Lamb of God Break Down New Album ‘VII: Sturm und Drang’ Track by Track
8. “Engage the Fear Machine”
“Obviously it’s about the media,” the growler explains about the seething, driving metal tune. “What ever happened to ebola? How long ago was that? We were all going to die, you know? The news just takes everything to the next limit, and it keeps viewers glued to the TV and it brings in advertiser dollars and it makes me so fucking mad. I was flying a lot during that time. I remember one time in an airport, every bar I’d walk past every TV was going, ‘Ebola is coming!’ Like it’s the Mongolian horde. I’m like, ‘Man, fuck you. This is complete nonsense.’ They’re using scare tactics. They’re controlling us through fear. It’s nonsense. I reject it.”
“What the fuck is an Internet meme?”
9. “Delusion Pandemic”
“The Internet is a useful tool, and you can use it to find out things, but I think it’s created a creatively stifled environment,” Blythe says of the dark-sounding, drum-kit rattling track. “I do not like mashup culture. There is nothing original about it. It’s a waste of my cerebral space. Everything’s getting shittier and shittier and shittier. I mean, I’m not Ernest Hemingway or whatever, I’m not the new greatest photographer in the world, but at least I’m writing my own stuff and I’m doing my own thing. Internet memes – what the fuck is an internet meme? Why are you paying attention to this? Why is there some stupid picture that you put some stupid little things on that say something dumb? This is cerebral garbage. You are clogging your mind.”
10. “Torches”
“There was a Czech student named Jan Palach in 1969, around when the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia because the people said, ‘We don’t want to be communist anymore and we are going to become a democratic society,'” the singer explains about the record’s chugging final track. “The Warsaw Pact forces – Russia basically – said, ‘Oh no, you’re going to stay communist,’ so they invaded. And the Czechs had already had their asses kicked by so many different groups. But right before that, the Nazis just destroyed, brutalized, Czechoslovakia. So there’s this student and he saw how the people were defeated. So he went to Wenceslas Square to the stairs of the National Museum during a busy time of the day and doused himself in fluid and caught himself on fire. And he walked down the steps in protest and then boom, hit the ground and died a few days later. He came a symbol of dissidence for the Czechs up until the rest of the brutal communist area. Learning about that while I was awaiting trial, I had a lot of respect for him, and it also made me think about what kind of mentality does a person have to be to be so upset that you burn yourself alive? That’s got to be an unpleasant way to go. ‘Torches’ was inspired by visiting Jan Palach’s grave. The other voice on the song is [Dillinger Escape Plan’s] Greg Puciato. He crushed it.”