1150: Randy Blythe | Making Peace with the Wars Inside His Head

1150: Randy Blythe | Making Peace with the Wars Inside His Head

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Randy Blythe: 2010. We were in Australia on tour with Metallica. And I woke up one day and I looked out on my hotel room balcony, and I was like, I don't wanna live anymore. It wasn't like I was suicidal, I just wanted to be erased from existence. James Hetfield and some of his guitar techs who I knew were sober, they had talked to me, you dude, you might wanna dial it back a little bit.

And then I was like, maybe you stop drinking and doing drugs. Your life might get better.

Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinkers through long form conversations with a variety of incredible people, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional hacker, astronaut, or even real life pirate.

Yes, those still exist, and if you're new to the [00:01:00] show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics such as persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation China, North Korea, crime, and cults and more.

That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now today on the show Lead Singer of Metal Band at, it's probably even like. Heavier than that, but whatever Lamb of God. Randy Blythe joins me here in studio.

I'm not much of a metal guy, but Randy has quite a story from his upbringing to his music career, the way he views the business, creativity, touring, recording merch and more. He's battled addiction, the music industry, even a murder charge that landed him in a Nazi prison castle in another country, which, well, yeah, we'll hear about that.

It wasn't necessarily a fun time. However, this conversation was fun. It's insightful, and I think you're really gonna enjoy it even if you don't listen to music that's loud enough to break your car windows. Alright, here we go with [00:02:00] Randy Bly.

30 years in the band. That's a objectively long time for any project, but I think for music it's gotta be top percentile of we haven't killed each other yet. I am

Randy Blythe: just astounded by constantly. I realize that we are heading into the legacy territory. I. And it's super rare. A lot of the great bands that I listened to when I was younger lasted five, six years.

Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: It's surprising when you read that, you go, wait, what? That was seven years.

Randy Blythe: But they're eternal. In your mind and in your sort of emotional connection to this music because it's so important to you,

Jordan Harbinger: what genre would you say it is? 'cause everyone has their different sort of opinion.

Randy Blythe: It just extreme metal, just descendant of thrash or whatever.

Just extreme metal.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you guys all get along pretty well? Yes. That's important. Eh,

Randy Blythe: better now than we ever did before.

Jordan Harbinger: That's and

Randy Blythe: rare. That's another thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Grievances add up over time. Right. I think everybody human knows that. I think

Randy Blythe: [00:03:00] we started as such a sort of cantankerous group of gentlemen combative.

Sure. And over the years we've learned. I mean, not a hundred percent, but we've learned more and more to shell the ego, this is my way. I want this. And really think about the greater good. So we have a saying in Lamb of God, which is better. Is better. That's a hard pill to swallow if you've written something that you think is genius and everybody else's.

I don't know, dude, but an old saying from writing often attributed to Tennessee Williams, you must be willing to murder your darlings.

Jordan Harbinger: I was just gonna say the same thing. Kill your darlings, right?

Randy Blythe: Yeah, I heard, I think you mentioned that I listened to the, um, was it the James Patterson episode? He was talking about that.

Yeah. I love that.

Jordan Harbinger: You really understand it when you do something. I'll make a joke that I think is hilarious or something, and then my producer will go, I took the liberty of deleting that terrible unfunny, somewhat offensive joke. And I'm like, not that one. That was [00:04:00] gold. What do you think? Show notes guy.

And he is, oh, that doesn't strike me as something that you should say. And I'm like, actually, these guys are looking out for me.

Randy Blythe: I'm just coming off this almost month long spoken word tour for my book, and I was telling stories, not in the book, but that relay the main theme of the book, which for me is perspective.

And I practiced very hard before I left, and there were certain things. It's not a standup comedy show, but it's close at times.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Deliver a story Well,

Randy Blythe: stories. Yeah. I'm a pretty good storyteller. And there were parts that I was like, this is so funny. This is gonna kill so hard. Absolutely. And it did not land one single time.

And I'm friends with some professional standup comedians. I'm like, dudes, what is going on? They're like, sometimes stuff just doesn't land.

Jordan Harbinger: It's only funny because of your unique personal experience and context with that particular story. And when people hear it, they're like, oh, that was the punchline.

Okay.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. Or perhaps stuff that I find funny. Other people find [00:05:00] horrifying,

Jordan Harbinger: but theoretically your fans are also some of those people. But yeah, if you get zero laughs, it's like you start crossing stuff off the set list

Randy Blythe: and then you're chasing laughs. I found myself after the first show. It's you're chasing these laughs, this validation coming from people.

Yes. I'm funny. Yes. What I'm saying has an impact. And speak the truth and hope it lands.

Jordan Harbinger: Lamb of God got popular over a longer period of time. This was not like one album. Oh my gosh. These are the greatest. Play it on every radio station one. No, no, no.

Randy Blythe: Never really any radio play. We were rather extreme for that.

I worked a straight job for the first eight or nine years of the band.

Jordan Harbinger: What did you do?

Randy Blythe: I was a restaurant, uh, cook and also a roofer.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. That's well inside of my guitar player.

Randy Blythe: Mark and I both roof together for a while and that's not an easy job.

Jordan Harbinger: You do go into some kitchens and hear crazy music going on in there.

Yes. And you, and you see the tats, especially in la You're like that guy. Is it the [00:06:00] Viper room tonight? Sure.

Randy Blythe: Absolutely. Yeah, it's a bunch of pirates. The restaurant business allows you flexibility to go out on the road. Most of my bosses, I'm like, look, I'm gonna go on tour for a little bit. And they're like, I give them, you know, a few weeks notice or a month or two notice and they're like, okay.

And then when you come back. Hey, you got any shifts? You pick 'em up.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, man, that's gotta be tough. Ending a tour and being like, I'm on top of the world. And then you go back and they're like, yeah, you can have the crappiest hours. And also the chef is still an asshole and the tips are still not shared at the back of the house.

And there's like, damn,

Randy Blythe: there's this massive, I wouldn't even call it deceleration process crash. It's just an impact. You're on tour and you have this schedule and everyone's happy to see you. And we are working straight jobs while touring in tour buses, which people see a tour bus and they think it's this magical vehicle that indicates you're just rolling in cash, but you come off, you're signing autographs, you're playing in front of people who love your [00:07:00] music and they're excited to see you.

And then it's Okay, I'm back to washing dishes.

Jordan Harbinger: Boom. Yep. Exactly. What is this stuck to my, nevermind. Don't answer that. I don't wanna know what I'm cleaning off with my bare hands right now. But

Randy Blythe: as you said, it was a gradual process and. I'm fully prepared for it all. Go away one day. Never know. That's an

Jordan Harbinger: interesting way to look at it.

That's a very sort of Ryan Holiday who I know, you know. He's a good friend, good mutual friend of of ours. That's a good way to look at it. He's got that Memento Maori thing, but he's also got the kind of stoicism where it's, you are the emperor today and tomorrow you're sweeping the streets. Yes. We talked about how your band grew slowly ish over the 30 year period.

Do you think that was healthy for you guys? 100%. I'd be dead if not, because the overnight fame's not good for anybody. But you see these bands where the kid's like 21 or 20 and you go, wow, there's no human on earth that's equipped to deal with this. And your brain's not even fully developed yet. Yeah, it's not done yet.

And you're like an A-list celebrity. You're never going to recover from this.

Randy Blythe: No, I've seen that. I know [00:08:00] people in our world who got pretty famous at 21 years old, and some of them are still trying to recover from that. You're not equipped to deal with that stuff at all at that age, and our quote unquote fame has been very gradual, steady, incline up.

We're grateful for that. Every new thing that happens for us, we're like, wow. It's cool

Jordan Harbinger: to be grateful for it. Yeah. But yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. It probably keeps you thinking about how lucky you are to be in the position that you are.

Randy Blythe: I don't come from money. I started working my first job when I was 12 and worked, who hires

Jordan Harbinger: a 12-year-old

Randy Blythe: a bookstore.

I got paid like $2 an hour and I found out what the 18 and over people were making and the owner was like. What are you gonna do? Yeah. And I was like, oh, screw you. Like I could, I

Jordan Harbinger: could report you, but then I probably [00:09:00] wouldn't be able to keep my job then I'd be a snitch. Yeah. And I love

Randy Blythe: working at the bookstores.

