Calmly, wisely, Blythe, 51, has been reading and watching the increasingly off-putting news and quietly considering his response, the sanest path forward through a terrain that’s truly gotten batshit crazy. And this time, the lyricist has found solace in the Biblical (“Gomorrah” and the title track), our shared mortality (“Ditch,” “September Song,”) and even the morbid musings of one of Richmond’s favorite literary sons, Edgar Allan Poe (“Nevermore,” “Vanishing,” and To the Grave,” which cautions that “The only thing to fear/ Remains inside unseen”). But Omens, despite its hammering squeal-chorded assault, feels far more grounded, clear-sighted, to an almost comforting degree. Maybe it’s because Blythe has had plenty of time to reflect. And this year, as Lamb of God (with drummer Art Cruz, bassist John Campbell, and twin jet-turbine-velocity guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler) releases Omens, its more measured, insidious juggernaut of a followup to 2020’s explosive eponymous effort, the rocker is still maintaining that stoic poker face and not showing all of his cards. The bottom hadn’t fallen out yet, but the pandemic was still in its infancy, and who knew what would happen when the still-employed Haves met the disenfranchised Have-nots on the street once all the lockdowns were lifted? Still, he nervously noted then, cracks in the carefully-ordered infrastructure were beginning to show. And in March of 2020, when it really did seem like the world was going to hell in a coronavirus hand basket, the Cody Lundin-trained doomsday prepper alluded to having a few “bug-out bags” packed full of the necessary gear and swore he had just purchased land in an unspecified South American country where he was planning to disappear if social structures really did collapse around us. Several years ago, he foresaw a possible post-EMP, Road Warrior atavistic future when banks have all failed and suggested, matter-of-factly, that when the grid went down, it would just be “me and my guns.” Did the Virginian have a hidden armory, a cache of survivalist weapons just waiting to be tapped in the wake of societal chaos? He laughed with a maybe, maybe not innocence at the time but never really clarified. It’s never a good battle strategy to telegraph your punches, swears Lamb of God growler L.
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