Lamb Of God – Into The Oblivion
Lamb Of God – Into The Oblivion
Century Media/Epic Records
Release Date: 13/03/26
Review by Jon Deaux
6.5/10
There was a time—not all that long ago in metal years, which are measured in the number of broken drumsticks and noise complaints filed against the band—that Lamb of God sounded like a band that had something to prove.
It was in the muscle of their riffs. It was in the sheer, grinding, insistent momentum of records like Ashes of the Wake and later in the oddly, almost defiantly confident sound of their 2020 self-titled album. That one had the swagger of a band stepping back into the ring after the departure of drummer and founding member Chris Adler. This had the stance of “Yes. We’re still here. Yes. We can still hit you.”
It had purpose. It had momentum. It had the whiff of gasoline and unfinished business. Now, they don’t have to prove anything to anyone. They’ve been around for nearly thirty years. Their influence is now baked into the very fabric of modern metal. Half the bands playing festivals now are essentially Lamb of God tribute bands with better haircuts.
Which makes the arrival of Into the Oblivion, a 39-minute shrug of a record disguised as a metal album, something like watching a veteran prizefighter step into the ring… only to realize he’s there mostly for the nachos.
Let me be clear before I’m set on fire by the angry gatekeepers.
Lamb of God are one of the most important American metal bands of the last thirty years. This is not a question. This is a statement of geological fact. Their groove metal machine helped forge the entire New Wave of American Heavy Metal, and for a generation of metalheads who came of age in the weird early 2000s—when the world seemed to have permanently switched to emergency broadcast mode—Lamb of God’s music was a form of controlled demolition therapy.
Lamb Of God have this weird kind of creative spark that can only come from being the kind of metal band that has managed to reach that slightly precarious kind of honorific title of ‘metal elder’. They’re veterans now. The riffs are veterans. The speeds are veterans. The album is a veteran. And, unfortunately, so is the level of energy they’re willing to put into it.
“The record is us being untethered, unencumbered by expectation, trends, or any agenda beyond making music that we think is cool,” explains guitarist Mark Morton. “The title of the record, to me, represents the complete dissolution of the social contract in America,” explains Randy Blythe, who, as ever, is not afraid to face the apocalypse head-on. “I mean, we’re seeing it with our own eyes. And I think it’s getting worse by the minute.” Which is all very well in theory. In practice, “Into the Oblivion” is simply an album that has clearly stopped trying.
The title track opens the album with the promise that maybe, just maybe, we are in for something ever so slightly seismic. The guitars enter with that classic Lamb of God hydraulic sound, Morton and Willie Adler falling into one of those grooves that has, in the past, made Lamb of God’s sound like a demolition crew marching in perfect formation. Art Cruz is continuing to prove that he is, in fact, an absurdly precise drummer, pounding out the rhythms with the clean, mechanical efficiency of a machine that has recently passed inspection. And Randy Blythe, as always, spits out his lyrics like a prophet who has just crawled out of a burning courthouse. And it’s great. For two minutes. And then something strange happens.
Not in the “groove metal hypnosis” kind of way that Lamb of God has long since mastered. No, this is more of a sit back in your chair, thinking to yourself, “You know, today, maybe we don’t have to hurry quite as much as we have been.”
Take, for instance, ‘Parasocial Christ.’ It’s fast, it’s aggressive, and it’s clearly meant to be a throwback to the classic thrash sound that Lamb of God has long since been known for. The thing is, it feels like an old trick, an old friend, done once again, but this time with just a little less passion, a little less fire in the belly. It’s Lamb of God at 70 percent instead of 100 percent, and while that’s still plenty heavy, it’s also a little…underwhelming, especially when you consider what this band is capable of.
Of course, then there’s ‘Sepsis,’ a song that was released as a single, and it’s one of the few times on the record where Lamb of God actually turns it up a notch. The tempo is slower, which gives Morton’s riffs a chance to shine, and Blythe’s vocals have the over-the-top quality of someone preaching the end of the world as we know it. It’s one of the best tracks on the record, and it’s no surprise that it was released as a single before the rest of the record.
Then there’s the middle section.
This is where their real persona shines through, and it’s not as a bunch of dudes who are trying to do something new, something exciting, something triumphant, but as a bunch of rednecks who know that they can rip your face off at any given moment, but today, it just feels like, you know, let’s just take it easy, have a little jam session, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll get back to ripping faces off next time out.
Tracks such as ‘The Killing Floor,’ ‘Blunt Force Blues,’ and ‘Bully’ all just kind of blend together into a nice little middle-of-the-road jam session, nothing bad, nothing terrible, nothing that makes you want to rip your hair out, but nothing good, nothing exciting, nothing that makes you want to take notice. Which, ultimately, is the biggest crime you can commit as Lamb of God.
This is a band that has earned their moniker on tracks that sounded desperate, surgical, and even deadly. Lamb of God is a band that, at their best, makes music that is as terrifying as a controlled explosion. You don’t listen to Lamb of God riffs; you prepare yourself for Lamb of God riffs. On Into the Oblivion, you just bob your head. There are moments on this album that recall those days.
‘St. Catherine’s Wheel’ has a riff that sounds for a second or two like something from their Sacrament days and is wondering why everyone else is just chillin’.
‘A Thousand Years’ brings a little bit of sadness to the melody that suggests they know the long shadow that they have to live under. But this album never decides to be hard, or weird, or even totally funky. It just is.
This doesn’t make it a bad album by any means. In fact, even when Lamb of God is phoning it in on tour, the riffs that appear on this album will still be better than what most metal bands will come up with in their entire lifetime. The musicianship will still be amazing, the production by Josh Wilbur will still be second to none, and the observations by Blythe about the fall of society, the fall of morals, and the quiet unraveling of the modern world will still be spot on.
With the album closer ‘Devise/Destroy’ there’s a sense of the band knowing that they already have the victory, that they’re just along for the ride as they watch the world burn in the distance.
Maybe that’s the point.
Because when the world is careening towards oblivion, as Blythe observes in some of the themes on this album, maybe this is the kind of music that should be playing in the background: not frenetic, not epic, but the easy cruise of experienced musicians taking in the apocalyptic view as they cruise down the highway in their tour bus at a leisurely pace.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Into Oblivion
02. Parasocial Christ
03. Sepsis
04. The Killing Floor
05. El Vacío
06. St. Catherine’s Wheel
07. Blunt Force Blues
08. Bully
09. A Thousand Years
10. Devise / Destroy
11. Wire (Bonus track)
LINKS:
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