With their recently announced Australian tour in October with Killswitch Engage & Unearth, (HELL YEAH!!!!) Lamb of God’s latest album - Sacrament - hit the streets this week. Yours truly quickly snapped up a copy as the record-store staff were placing this fucker on the shelves! The Australian pressing comes with an additional 90 minute ‘Making of the album’ DVD which proved to be a fascinating insight into the making of one of the albums of the year! Let’s face it, any ‘behind-the-scenes’ look into Lamb of God is always an amazing, eye-opening experience and worth the price of the CD alone. But having said that, it would be a shame not to focus on what is a blistering slab of new tunes from one of America’s definitive exponents of the Metal genre. Featuring absolute precision muscianship courtesy of the intricate and majestic drumming of Chris Adler who keeps the band tight and intense, the foundations are well and truly laid for a fine slab of Heavy Metal in its purest form. Lamb of God have an uncanny knack of producing Metal riffs that remain embedded in the sinews of your brain long after you’ve stopped listening to the album. Vocalist Randy Blythe delivers some of his finest moments. His intencity is so magnificently captured by album producer Machine. Blythe’s vocal stylings cut through the bone and his voice is filled with such venom and spite that one shouldn’t stand too close to the speakers when listening to this in case one is sucker-punched by the ferocity and anger eminating from the wall of sound. What we have as an end-result is such a complete and finely crafted Metal opus. The band have injected more melody throughout - nicely toned lead-breaks and a nice measure of controlled chaos at all times. A damingly awesome exponent of where the American Metal movement is headed these days.