I wound up just mostly doing lawn work after that, making better cash than sitting in the bookstore.

Jordan Harbinger: To be fair, that guy was doing you a favor by paying you at all. Yeah. I dunno how useful 12 year olds are in any environment. Generally speaking. I was

Randy Blythe: really surprised. I was 12 or 13 and I started running the cash register and stuff.

Oh, okay.

Jordan Harbinger: So that's real work. Uh, yeah. All right. He was, maybe it was a mutual exploitation in that. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: And a lot of music of course. And especially, it seems like a lot of metal bands. There's an act, it's a performance like most people on stage. And you've been in the band for 30 years and I wonder if there's any difference between Randy Blythe in person and Randy Blythe on the stage.

That's 'cause eventually that just blends together. Sure. I would imagine after 10 years, you're like, it's the same guy.

Randy Blythe: Sure I am the same guy. I think being in such an aggressive band and there's this idea about people and bands as aggressive as mine, whether it be metal, hardcore, or punk that are quote unquote angry bands.

Those of us in those bands and [00:10:00] people in the community that go see these bands. To the outside eye, it may look violent and chaotic and crazy, but again and again, you'll hear from people who go to a metal show with a friend for the first time. They're like, everyone was so nice. And I think as far as the person on stage and the person in front of you, they're the same person but the onstage person.

I'm allowed to release a lot of energy, a lot of aggressive energy in a controlled environment. Um, I don't go running down the street screaming in people's faces and

Jordan Harbinger: why not? It's la You could get away with it.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. Then I'd just be a tweaker. Right? Yeah. They do that downtown. Yeah, they do that. So for me, it's an aspect of my person.

I don't sing about dragons and fantasy stuff. I sing about real things, mostly things that concern me and upset me. Sociopolitical [00:11:00] issues, environmental issues and things like that. And that's stuff that really gets my gears grinding on stage. I can release that in that manner. It's a release valve. And the people that come to the shows that engage in this very physical act of viewing this music, whether it be banging their heads, moshing, or just jumping up and down, it's a release valve for them too.

Jordan Harbinger: You know, I was really surprised. I went to, this is 25 years ago now or something, but my friend worked for our student newspaper back at Michigan and we went to go see Disturbed, I think it was, and it was really hot in this crappy little venue that it was down in Detroit. These guys are like, yo, you gotta to mush with us.

And I was like, oh, these are really scary guys. We need to get away from these guys. They're really aggressive. And I was like. No thanks, man. I'm just watching it. It was Oh, okay. No problem. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I thought we were like about to get our like punched in the face by some progressive psychopath and he was like, oh, it's like a sport.

It's like if you're not playing, you're not playing. But if you're playing like you run into each other at full speed and it's just part of the game.

Randy Blythe: There [00:12:00] are jerks every now and then, but there are jerks in this building somewhere right now. So

Jordan Harbinger: like

Randy Blythe: you're talking to one. Yeah. Two, uh, our community tends to self-regulate itself.

That just unrestrained aggression to try and purposely hurt someone, it gets dealt with.

Jordan Harbinger: I was also surprised by how nice the staff was. Nice. We went to the tour bus to interview, not super familiar with that band, and it was a long time ago. The singer, the lead singer, yeah. David Draymond. And he looked really scary, like he's got metal in

Randy Blythe: his face and all that stuff and

Jordan Harbinger: he's talking to us.

He goes, what's up guys? And he is taking these giant like metal horns out of his face and stuff. Yeah. And putting them in a little container. He was so patient with what had to probably be the most like surface level college student. Never done this before. Interview in the world. Sure. And his girlfriend was like, all right, I'll be back there.

And he's like, okay, go take a shower. I'll be done soon. He gave us all the time and when we were done, he is okay. Is that it? You take all the time you want. We're like, oh, well you're probably tired. He said, it's fine. And we're like, oh. So this super famous, really doing super well, [00:13:00] right? Successful guy not only invited us into his tour bus when he could have just talked to us outside for two minutes.

He was in absolutely no real hurry. And I just thought, wow, if I ever get really famous for anything, I gotta be cool. This was really surprising.

Randy Blythe: I know those dudes, they are a very big band. They did a cover of the Sound of Silence and Draymond has a beautiful voice. He's a great singer. They're at the point where my mom, who's met lots of my scary friends and is always like, they're so nice.

Yeah, Southern woman, but she's like, Randy, do you know this band disturbed? I'm like, yes, mom, I do. And she's like, I just love their cover of Sound of Silence. And I'm like, I'll tell David Singer, my mom loves your

Jordan Harbinger: music. Oh,

Randy Blythe: but those guys, he's patient with you. Those guys come from a DIY background. They're from Chicago.

And these have these parties where they would throw these parties in warehouses to promote their music. It's like a metal

Jordan Harbinger: rave.

Randy Blythe: Yeah, exactly. It's not [00:14:00] like the record label Gods were swooping down upon them and making them huge. They were promoting themselves for a long time. And that's the world we come from too.

Jordan Harbinger: That whole gorilla. Make it your own. That's way more popular and common now 'cause you have social media. Sure. So any sort of niche, if you can get traction, you're good. But yeah, back then it was like handing out tapes outta the back of the car and then Oh, that's the whole

Randy Blythe: hip hop scene.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. The whole hip hop scene.

Exactly. You do seem, and you have a reputation as a down to earth guy. Isn't being the front man of a successful band, kind of like gasoline for an ego. How do you keep that in check because Sure. Uh, that could be a problem.

Randy Blythe: We call it LSD, lead Singer's Disease. Yes. Nice. For me, I think, no offense to the city of Los Angeles, but I don't live in Los Angeles.

I don't live in New York City. I don't live in an epicenter of the music industry in Richmond where I'm from. A lot of people, except for the younger people, they're like, oh, that's [00:15:00] Randy. He used to be a line cook at Third Street Diner. That dude made me pancakes

Jordan Harbinger: and they were terrible.

Randy Blythe: No, they were great.

I'm very egotistical about my pancakes.

Jordan Harbinger: We

Randy Blythe: as a band are pretty cognizant of the dangers of that and act very purposely to not be jerks and to stay right sized. It's gotta be tough though, because dude, when you start believing,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah,

Randy Blythe: people are like, you're awesome. You're a God. I've had tons of people and I know it's an expression.

They say, you're a God. And I'm like, you need a better deity. I suck. I'm fallible. Even just saying that is reinforcing that in the back of my head, and once you start believing your own hype that you're this awesome thing, I find that's when your talent tends to abandon you.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Why do you think that happened?

Drew Carey said something similar on the show earlier. He said, comedians get decidedly less funny as soon as they start making money. His rationale [00:16:00] was, comedians are griping about everyday things. So if you're taking your private jet with your assistant and they're going shopping for you, you just get less material that people can relate to.

But with a band, why is that happening? With music, for example,

Randy Blythe: it's a matter of purity of expression and I sing about things that matter to me. Things generally That upset me a lot of the times. Yeah, because I make a decent living. I'm not a multi bazillionaire. I don't have a Rolls Royce and all that other crap.

Jordan Harbinger: I make a

Randy Blythe: good

Jordan Harbinger: living. Would you ever buy a Rolls Roy that

Randy Blythe: No, dude, I drive it. It's so not metal. I drive a 2006 used Toyota fore runner that I've had since I bought it used in like 2008.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Why do you do that? '

Randy Blythe: cause why not a car guy? Yeah, it's got 258,000 miles on it. I think. I surf board fit on top and I'm gonna have to buy a new car soon.

'cause it's getting more, they got

Jordan Harbinger: air conditioning now, you know that right? Yeah. Mine is real. Dude.

Randy Blythe: The heat didn't work on this winter, but it's not [00:17:00] important to me. Mine is dented. It's got scrapes on. I don't care. It's

Jordan Harbinger: liberating to dress something like that, isn't it? Yeah. Oh man. It's a tight parking space.

When someone swings a door, whatever.

Randy Blythe: I have a rental car out here and they gave me this audial, like with this spaceship screen, and I'm just parking in the garage, the below ground chair and all that's beeping and all this other stuff. And I'm like, ah,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah,

Randy Blythe: but don't scratch this thing.

Jordan Harbinger: It's not mine.

