### Burn the priest: Burn the priest

#### 02/09/08 || Daemonomania

As you may or may not know, this is the “debut” album from the ever-controversial Lamb of God. Not that Lamb of God is controversial in the child porn/zombie goat bondage/lemonade stand-burning sense. The band’s fanbase seems to be a bit on the n00b side these days, and LOG manage to generate a healthy amount of ire amongst seasoned metalheads for being accessible and popular. I’ll admit to liking the Lamb up to “Sacrament,” which lasted for about two tracks before being dropped in the trash. Their earlier work was certainly better and more extreme, and it is quite the tossup between this disc and “New American gospel” as to which is their best.

What makes BTP so endearing is an ear for sludge in the midst of the new thrash/semi death metal proceedings. Today’s LOG (heh heh, today’s log was dark brown and laced with corn kernels, as I recall) sounds very clean, a little sterile, and pretty repetitive. A warning: if you wish Lamb of God was pinned by their skulls to a concrete floor with meat skewers and hate everything they stand for and categorize their music as emo, well, you won’t like this much either. But in the good old days, they pretended they were from the deep South and threw a bit of the bayou into the mix. And by adding a pinch of Cajun spice the ‘core was defeated. BTP really sounds hungry and mean and fucking METAL. The badass cover art and pics in the booklet should be a good indication of that. They’re not going for the Hot Topic crowd. They’re going for the jugular.

The element which most adds to the extremity is the unbridled drumming of Chris Adler. While the production isn’t as drum heavy as NAG, he does a pretty fantastic job of running the show here too. You can hear that this dude is quite creative, and it is a pity that he’s been reigned in on more recent tunes. He needs to sleep with a big Jamaican dude and get his groove back. No, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Randy Blythe is as incomprehensible as ever on BTP, not that my non-souped up original version of the CD has any lyrics to read along with anyway. He sounds like he’s given up on the English language for the most part, and just growls, howls and hisses away with abandon. Every utterance sounds like it would hurt the human vocal chords something fierce, and in metal that is commendable. Blythe uses many more high-pitched screams and every once in a while his performance is downright fantastic. Good job Randy. Go back to this style, and for the love of Lucifer, please stop singing. It is not helping your street cred.

Guitar-wise, nothing to write home about. The breakdowns sound more sludge and less core – shame they couldn’t have kept that up. Less of the same riff over and over again, but also fewer guitar solos. A mix of great sections and boring ones. Even a grinding feeling here and there, but sloppiness is the order of the day. Take the good with the bad, my friends. The muddy production helps their cause, fer sure. And the bass, well, this is metal folks. Don’t cry for John Campbell. He wouldn’t cry if your contribution to an album was mixed out of existence.

There’s plenty of highlights, including the punishing “Dimera,” “Chronic Auditory Hallucination,” and “Buckeye.”

In the end, they switched a band member so that the Brothers Adler could play back-to-back 80’s style, and the whole gang decided the name Burn the Priest was immature. That may be true, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t sound more serious then than they do now.

7 immolated holy officials out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 1999
- Label: Legion
- Website: www.burnthepriest.com
- Band
- D. Randall Blythe: vocals
- John Campbell: bass
- Chris Adler: drums
- Mark Morton: guitars
- Willie Adler: guitars

- Tracklist
- 01. Bloodletting
- 02. Dimera
- 03. Resurrection #9
- 04. Goatfish
- 05. Salvation
- 06. Lies Of Autumn
- 07. Chronic Auditory Hallucination
- 08. Suffering Bastard
- 09. Buckeye
- 10. Lame
- 11. Preaching To The Converted
- 12. Departure Hymn
- 13. Duane