Inside Lamb of God’s Prison-Themed New Single ‘Still Echoes’
“People shouldn’t expect a prison record,” Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe says of the group’s upcoming LP, VII: Sturm und Drang. “But I write about things that affect me very deeply. And going to prison in a foreign country and being charged with manslaughter will affect you – trust me – very deeply.”
Today, Blythe and his bandmates have unveiled the incredibly heavy “Still Echoes,” VII’s first single ahead of the 10-track LP’s July release and a tune that holds a very personal meaning to Blythe. “The song is a history of [Prague’s] Pankrác Prison,” he says. Three years ago, Czech authorities arrested the frontman under charges of manslaughter – they claimed a Lamb of God fan died as a result of injuries from Blythe allegedly pushing him offstage at a 2010 gig – and placed him in Prague’s decrepit 19th century prison. He was found not guilty in 2013. “It was a tragic experience,” Blythe says. “It’s a chapter of my life that’s in my head daily.”
It’s a bright late-April day in New York City when Blythe meets with Rolling Stone, and the singer has slunk in the booth of a hotel restaurant near Chinatown, his long hair pulled into a ponytail that’s draped over his Black Flag “Everything Went Black” T-shirt. He speaks earnestly about the period he was incarcerated and how it played into the song, which he began writing while locked up.
He recites the first lyric from “Still Echoes”: “A thousand heads cut clean across their necks, right down the hall from me.” And while, at face value, the words might read like generic gory metal imagery, Blythe asserts that their inspiration was very real. “There was a guillotine right down the hall from me, from when the Nazis had the prison. From 1943 to 1945 they executed almost 2,000 people by the guillotine, because it was cheaper than shooting and quicker than hanging.”
Although the Nazis attempted to hide the execution device by throwing it in a river, the Czechs dredged it up and put it back in the room where the occupiers murdered thousands. “They call it the Pankrác ‘Saw Room’ or the ‘Axe Room,'” Blythe says. “I sat there at night, and I’d think about all those dudes that got their heads chopped off – men and women – in that place not too far from me.”
Blythe says he actively sought out information about the prison’s history, from guards and fellow inmates alike, while he was incarcerated. “I was like, ‘How old is this fucking place?'” he says. “‘Cause it was fucked up in there. It was 123 years old when I was in there, and it hasn’t been under renovations. Parts of it look like downtown Detroit – just broken windows and abandoned stuff. It’s crazy in there. So the song is a history of the repression the Czech people have undergone.”
From time to time, people have asked Blythe what being in prison was like, and he always compares it to being in a Misfits song. Moreover, he wrote “Still Echoes” specifically to be Lamb of God’s take on the legendary punk group’s “London Dungeon,” which that band’s former singer Glenn Danzig allegedly wrote after being locked up in England. “I had three songs in my head while I was in prison,” Blythe says. “‘London Dungeon’ by the Misfits, ‘Rise Above’ by Black Flag and ‘Attitude’ by the Bad Brains. That was my soundtrack.”