Exactly. I know what that's like. The more crap you have. There's this phrase like, possessions own you or something like that. It's, you're

Randy Blythe: a prisoner to your possessions after a while.

Jordan Harbinger: Whenever you get like, this is aura ring. It's a sleep tracker.

Randy Blythe: I know what it is. I've lost two. You've lost two. Okay. Shout out to my buddy Patty, the surfer.

He got me on it. So it's, they're,

Jordan Harbinger: they're fun. When you get one, you're like, oh, it's pristine. It looks so nice. Yeah. And then you hold a fork and you're like, oh, did that, just scratch that thing. And you get mad for a couple hours and then you realize now I can scratch it a hundred more times. It doesn't matter because it's no longer pr.

So you, once you get over that hump. Or you never had it 'cause you bought the car used. You just don't have to worry about that. And it's [00:18:00] very freeing to be like, yeah, this is the phone that has a crack in the side already, so it just doesn't matter. Forget sure.

Randy Blythe: I am going to buy a new car because this car is starting to repeatedly need to go to the garage and I just want something reliable.

So I'm, I'm gonna buy a brand new car for the first time ever. What do

Jordan Harbinger: you think you'll get?

Randy Blythe: A Toyota RAV4 hybrid. There you go. It carries surfboards. But I'm gonna be a nervous little ninny about it. Like,

Jordan Harbinger: oh my God. The trick is to get it kick a dent in the door with your boot the first day. Yeah, there you go.

No worries. Yeah, there was a show, California case where David OV was in it or something. He buys a new Porsche, he looks at it scowls, then he wax one of the headlights with like a metal rod and breaks it and he is like, all right though, there we go. It's some sort of metaphor or whatever for the show that I probably didn't pick up on, but I was like, oh, let's see what you did there.

Make sure it's no longer pristine. There's a viral video of you trying to go backstage. I don't know where it is, but this secure bloodstock. Okay. It's a

Randy Blythe: big festival in the United Kingdom.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And the woman stops you and [00:19:00] someone's like, do you know who this guy is? And. It was one of the reasons I booked this interview because you handled that so well.

Do you mind telling us the little anecdote?

Randy Blythe: Yes. We were headlining bloodstock in England two or three years ago, I guess. It's a big music festival and we were the main act 'cause we, we do very well in the community there and there's 40,000 people there. I guess when you walk on stage, you have a laminate most of the time.

Jordan Harbinger: Like a ID card thing? Yes,

Randy Blythe: exactly. It's a tour laminate and I did not have mine because I'm a sweaty mess. When I go on stage, I'm afraid I'll lose it or if I leave it, someone will take it. People see tour laminates, they're like, Ooh. So normally I give it to my guitar tech or I just leave it locked in the dressing room on this night, I was like, I probably won't need it.

We're the headliners. So I walked up without my laminate and you have to show your laminate to get on the stage. We're getting ready to play and this [00:20:00] young lady. Doing her job looked at me and said, excuse me, I need to see your laminate. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm an idiot. I don't have it. And someone's like, no, no, no.

He is the singer. And she's like, oh, I'm so sorry, right? And I'm like, no, don't be sorry. You're doing your job

Jordan Harbinger: right. I could be anybody.

Randy Blythe: I like you. And it's my fault that I didn't have my laminate. I didn't want to be inconvenienced. So like why should I be mad at this woman? For doing her job. That's patently insane.

She's there to keep me safe.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I think a lot of people said, whoa, this guy's super down to earth and really cool for not explo. That's how low the bar is though. Right. Which was so

Randy Blythe: surprising to me. I'm like, this is not like some sort of triumph of altruism. This is a decent human being,

Jordan Harbinger: man. It's not hard.

Yeah. That's how low the bar really is. Or they expected less outta you, Randy.

Randy Blythe: Yeah, maybe. I guess I look like a mean person, but my [00:21:00] girlfriend says I have a mean demeanor,

Jordan Harbinger: resting jerk face. Not really.

Randy Blythe: When I'm walking around, I guess she look mean and I'm like, I don't know if that's okay.

Jordan Harbinger: It stops you from getting mugged and know.

Yes,

Randy Blythe: I'm a really nice guy. But when that came out, you know, I've talked to a lot of security people and they're like, dude, there are band guys that.

Jordan Harbinger: Don't you know who I am? No. I just work here, which, yeah, exactly. And I don't listen to this crap.

Randy Blythe: I just work here. So for me, I always like to poke fun at myself and say, don't you

Jordan Harbinger: know who I think I am?

That's great. Yeah. She's having worked venue security. Do you know who that is? No. I'm literally wearing headphones because I don't wanna hear this shit.

Randy Blythe: We played a few like a year later in Bristol, England, and someone told me, yo, I think her name was Sarah. They're like, she's working tonight. And I'm like, oh my God.

The same lady. I got to see her and give her a big hug, and then we did this whole like skit where I acted like I was security and she was trying to come backstage. I'm like, wait, wait, wait. I need to see your id and my band [00:22:00] is you jerk. Don't you know who she is? It was

Jordan Harbinger: pretty funny. She's a very sweet girl.

That's what people loved about that. I think it was like a wholesome interaction. By the way, what happened? He had so many dreads. Then I looked you up and I was like, oh, that's not the same guy.

Randy Blythe: No, it's the same guy. We played a festival in Milwaukee a couple years ago. Milwaukee Metal Fest. A friend of mine puts on and I got a kink in my neck.

From swinging them around and it wouldn't leave for like two weeks. And I was like, okay, that's it. It was constantly hurting my neck. I surf too. And they get really heavy when you surf.

Jordan Harbinger: How does that even work? Because soaking wet Giant, yes. Mop of dreads. It's gotta weigh like 30 pounds. Yeah,

Randy Blythe: it sucked.

And also I'd have to tie 'em up. They come undone sometimes. Do you surf? No,

Jordan Harbinger: but my brother-in-law is all my friends. So

Randy Blythe: when you paddle and then pop up, you put your hands at your rib cage to pop up. Oh, you've got your hair. And sometimes my hair would get underneath it and then I'd just eat crap.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Why can't I put Oh right.

'cause I'm holding myself down. Exactly. My buddy, he surfs. He ended up with, have [00:23:00] you ever heard of surfers myelopathy? It's a super rare disease, a rare thing. No,

Randy Blythe: don't scare me. You're not gonna get this.

Jordan Harbinger: Only apparently every case has been Asian men because of where their nerves are located in their back.

But I guess the some thing where you put your hands on the board and pop your spine. Yes, like that Cobra yoga position. Yes, that's a popup that can pinch nerves in your back, but again, only in like Asian males or something generally. And he got that. And what it does is it makes it so that you can't really walk.

'cause it's some sort of like impingement of a nerve. Ugh. You can't really walk. And then he couldn't pee. So he goes to the hospital and he's like, I have to pee super bad, but I can't relax. Whatever muscle that is. And they're like, okay, this is gonna be uncomfortable. Comes to the catheter. Catheter. And he's like, it was actually like the best, most welcome because imagine having to pee worse than you've ever had to pee in your entire life,

Randy Blythe: but you can't do it.

Your bladder would eventually explode and poison you. I guess. I

Jordan Harbinger: suppose that's what has to happen, right? So, or the muscle gives out and it just dribbles out. What do I know? Awkward transition. But what happens if you're playing on stage and you really [00:24:00] have to go to the bathroom or something? Are you just stuck?

Randy Blythe: Um, yes. But if it's an extreme emergency before you go on stage, every person is going to the bathroom as much as possible to get it out. What

Jordan Harbinger: I do before the show, but I still end up taking a break in the middle of having to go to the bathroom. Sure.

Randy Blythe: But dude, there have been some close calls with not just peeing.

Oh God. Because when you go on tour, you have to be pretty much dead to not get on stage. All of us have gotten on stage after suffering food poisoning where it's like, ah, it's coming out. You know? And I remember we played in London one time and my guitar player, mark had gotten food, poison had been up all night long, puking and coming out the other way.

And he just stood in one place. I couldn't really do my job 'cause I was so worried he was gonna fall over. He was gray. And I was just trying to stay near him. Oh my gosh. So he could hold them up. But we've definitely had trash cans backstage before. 'cause it, if it's gonna go, it's gonna [00:25:00] go.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. Yeah.

