Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

MUSIC Q+A::

Metal group, banned from California venue, to visit Vegas

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PUBLICITY PHOTO

Heavy metal band Lamb of God has a break in its schedule of opening for Metallica, and it will take the opportunity to play a date in Vegas.

IF YOU GO

Who: Lamb of God

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday

Where: House of Blues

Tickets: $22 to $25; 632-7600

Beyond the Sun

A California house of God has banned Lamb of God from its property — but the Las Vegas House of Blues is welcoming the heavy metal band with open arms Thursday.

Lamb of God has been opening for Metallica on its current national tour, but won’t be performing when Metallica plays the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., this week.

Lamb of God was banned by the Forum’s owners, Faithful Central Bible Church, which uses the venue for Sunday services. The church also banned Lamb of God during an earlier tour with Slipknot.

The arena, which opened in 1967 and seats more than 15,000, has hosted concerts by such groups as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden and AC/DC. It also served as the home of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team and the Kings hockey team before both moved to the Staples Center in 1999.

“I never got a full explanation,” Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton said during a phone call from Spokane, Wash. “I just find it fascinating that the door just slammed shut without any kind of intellectual, intelligent discussion. I don’t expect them to engage me or be interested in our music, but let’s sit down and talk about it and I can explain every word to you. I think if you knew who we were it would be different. We’re husbands and fathers. We’re not these church burning anti-Christs.”

Marc T. Little, chief operating officer and general counsel for Forum Enterprises, responded to the Sun’s questions in a prepared statement:

“The Forum is happy to welcome back Metallica ... For the second time, the Forum could not extend the same courtesy to opening band Lamb of God. Lamb of God’s sacrilegious message is not one that the owner, Faithful Central Bible Church, can endorse. The Forum extends its apologies to those fans who may be inconvenienced by the owner’s decision.”

Morton said it’s not a problem — the band will play Las Vegas instead.

“It’s a shame, but it’s their bat, their balls, their rules,” he said. “It’s fascinating to me, but at the end of the day I just take my band down the street and book another show and make our money and play for our fans and keep on going.”

Q: How did you come up with the name of your band?

When we started the band about 18 years ago, now, we were just some 20-year-old kids. There wasn’t a lot of heavy metal going on at the time and we were all pretty big fans of it, so it was kind of our Friday night outlet. We’d get couple of cases of beer and go down in the basement and make a bunch of noise. That was the start and finish of it. At the time, we started playing little parties and warehouses and stuff. We called the band Burn the Priest because we thought that was a great way to wrap it all up, what we thought we sounded like — just evil and heavy-sounding and scary-sounding music.

But over time we kind of started getting recognition, regionally and then on a national level, we began to rethink how we were representing ourselves because our name didn’t really reflect who we were and people started taking that kind of imagery seriously.

How did you come up with the new name?

It was just something we kind of came up with when we were brainstorming names. At the time I was surprised it hadn’t been taken because I thought it was a great name for a metal band. If you follow metal, look at the history of some of the legends in the genre, it’s a pretty common practice to use religious symbolism and play on that — Judas Priest comes to mind and Black Sabbath and a bunch of other less legendary bands. So it seemed to make sense. We thought it was a really cool name for a band and it stuck.

You seem to use song titles and album titles that have quasi-religious references.

We walk that line. We do it with a certain amount of ambiguity on purpose. The first song on our last album, “Sacrament,” is called “Walk With Me in Hell.” At face value you might take that literally, but what that song is really about — it’s almost a bit of a love song because it’s written about having someone very dear to you, no matter how bad things around you seem. Sometimes it feels like we’re living in hell but we’ve got people really close to us to help us get through it and that’s what that song’s about. But if you just read the title and thought we were some kind of satanic anti-Christian band or whatever, you would just assume we were boarding the train to hell. But people get what they look for in our music.

Have you always been a metal fan?

As soon as I could walk, I’d run to the record player and try to get my mom to put on records for me. I had an older brother who was really into late ’70s and early ’80s rock. Around the age of 12, I wanted a drum set, but my parents said that was too loud, so I settled for a guitar. It seems to have worked out.

Who were your earliest influences in metal?

Probably early Metallica. Megadeth. Black Sabbath, bands like that, most of what they called the “Bay Area thrash scene” in the mid-’80s. Metal has always been big part of my life, but I’m honestly more inspired by blues players like Rory Gallagher and Jimmy Page. Eric Clapton. Jimi Hendrix. Billy Gibbons. At heart I’m more of a blues player. I just got into metal and got pretty good at it and developed a deep love for it as well the blues.

Tell us about the House of Blues gig.

Vegas is always fun. We wind up there a few times a year. We always have a good crowd. We have a few days off between the Metallica shows, so we’re headed for Vegas. We’ve been fortunate to be part of the Metallica tour, which has had huge crowds — 15,000 to 20,000 people. It’s probably the biggest heavy metal band there ever was. For them to reach out and put us on the bill has been an honor. But they don’t work as much as we do. They like to go home and take their breaks, which I can’t blame them. But in between we’re filling it up with our own shows, and that’s what this Vegas show is going to be.

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