got sober, and all I did was just try to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although naturally scared at the time, Randy seems pretty level-headed in his account of what occurred. \u201cI learnt that, dude,\u201d he shares. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I had lived this luxurious life of comfort and stuff, and then all of a sudden, bam, I was slapped into prison. I\u2019ve had kind of a crazy life in a lot of different ways. I just barely touched on little bits of that in the book. I was kind of prepared for uncomfortable circumstances (laughs). Like I said, I had experienced a change before. There was a big change in my life, and I wrote about this in the book at the very end. A big change occurred in me long before I ever went to prison. Everything else is just following the correct operating procedure to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018The correct operating procedure\u2019 is equally applied towards onstage performances, for which the wordsmith\u2019s mindset hasn\u2019t been affected. \u201cEverything is the same, dude,\u201d he underlines. \u201cWe have contractual obligations that state the need for security, and a properly placed barricade, and trained security placed in the correct positions. The tour manager had to talk to the owner of this club, and say \u2018Do you have the security?\u2019 \u2018Yes.\u2019 The promoter: \u2018Yes, yes…\u2019 When we got onstage, there was nothing there. This was a particularly bad show, where for the first time in years they didn\u2019t follow their contractual obligations. We already had preventative measures in place to stop this. It\u2019s not like before it was like this free-for-all, so everybody could run onstage. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo. We don\u2019t want you on our stage, so we have preventative measures to stop that. Regrettably, the people whose job it was to provide that didn\u2019t do their fucking job. Since then, it\u2019s been a matter of we\u2019re really double-checking these people to make sure that they\u2019re gonna say what they\u2019re gonna do, but we\u2019d never had that problem before. It was just an unfortunate situation, but no, nothing has changed. We do everything the same way, because we didn\u2019t do anything wrong in the first fucking place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the incident has strengthened Randy\u2019s resolve. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he ruminates. \u201cI definitely look in front of the stage more now, whereas before, I took for granted what would be there would be there because everybody in the past had fulfilled their contractual obligations. Now, I definitely will look a little bit more just to double-check these people have done what they said they would do, but it hasn\u2019t really changed anything dude. We do what we do (laughs). We follow the correct operating procedures. This was just a fuck up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vocalist intends to expand his bibliography. \u201cI\u2019m gonna write more books, but it definitely won\u2019t be non-fiction, and it definitely won\u2019t involve anything bad happening to me or anyone else I know, because I\u2019m over it,\u201d he reveals. \u201cI would like to write some fiction, and if something bad happened to someone, it\u2019d be to a fictional character. I could laugh at it, and not sit there and relive it as I write it for a year. I\u2019ve had about enough of that (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

In the musical sphere, seventh Lamb Of God studio affair VII: Sturm Und Drang<\/em> arrives later in July. \u201cIt\u2019s cool,\u201d Randy recommends. \u201cIt has nothing to do with that whole Prague situation except for two songs that I wrote while I was in prison (\u2018512\u2019 and \u2018Still Echoes\u2019), so it\u2019s not a prison record. I\u2019m not a gangster rapper (laughs). Other than that, it\u2019s a good record. I think it\u2019s the most well-balanced one we\u2019ve done in a while. I hope you all enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dark Days<\/em> was released on July 10th, 2015 in the United Kingdom and subsequently on the 15th in North America, all via Da Capo Press.<\/p>\n

Interview published in July 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

D. RANDALL BLYTHE – Still Echoes Anthony Morgan July 2015 Randy Blythe On May 24th, 2010, a 19-year-old fan named Daniel Nosek rushed the stage during a concert by Richmond, Virginia-based metal group Lamb Of God. The concert in question took place in Prague, Czech Republic, vocalist Randy Blythe pushing the fan away in order […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2423,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d-randall-blythe","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35462"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35478,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35462\/revisions\/35478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}