That's interesting. 'cause you think, okay, you can empty your bladder or say, okay, no drinking an hour beforehand. Well then you're dehydrated. You're dehydrated then. And especially if you're playing outside in the summer and it's 95 degrees in the shade. You have to deal with that and yeah, being sick.

What happens if a band your size has to cancel a show? What is the process like? Do you have to refund everybody?

Randy Blythe: The last time we canceled because of illness was because of me. I had sushi with a friend of mine in LA and then we went to Vegas for the next show at House of Blues. And I woke up and I walked off the bus and I was feeling great.

And then all of a sudden I wasn't feeling great. Oh no. And then all of a sudden it all started coming out. Oh man. Everywhere. And eventually it would not stop. So we got a doctor to come to House of Blues and give me a shot to stop the vomiting. Plug you up. To plug me up. And then I got in my bunk and I just, I couldn't barely move.

And I remember. [00:26:00] My tour manager opening the bunk and he is, do we need to cancel? And I'm, yes. I can't move. You could wheel me out and lay me on the stage. I could just lay there and vomit and shit myself. Yeah, it wouldn't be much of a shit. It's performance art

Jordan Harbinger: people. Yeah,

Randy Blythe: exactly. We came back, I. I can't remember how many months later and made that show up.

But if people couldn't make it up, obviously they're gonna get a refund. Oh

Jordan Harbinger: man.

Randy Blythe: It's also when you cancel a show, fans get so mad. Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: They flew in and took a week

Randy Blythe: off or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. And I understand that. That's why we don't cancel unless something is severely wrong. But for us, it's not good either.

Because when you cancel a show, we still have to pay our crew. We've already paid the bus. Yeah. The venue. We paid for everything. And that's built into the budget. So you don't make money on a tour until a lot of the times the last third of the tour. I see. 'cause everything is else is catching up with the [00:27:00] initial output.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. You need like startup capital to Yes.

Randy Blythe: Oh yeah. So we reserve that in our bank account to start a tour, but if you cancel shows you lose money. And I love playing music and I love playing for the fans, but it's also my job. I'm not out here to lose money. So when people cancel. I don't think fans understand this.

Sometimes they're like, he just didn't want to come here or something. Yeah. Diva. No, dude, this is how we make money.

Jordan Harbinger: God and your band mates would be pissed too, because look, if you're dying from food poisoning, they understand, I would assume. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But nobody wants to go, oh, he's a little tired.

Let's cancel this show. And hey, that's my $15,000 and your 15,000. Each of us are chipping in for all the deposits and

Randy Blythe: we're,

Jordan Harbinger: and we're paying for everything else. Right. This is my kids' college tuition money that I, yeah,

Randy Blythe: exactly. A lot of my guys have kids and the band dudes are the last people to get paid.

Sure, of course. Always the last.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's gotta be for a damn good reason. Oh yeah. Let's go out for sushi. You know what, actually we're headlining tomorrow. Let's not go out for sushi.

Randy Blythe: Do [00:28:00] I have learned the hard way? I don't really do sushi. I don't eat spicy Indian food anymore. I don't like at all. Or just before shows.

Okay. Yeah. My tolerance for spice has gone down over years. Really? Oh, sadly.

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like mine has gone up. Much like you needed the headphone volume turned way up. I need my spice volume turned way up. Now that I'm 45,

Randy Blythe: no, mine has sadly gone down. I can't do it the way I used to.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, but it's wise, right?

You have to think about what you're gonna eat. For me, it's before a plane ride or a big interview. It's, Hey, do you want to have this questionable oyster omelet for breakfast? Right? Sure. No, sir. Oh, I think we're gonna do some sausage and pancakes. No, I

Randy Blythe: don't do raw oysters on tour. I won't do mussels. One wrong mussel to quote Anthony Bourdain and you're shitting like a mink.

Whatever that means. I always just thought it

Jordan Harbinger: was a great expression. Definitely true. The only times I've had food poisoning has always been like, I will have the seafood pasta. Oh, that one tasted funny. The rest of it was fine, and then the next day you're just like, cancel everything for the next four days.

No bueno. Done. You guys can't make too many [00:29:00] mistakes on it. Like I can go, uh, what else do I wanna talk about? Oh, we already talked about that. And then they'll just edit it out and make it look like I know what I'm doing.

Randy Blythe: Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Surely there are mistakes that happen during shows, and then what do you do?

When that happens,

Randy Blythe: we are very self-critical and there are mistakes that happen during shows, but our band is so tight, we are one of the tightest bands out there. So for us, a mistake that will really bother one of us is something completely unnoticeable to the average listener. I. So it's gotta be a huge train wreck.

And I think one time in the last 10 years we have a total train wreck on a song. And then I'm like, you just laugh.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Randy Blythe: You laugh at yourself. Be refreshing.

Jordan Harbinger: It's like an outtake at the end of a comedy movie. Yeah. We're like, oh, that they screwed up the line.

Randy Blythe: And that's scene. That's hilarious. We're humans and we don't play to a click.

We are a live rock band. And as such, mistakes happen, but not often.

Jordan Harbinger: No Milli Vanilli moment where you're gonna

Randy Blythe: No, we don't run tracks except for like during the [00:30:00] intro there's an intro, woo or whatever. There's no vocal tracks, no guitar tracks, none of that crap.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you guys do pyrotechnics and stuff? I haven't seen a live

Randy Blythe: show, but I assumed, yes.

We started doing that a few years ago. What

Jordan Harbinger: do you think about that?

Randy Blythe: It was, I love it. It's cool, right? It's very cool. But it was very scary at first. And the first time we did it was in 2021, I believe it was the first tour we did Coming outta Covid and we started it in Austin, Texas. There's a venue at a racetrack, a Formula One racetrack out there, and it was in July or August in Austin.

We had a pre-production day where we ran the whole set,

Jordan Harbinger: including the firework. Oh yeah.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. And I'm on stage and it is, I think it was like 110 degrees outside.

Jordan Harbinger: We need more fire. I'm like, why

Randy Blythe: did we do this? Why? But it's awesome. It's amazing's to have a pyro guy, bro. Yeah. It's like having your own personal wizard.

It just presses a button and I am [00:31:00] the mother of dragons.

Jordan Harbinger: Because you see it now with lasers, and lasers are cool. They're super cool. There is something missing when there's no explosion. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. It's a primal thing. Fire is very primal. The feeling of the explosion going off Yes. Is also absent when you just have a laser thing.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. Happening or

Jordan Harbinger: drone thing.

Randy Blythe: I mean, when you think about it, you're sitting around with people. If there's a fire in someone's backyard at a fire pit, people gravitate towards that. That's right. They sit there and they look at it. It's primal. It is. It's in our DNA.

Jordan Harbinger: Now your ears will ring from the explosively good deals on the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Aura Ring. I've been rocking the aura ring since Gen one back when it looked like some sort of gadget from the future. Now we're on gen four. I've gotta say it just keeps getting better, sleeker, more comfortable, smarter. I wear mine 24 7 without even thinking about it.

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Learn more@auraring.com slash Jordan. That's OURA ring.com/jordan. This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. I gotta give a shout out to Brian McDonald, who listens to the show and absolutely hooked me up in Vietnam. Recently, Brian runs a taste of Hanoi, [00:33:00] and I had this layer over in Hanoi, and he's like, I got you.

Set me up with one of his guides for a motorbike food tour in Hanoi, which is awesome. Now, if you've never been in the back of a motorbike in Vietnam, it's something, man, you're weaving through scooters and traffic like a video game where you can actually die, and then all of a sudden we're inside someone's house.

Literally inside we rode the motorbike. I, I'll tell you here, here with the guide, pulls into what looks like an alley, okay? But it turns into a hallway, and then he turns around grins and goes, okay, put your hands on my shoulders. Duck your head down. Pull your knees all the way in. The next thing I know.

We're riding through someone's living room. Not even kidding, like actually someone's living room to get to this little courtyard kitchen where this auntie is making fu. That'll just ruin your life. No fa will ever taste as good. And Vietnamese egg coffee upstairs on the balcony. I don't even know how to describe it.

It's like tiramisu and espresso. Had a beautiful caffeinated baby. Short trip, chaotic, absolutely incredible. And I can't wait to go back and bring Jen next time because I know she's gonna love it. And next time we'll put our place on Airbnb to help fund the adventure you can too. Airbnb makes it super practical.

