siLLy puPPy
BURN THE PRIEST is the first name and debut album of the better known name Lamb Of God. Hailing from the Bible belt state of Virginia, Mark Morton (guitars), Matt Conner (guitars), Chris Adler (drums) and John Campbell (bass) met in Richmond as college students and found a commonality in extreme metal and wasted no time pumping out some demos and a couple split EPs with Agents Of Satan and ZED. This first lineup didn’t last long however and soon Morton and Conner opted to finish their academic studies instead of pursuing their metal dreams. After settling for a replacement guitarist in the form of Abe Spear, they also recruited Randy Blythe to handle the vocal duties who has been successfully screaming up a storm with the gang ever since.
This debut album is unlike the later Lamb Of God albums in that the sound despite having clear ties to the groove metal sound that Pantera had made popular in the 90s, has much more deathcore elements going on. The music is as relentless as many of their releases but instead of being groovy in its unrelenting aggression it is less so and focuses on pure dirty filthiness. The guitars are highly distorted and Randy Blythe’s vocals are as anguished and tormented as humanly possible alternating both low guttural vocals with high pitched screams. The rhythms can be hypnotically simple but can change suddenly and unexpectedly. Like much deathcore, grindcore and metalcore this groovecore hybrid sticks to short but sweet song lengths with only two tracks clocking in over the four minute mark.
Tired of being considered a Satanic band due to the band name and the original cover of angry nuns with pitchforks burning a priest alive, the band decided to change their name since not only did they lose most of the founding members but also lost Andy Spear after this one. From album number two they would be called Lamb Of God and would steer their sound more into groove thrash and downplay the extremities of the deathcore. All in all this is a decent slice of metal aggressiveness turned up to 11 and although i much prefer the better song writing talents that began to blossom on later albums, this is a special debut album for its sheer emphasis on the most brutal aspects metal has to offer. Unfortunately newer releases have a rather boring solid black album cover as the band went more mainstream to avoid the controversy of this first release.