It doesn't take a lot of effort. You set it up before you leave, and then boom, your [00:34:00] house is earning money while you're on vacation and making memories. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host. If you're wondering how I managed to book guests like Randy Blythe, it is because of my network.

These always come through warm intros folks. It's not just fallen in my lap for no reason. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free. Now, I know you're probably not booking for a podcast, but everything that has come through in my life and business, including meeting my wife, has come through this circle of people that I know, like, and trust.

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Alright, back to Randy Blythe. You had a [00:35:00] bout with alcoholism. Yeah. You can call that. You wanna call it

Randy Blythe: that? Oh yeah, sure. 22 year knockdown, drag out Olympic level brawl with booze and drugs. Yes. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: I would love to hear about that because it sounded like your life revolved around booze for that.

Randy Blythe: Yes.

It's the center of my existence.

Jordan Harbinger: 10 years sober now. 14. 14. What? I don't know where I got 10. It's a nice, easy number to say. It's a round one. It's probably in your book. And I was like, oh, time has not evolved since I've read this piece of thing that he wrote four

Randy Blythe: years ago. I started drinking when I was about 18, and the longer I stay sober, the more I realized how different my drinking was from the beginning.

Whereas everybody drinks when they're young, at least in our age group. Sure, my friends would drink and most of them even on the weekend, maybe get a hangover or whatever and then go on about their life. But with me, and when I drank strange things happened, I wound up in weird places with weird people doing weird things [00:36:00] at times, and I.

That was even before my band. So once I joined a band, you can get away with a lot of stuff when you're in a band that you can't, he's an artist at a regular job. It's normal

Jordan Harbinger: for him to have whiskey for breakfast. Yes,

Randy Blythe: exactly. And when we finally signed to a major, I'd been in the band oh nine years at the time, I guess when our first major label record came out and we didn't get millions of dollars a piece or anything, but we had to make a decision when our first major label record came out.

Like, okay, are we going to devote ourselves full time to this or are we going to continue to weaken warrior this and work when we can and tour when we can? It was very scary time in my life because I've been working since I was

Jordan Harbinger: 12. Oh, so you're like, should we burn the boats?

Randy Blythe: Yes. Burn the boat's. Time to do this.

And the odds of success, particularly given the nature of our band, are not good. Right. They're not. We're never gonna deliver a radio hit.

Jordan Harbinger: You're not writing pop songs [00:37:00] for No. Taylor Swift.

Randy Blythe: When I quit the day job and the band became full time, I no longer had any sort of restraint except for when I was on stage or in the studio.

There's nothing telling me not to drink every day. Right. I see. And I had some money in my pocket for the first time in my life and my alcoholism just progressed. And I think he was already there. Like in retrospect and looking at it, it got worse and worse though. And particularly in our culture. I think it's changing now.

I think the paradigm is changing. I think kids are smarter now. I don't think they think it's cool to be a drunken train wreck anymore. But we did from the heavy metal world. Yeah. Yeah. And our band is from that. And even in the more punk rock scene I come from, there's a long history of junkies and so forth.

Jordan Harbinger: Was it Sid Vicious who died? Sid of heroin when he was like 21.

Randy Blythe: Yeah, he was 21 years old.

Jordan Harbinger: That's like a child.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. And he was a

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:00] hardcore

Randy Blythe: junkie. Yeah. So that sort of mythos, I bought into that. Of course I drink, I'm in a heavy metal band.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's beneficial for my voice. Yeah. To smoke this cigarette nonstop

Randy Blythe: and, and being a train wreck kind of was expected.

So it got worse and worse though. My band was doing better and better and I was getting worse and worse until finally in 2010 we were in Australia on tour with Metallica and I woke up one day and I looked out on my hotel room balcony and I was, it was a beautiful day in Australia, Brisbane. And I was like, I don't wanna live anymore.

It wasn't like I was suicidal, I just wanted to be erased from existence. I

Jordan Harbinger: see. Shut the machine down.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. Done. And then I was like, maybe you stop drinking and doing drugs. Your life might get better. And it did.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So how did you stop? You just,

Randy Blythe: I stopped and I talked to some of the dudes who were out on that tour who I knew were sober, James Hetfield and some of his guitar [00:39:00] techs and stuff.

'cause they had talked to me. We were on tour of Metallica for about a year over the course of two years back then. And every now and then they'd be like, dude, you might wanna dial it back a little bit. 'cause party to Cross America, Europe, then on into New Zealand, Australia. And I knew those dudes were sober.

So I went there. I'm like, please help. They were like, just breathe, dude.

Jordan Harbinger: We were wondering if you were gonna have this conversation. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Randy Blythe: I spent my first month, I. Sober in Australia on tour.

Jordan Harbinger: Did you have withdrawal symptoms and everything? Uh,

Randy Blythe: my metabolism is so fast. I processed it out.

I was sweaty and couldn't sleep very well a couple of nights. Sure. But there's only two substances that can kill you from withdrawals and that's alcohol and benzodiazepines, Xanax and that shit. And withdrawals from alcohol can kill you, seizures and all that stuff. [00:40:00] Luckily it just didn't happen for me.

I guess it just processed it. I got lucky. That is fortunate. Yeah. But I had a friend who drank himself to death at age 23 years old. Died on his bed, cursing his parents. They were coming to see him and he couldn't barely even speak anymore.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's terrible.

Randy Blythe: They took the alcohol away from me, went to the hospital and his and his internal organs melted.

Jordan Harbinger: That's just horrific.

Randy Blythe: He was built like me, like a tall, skinny dude. You never know. It's an individual thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Geez. Again, it depends on your organs. Did you get fat during this time? 'cause alcohol is a shit load of calories. I tried my best to get a beer gut. Didn't happen. Did you? One of the guys are like, oh yeah, I have a six pack now.

'cause I've been eating too much fast

Randy Blythe: food. I get a gut when I eat, but it's not like a fat gut. It's just distended. Six pack float and then two hours later it's gone. Man, it makes my girlfriend really mad. Yeah, you eat whatever you want and I gained the weight. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: that's nonsense. Nobody likes you for that.[00:41:00]

You said in the book, no one is more educated about your beliefs than yourself in theory, and then I'm paraphrasing here, but you go on to say, but if you don't question or analyze these or look at your beliefs critically, you just take them at face value. Then you're driven by fear. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Randy Blythe: The precise quote, the word that's missing is if you are unwilling. I see. To examine. I. If you sit there and you're like, if I think, okay, Jordan Harbinger really doesn't like me. We're gonna do this podcast and he's gonna ask me some gotcha questions and then try and submit this to, uh, the music press and make me look like a total jerk.

That is

Jordan Harbinger: my

Randy Blythe: plan. Yeah, I know. I can tell you're very Machiavellian. So if I have these beliefs for some reason, if I am unwilling to say, why do you think that dude? Like, why, no matter how cherished [00:42:00] that belief is, if I'm unwilling to do that, then I'm scared to look at myself and look at my method of processing the world.

And I think this is something that a lot of people experience. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance going on. I believe this. We live in such a divisive society, not to get into any sort of political party or whatever, but people are so binary now. Yeah. Yeah. Almost black and white thinking at at least online in person.

Things tend to go a little bit smoother, but online there's this group think. You're A or B, and the group is comforting. Human beings have a herd instinct. Of course, this is the way to think everybody else thinks. Everybody else in my bubble agrees with it. E. Exactly. And it's reinforcing your biases, your already existing biases.

But if you aren't really willing to sit there and look at why you think the way you think, and ask yourself, do I believe this [00:43:00] because I believe this or because it's been yelled at me by a bunch of other people, then you're just scared. You're scared to look at yourself. And I think as an artist, at least for me and a lot of my friends, that's one of the great things about being an artist, because it involves a lot of self-reflection, creating honest art and questioning myself and my beliefs.

And some of my beliefs are the very same as they were when I was 16, and I hold them up to scrutiny and it's uncomfortable. But some things I have to let go of

Jordan Harbinger: evolve. Yeah. A friend of mine, she asked why I eat meat? She's a vegetarian. And we were hiking. So I had eight hours to think about the answer. I was like, let me get back to you.

And at the bottom of the mountain, I said, I think it's because I'm a hypocrite. And she's, what do you mean? And I said, I would never let anybody eat my dog just because they eat dog in their culture or whatever. Right. But I will eat chickens and cows and lambs, and I just don't [00:44:00] care.

Randy Blythe: You get hungry enough, you'll eat your dog.

Of course.

Jordan Harbinger: I understand. If someone's starving and they steal my dog, I can empathize with that. But it's not like I would butcher my own dog because I'm just too lazy to go to the grocery store. No, but then you go, yes, I know these animals are mistreated, but I'll still eat them. And the only honest answer is because I just am able to compartmentalize it.

And not look at it and not care. Absolutely. And it's hypocritical to do that. Yes. And you just have to accept that about yourself. And it's not comfortable to be like, yeah, I have beliefs that don't make sense because they're convenient. Right. 100%. And that's

Randy Blythe: the whole thing is. It's uncomfortable to question your beliefs.

And with the meat thing, I eat meat myself. That being said, the factory farming slike system is atrocious. It is.

Jordan Harbinger: It's really gross. It

Randy Blythe: is horrifying for me in my life I've been trying to buy, it's much more expensive, especially these days. Ethically sourced meat.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Randy Blythe: cage free eggs, [00:45:00] all that stuff. It's expensive.

Yeah, it is expensive, but it's the little thing I do. But when I'm on tour, you're not getting cage free eggs, waffle. I'm not doing that. So it's hypocritical. I think we can only do the best that we can do.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Once you have kids, it's even harder, man. I gotta tell you. I looked at my electric bill. I used to be one of those guys, turn off all the lights, wash clothes.

Once a week. I looked at my electric bill. I goes, that line us? And she goes, no. That's the line of how average people, our house size and our area, their electricity that they use. And I was like, what's the giant line that goes all the way across the page? That's our house. I was like, how do we use 300% more electricity than other average people in our area?

And she's like, we work from home. We have two kids. Your parents come over every night. We have an electric stove. And, and this is horrifying, but it, what are you gonna do? Have your kids sit in the dark, wear poopy clothes. Yeah. And you have to just eventually go, damn, I'm not this good person that I thought I was, or I'm not this environmentalist that I thought I was.

Yeah.

Randy Blythe: I am constantly turning off [00:46:00] lights. I am constantly recycling. Yeah. I'm constantly doing all these things that

Jordan Harbinger: you just hope are actually working and I'm just like, please.

Randy Blythe: And it, I'm gonna buy a hybrid car next. 'cause I know that will reduce gas usage, but the batteries were mined by by children in Africa.

Exactly. And, and it's just, oh God, there's so much. And I think that if you're a socially or environmentally conscious person at all, you can't concentrate on everything. You'd lose your mind because you begin to feel. Helpless and without agency. And I think that feeling of helplessness and lack of agency causes some people to just say, screw it.

Yeah, I'm gonna just do whatever. And that's not the answer. So for me, just try, man. I'm trying just to do what I can and I know I'm not perfect, but don't give up hope on doing the right thing just because it's difficult.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree with you. I got a little derailed there, but [00:47:00] you said in the book, my head is a bad neighborhood to get lost in.

Randy Blythe: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: What do you mean by that?

Randy Blythe: I mean that I'm a great catastrophizer. That means that I start with something relatively minute, maybe that has gone wrong or more likely that I have screwed up. And my mind immediately kicks off like an English soccer riot and draws an entirely logical sequence of events that ends in the worst possible outcome,

Jordan Harbinger: lead destruction of your life.

Randy Blythe: Everything my friend. I'm from the 1970s, a child of the Cold War, and the worst logical outcome is global thermonuclear warfare. I forgot

Jordan Harbinger: my laminate sot. Exactly. Thermonuclear warfare. So

Randy Blythe: they're so I forget to stop by the grocery store to get yogurt from my girlfriend, like I promise. And next thing you know, Putin's invading Ukraine.

The sky is on fire and everything's dead. But cockroaches and Keith Richards right bro. So this happens all the time. I need some adult [00:48:00] guidance. I should not go wandering around up in my head without some adult guidance. So that's why I do things like read philosophy and talk to people who have more experience.

I used when I was younger, try to figure everything out myself. Why am I so upset with the world? Why are people jerks? Why can't they put the grocery cart back in the car corral that's it's 10 feet away? And I get so mad that I'd have to change my perspective. And the best way I found to do that would be drink.

And then you're just possessed by impotent anger. It's okay to be anger about some things, but if you're not doing anything with that or it's not inspiring any sort of action whatsoever, then you're just sitting there mad. And nobody likes the mad guy. He doesn't get invited to parties. Were you an angry kid at is after a certain point?

Yes. Did something start that or was it Yeah, absolutely. I don't come from money. I didn't grow up in a dirt shack with no electricity or anything. My dad and [00:49:00] mom, lower middle class and upper lower class, lower middle, somewhere there, somewhere in there. And when they split up, when I was in like the end of third grade, my father and my brothers and I moved to Virginia from North Carolina.

My mom stayed in North Carolina to go to college. Shout out, mom, I love you. Good for her.

Jordan Harbinger: She went to college after having a bunch of kids and

Randy Blythe: stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow. That's, she had

Randy Blythe: three kids. Not easy. No. So she went to college and my parents are great friends to this day. That's good. This separation was not what like really made me angry.

Okay. 'cause they handled it. They never weaponized my brothers and I against him.

Jordan Harbinger: We didn't know anything was wrong. That's how well they handled it. That's very impressive.

Randy Blythe: They're beautiful. Both of them are beautiful people. I love them both very much. Learned a lot from both of them. But when we moved from North Carolina to Virginia, I went into a new school.

I did not fit in. I did not have the right clothes. I did not live in the right neighborhood. [00:50:00] I was not interested in the right things like sports? Yes. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh God, I can relate, man. I

Randy Blythe: wanna read books. Yeah. And I want to go skateboarding. And this is in the eighties. Yeah. When skateboarding was not

Jordan Harbinger: cool.

Skateboarding wasn't cool in the eighties. No. Oh man. In Michigan, it was like the coolest thing. Not in the broader sense

Randy Blythe: than

Jordan Harbinger: it

Randy Blythe: is now. Yeah, sure. Like you were a weirdo punk rocker most of the time. Really? If you were a skateboarder. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Randy Blythe: And I lived in a little tiny redneck town.

Jordan Harbinger: Maybe that's why.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. So it's like you're a fact dude.

Jordan Harbinger: Remember when people could just freely say that? Yes. How horrible is that? Yes.

Randy Blythe: To the point that was in the culture so much that I don't know how old I was. I managed to eradicate that from my vocabulary because it's something I used to say, of course, because I was raised around it and didn't mean like,

Jordan Harbinger: or homeless wasn't a slur.

We were just using it as a random insult. Right. Until your friend goes, yeah, hey, by the way, that's a slur. I had a friend who was like, I'm gay, and that's a slur. And I was like, oh, come on. And he is, no, it's like the N word for gay. And I was like. [00:51:00]

Randy Blythe: Oh, I should just not say that anymore. Yeah. I didn't know any gay people until I got older.

You did, but they didn't tell you. Now I have some very dear friends, and it's like embarrassing to me. It is embarrassing. I'm like, oh my God. I was like, even though these people called me that word, I'm still throwing it around. What a jerk. So it's a process of, thank God

Jordan Harbinger: we didn't have social media when we were kids.

Dude, can you

Randy Blythe: imagine all the crap

Jordan Harbinger: that would've been filmed of

Randy Blythe: us doing? Oh, oh my God, dude, I say that nightmare so many times. I'm like, thank God there were no cell phones when I was a teenager.

Jordan Harbinger: I did and said so many dumb things, even through college, everything. Oh yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah, absolutely. You and I would not be able to have careers.

No, because they'd be like, here's a tape from. 10 years ago where you were saying all these different Yeah, but I was just drunk at a party. Yeah. We don't care. You're a racist to homophobic. Right? It's like not

Randy Blythe: really though. Yeah. I think that's a problem with children today though too. We're joking about it.

Thank God we don't have this. But they do have it. They do have it. [00:52:00] There is a frothing mob of iPhone wielding documenters waiting just to catch your every screw up and like that's gotta be pressure.

Jordan Harbinger: The only saving graze now is in a few years you'll be able to go, that was ai. That's fake. That wasn't me.

Yeah. Yeah. It's getting real scary. Look, here's the full video and then the kid starts flying through the air. Just have to make a fake one. By the way, you taught me something in your book that I've never heard, which is also really scary that you can rip your larynx if you hold back a sneeze. This is true.

One, how did you learn that? And two, that sounds terrible. Do you know anyone who's done that? No, I did not. Oh my God. But

Randy Blythe: I was writing that part. About how the future is unknowable. No matter how advanced our technology gets. People are not good with uncertainty these days. We all have these cell phones, which I call the pocket.

Jesus. You look to it for all your answers, but some things you just don't know. Uncertainty, and you just have to deal with it. So I was [00:53:00] writing about how if someone were to say, I'm not gonna sneeze two years from now, or whatever, it doesn't matter how much you study, sneezing, every allergen you remove from your environment, you could be the boy in the bubble.

You might be ready to

Jordan Harbinger: sneeze the boy in the bubble. There's a reference of people who are younger than us. They're not gonna understand. Yeah,

Randy Blythe: look it up. Like what's John Travolta?

Jordan Harbinger: It might've been, I think so, actually you might be right. Wow, that was John Travolta. Seriously old. So for people who have no idea what we're talking about, this is a kid who based on a true story Yeah.

Randy Blythe: Autoimmune disease

Jordan Harbinger: had or like no immune system or something. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: He had an autoimmune disease, which basically meant he had no immune system.

Jordan Harbinger: Basically he had to live in like the equivalent of a big old fish tank kind of thing with a fan blow in the air. And when he left he had

Randy Blythe: one of those ball things that like hamsters roll around in.

Jordan Harbinger: Terrible.

Randy Blythe: I've read about people with that to this day. But the, yeah, the whole point of that is, is I was talking about how the unknown is unacceptable and, and if you say I'm not gonna sneeze, that's a ridiculous statement. And by the way, don't try and hold back sneeze [00:54:00] 'cause you can rip your larynx. I also have read.

And I'm very careful when I'm driving, if I have to sneeze. Very careful

Jordan Harbinger: when you're driving. Yes. So that you don't slam on the accelerator

Randy Blythe: so that you actually see what's going on. Because most of the time when you sneeze, you're just like, and driving is not the time to blink, like so. I'm just like true.

Jordan Harbinger: And I very

Randy Blythe: purposely keep my eyes open.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Get to clean the windshield. Afterwards I guess I put a hand over my mouth. I'm not a savage. I see. And then, then you touch your

Randy Blythe: steering wheel again. Yes, of course. And spread my germs all over.

Jordan Harbinger: Spread it everywhere. Do you have vocal damage or anything from years of essentially screaming?

Randy Blythe: My voice gets deeper. I think everybody's naturally does.

Jordan Harbinger: You don't have nodules in there or anything like that. Maybe it doesn't sound like it sometimes. You can tell like when Stephen Tyler's got something going on. Yeah, yeah. That's vocal damage. I, I don't think he always sounded like that. He can still sing like high notes and everything.

It's just there's one segment of his [00:55:00] larynx or whatever that's probably shredded up well,

Randy Blythe: you know, consistency and you go out on tour and a guy with a voice like that he wants to deliver. People want to hear that dream. Yeah. You know, like, perfect. They want to hear it perfect. And if he can't hit that, he doesn't, you know, I understand.

If it ever gets to the point where I'm like, ah, I'm gonna be okay, it's time to hang it up.

Jordan Harbinger: Is there a range that you can't sing? Like do you ever go, oh, I'm gonna sing to my nieces and nephews and go, oh God, I can't actually do the frozen soundtrack at all.

Randy Blythe: And the more I sing, the better I get over the years.

But certain false set of stuff, I'm a base barone, so it's a little difficult for me.

Jordan Harbinger: Give 'em the Lamb of God version of,

Randy Blythe: I know. I try not to do that around children. The gold never bothered me anyway.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you have, is it tinnitus? The perpetual ringing in your ears? It comes and goes. I see. Do you actually have hearing damage from, you know,

Randy Blythe: amazingly enough, the last time I had it tested, it was okay, and I get done [00:56:00] recording, or I come off tour, I lay down at night and it goes away after a couple of days.

Every now and then it'll just come beep really high pitched. But I do not have it like for say, William Shatner has it. William Shatner got it. On the set of the original Star Trek, there was, remember when they'd be on the bridge on Star Trek and things would be on fire or whatever. The pyrotechnics exploded unexpectedly close to his ear while they were filming one day.

And so Shatner has tinnitus so bad almost that he was considering suicide. Yeah, it's terrible. It was driving him crazy. So I think he's done some work with foundations to research that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's one of those scary things. There's no cure for it and you think Oh yeah, mild annoyance. But yeah, multiple people have told me that when they have it, it's beyond annoying.

It's like they consider making it all end 'cause there's no way to stop.

Randy Blythe: Mine has not been that bad. Generally what I'll do, if it's at the end of a tour [00:57:00] and I have a little bit, I'll make sure there's a fan running some sort of of white noise until it fade.

Jordan Harbinger: I heard you don't actually like, like recording music, you just tolerate the recording of the music.

Randy Blythe: I don't like recording Lamb of God.

Jordan Harbinger: Why is that? I think that probably confuses people

Randy Blythe: because it, it is physically painful.

Jordan Harbinger: What? What do you mean?

Randy Blythe: When I record, I need everything in the cans ear, bleedingly loud to help emulate this sort of vibe I have with my band. 'cause we're not a quiet band,

Jordan Harbinger: right?

Randy Blythe: My ears go bee.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that kind of physically. Okay. Yes.

Randy Blythe: I have a headache. My throat hurts after you've done it. I wake up every day. My voice is naturally pretty deep when I'm recording. Be great for like sexy voiceover. Sure. And I will hear a fragment of a lyric that I recorded the day before. When I lay down to sleep, I'm hearing the peep, and then I'm also hearing my own voice screaming a part [00:58:00] of a lyric

Jordan Harbinger: again

Randy Blythe: and again and again.

Like

Jordan Harbinger: when you play a video game for too long and you go to sleep and it's in your head. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: It's not good. It's a physical process for me. It really is. I don't enjoy it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Then also you don't wanna record it at classical music volume. No. And find out it doesn't sound quite right at 11 or whatever.

Randy Blythe: Right. I always have a hard time getting my voice to do what it does live. Until one day my producer was like, let's try a trick, and he put a filter on what I heard. My ears and not what was going to tape, but the filter that I was hearing, my voice, he made it sound like a crappy club pa. 'cause that's the world I come from.

And then all of a sudden my voice went

Jordan Harbinger: bling. Oh, that's funny. You tuned it right away.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. Also, because most of the time when you're recording an album, our last album we're recorded here in LA at Henson Studios. And a lot of it was live where the

Jordan Harbinger: Muppet thing was. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. That's gotta be a kind of a cool place to do.

So that Yeah,

Randy Blythe: it's a legendary studio. Yeah. Charlie [00:59:00] Chaplin owned. Yeah, that was his intervention. Right. Forgot

Jordan Harbinger: about that.

Randy Blythe: So we did it. We had a great live room and I wasn't in the room with my guys while they were playing, but I was in a booth. And I could see them and there's an energy that happens between us live.

It's just so much different now. If I'm singing to a tape, my dudes aren't there. I don't feel this visceral connection to them and the music as it's being made that I do on stage.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Randy Blythe: I really feel it and it makes it, I don't know, it makes it just so much better. I hate singing to tape.

Jordan Harbinger: You feed off the crowd too, or does it work?

Oh, 100%. Even with the lights where you can't see anybody or does that not happen at your kind of shows?

Randy Blythe: The lights can definitely blind you, but I'm very well aware of the audience. I'm hyper aware of how the music is going over with the audience. It's my job to make sure the, to facilitate the audience's Good times.

Sure. As a front man, not to be egotistical, but it's your job to make sure [01:00:00] that these people are enjoying the music. Yeah. It's what they're

Jordan Harbinger: paying for,

Randy Blythe: right. Involves encouragement at times, so I'm very much aware of the audience's status.

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What is this Czech prison story? I know a little bit about it, but Stacy, who's out there who I think is maybe my boss, I'm not sure. Right. Basically, if the company had to choose one of us, they would choose her over me. But anyway, she was like, you gotta ask him about the Czech prison story. And I thought it was gonna be like some hilarious night out that ended in you going to prison?

Not really the case, no, no, no, no,

Randy Blythe: no. Not really the case. That's what my first book Dark Days is about, and it's a 500 page book. But basically in 2010, lamb of God played a concert in Prague. Their security was non-existent. Kids were on stage off and on the whole time in very dangerous small club. Our equipment was ready to fall on people.

We played that show. We're like, thank God that's over. We came back. Two years later, we flew from Norway to Prague, landed in Prague airport, got off the plane and they diverted myself and my band into another room. And in the room there were five or six dudes in [01:05:00] like mask, balaclavas. Oh, scary machine guns and stuff.

Three big, huge like Slavic meathead. Yeah. They look like Dolf from the Rocky movies. Yeah, sure. That these plain clothes detectives. And then this woman, this woman who was the head detective, handed me a piece of paper saying that I was being charged with the equivalent of manslaughter. 'cause a young man, they said I purposely pushed a young man off the stage, attacked him, he fell, hit his head, went into a coma, died a month later, and we had no idea anyone had been hurt

Jordan Harbinger: at the previous show.

Randy Blythe: No clue. And the American government had been contacted about this by the Czech government. Two years previously, and the American government said, this is nonsense. We're not gonna cooperate. But the American government never let me know. I was gonna

Jordan Harbinger: say they didn't, just didn't tell you. No, because would've flow back there.

Obviously. I

Randy Blythe: would've gone back there to handle this. It's not a parking ticket.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Randy Blythe: So [01:06:00] I'm in total shock. What are you talking about? This makes no sense. I thought it was a mistake. And then I went to a prison and Prague for 37 days.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh shoot. So this wasn't like a long weekend in the No, no, no, no, no,

Randy Blythe: no, no, no.

And so they granted me bail, which was almost half a million dollars. We borrowed that from the record label. And then unlike America, where when you pay bail. You're free to go there. We paid bail. The prosecuting attorney did not like it, so he objected. So they doubled the bail, so we're pushing towards half a million dollars.

Oh, I see. Wow. Luckily, some rather wealthy friends of ours were like, we'll loan you guys the other half, which they did.

Jordan Harbinger: Yikes.

Randy Blythe: And then I got bailed out and I went back to America and immediately went on tour in order to pay for all the lawyers. Sure. And then six months later went back to trial in the Czech Republic [01:07:00] and I was found not guilty.

Jordan Harbinger: So I'm sure that everyone said, Hey, don't go back there, because the trial could go anyway and you have no control and they're not gonna extradite you.

Randy Blythe: Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: Especially if the US government said, this is nonsense. They're not gonna cooperate. So why did you

Randy Blythe: go

Jordan Harbinger: back?

Randy Blythe: Because the family of this young man who died.

They never attacked me in the press. The Czech press attacked me, particularly. This one tabloid newspaper painted me as this Maring American Viking, come to murder people or whatever they said, printed all sorts of nonsense. He said I had kicked a woman to death in the head. All sorts of just made up.

Just made up nonsense, and then just painting me as a really bad guy to the point where my attorneys had to threaten to sue the paper. My check attorneys did. But the family of this young man who tragically died, they deserved answers. All they knew is that their son went to go see my band. He was injured somehow and he died a month later.

It's horrible as a parent, it's [01:08:00] horrible. And I, my first marriage, I lost the only child we had. She died shortly after birth due to a heart defect. And I had empathy for those parents. I know what it's like, probably even worse for them. 'cause he had lived, how

Jordan Harbinger: old was he? 18, 19.

Randy Blythe: 18 or 19. And my daughter only lived less than a day.

Jordan Harbinger: Sorry to hear that though. I know.

Randy Blythe: Well, you're a parent. So the only thing these parents knew was that their son had gone to see my band and then this sort of rumors of me attacking him and all this other stuff. I felt honor bound to try and give them the answers that I could to the best of my ability not to hide in America like a coward.

Sure. Because their son is dead. That's horrifying. And B, although I know I was sober that night, I know 'cause I've been writing about it in a journal. Also, [01:09:00] memory is a tricky thing and memory. It's not like people think we have this hard drive that all you gotta do is press a button and everything is replayable.

That's not how memory works. It's like recreating a puzzle almost every time you remember something. I learned a lot about the science of memory during this, so I needed to make sure that if I was in fact culpable here, if I had done something that I did not remember or had falsely construed in my mind, if that came out in a trial, then I need to be held responsible for my actions because I ran away from my problems for so long and alcohol.

But I was a sober man. Then if I am not willing to take responsibility or at least look at the possibility to examine myself and what may come out evidence I'm unaware of, then [01:10:00] I am not being accountable in my life. And if I can convince myself that I am not accountable in this one area, just because it's scary.

'cause it's scary, then it's only a hop, skip and a jump for me to convince myself that I'm not accountable in all sorts of areas. And from there, it's very easy for me to be like, you've been sober a long time. Mm-hmm. Maybe you can just take a drink and it'll be all right. I

Jordan Harbinger: see.

Randy Blythe: And then if I hadn't gone back, I'd be dead now, one way or the other.

Jordan Harbinger: Really?

Randy Blythe: Yes. Because I would've either drank myself to death, I know it, or I would've killed myself. 'cause I couldn't look at myself in the mirror.

Jordan Harbinger: That's fascinating that you can draw a line from that to just being dead essentially. Yeah. That's fascinating. I was not really expecting that. That's quite fascinating.

What is Czech prison like? Dare I ask, have you been to a jail in America? Sure. I've been to the, the drunk tank over

Randy Blythe: mad

Jordan Harbinger: a few times. What's Czech prison like? Comparatively to [01:11:00]

Randy Blythe: the prison I went to was called Pen Kratts Prison. It's in Prague at the time, I believe it was 100 and. 27 or 137 years old.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh wow.

So it's like a dungeon or something like that? Well, it was

Randy Blythe: for the first half of it, they put you in one tear to see if you're depressed and suicidal. Supposedly

Jordan Harbinger: we're gonna put you in the most depressed place. Place. Exactly. So they put you in the basement. Oh my gosh. And if you're not suicidal, you're gonna be when you get outta here.

I

Randy Blythe: talked to this one guy who spoke English. He's look. The doctor is going to come for psychological development. When they ask you what you think, do not tell them you do not like it here because they will keep you in the basement longer. He told me that when they ask him, what do you think are the presence of, I said, what the, pardon?

My French, what do you think? I think about this? Yeah, it sucks. And they're like, you're depressed. Maybe you ought to stay down here in isolation a little bit longer. So it was very heavy. [01:12:00] He supposed to I love the history. Yeah, just

Jordan Harbinger: these

Randy Blythe: walls, the stories they could tell. The stories that prison can tell are from 1939, I think, to 1945, and the Nazis had it.

Oh geez. They were putting check dissidents, black marketers. Some Jews I think sees political undesirables there, and they were executing them by firing squad. Then that got too expensive. So they started hanging them and then that took too long. So they installed a guillotine. And so in about a year and a half, they executed over 2000 people.

I think it was by the guillotine.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. That blades doll. By then the

Randy Blythe: guillotine was down the hall from me. It was still in there. Yeah. I didn't get to see it. Oh. But they keep it there because at the end of the war, the Nazis took it and threw it in the Volta River in order to hide the evidence of their atrocities.

Sure. But the check divers [01:13:00] went and got it and brought it back. Good for them. And the head executioner of that prison. Maybe it was even in the two thousands, he applied for his retirement benefits from the German army in Germany. Oh my God. Because he's, yes, I served and this and this. And they're like, what did you do?

He is, I was the executioner at Pancreat prison. He wrote the check. Oh my god, government, he is, I need proof so I can get my government benefits.

Jordan Harbinger: Yikes.

Randy Blythe: From killing thousands of you. And then

Jordan Harbinger: the German government gave it to him. They have to, okay, we had you do this work for us. We don't like it. Are we then gonna also stiff you on the payment?

What an awkward situation that is. So being in that prison was like being in a

Randy Blythe: misfit song. I don't know if you know that band. Of course. Yeah. Geez. It was crazy.

Jordan Harbinger: You've had band mates say like, I hate touring. This is prison. And it's, are you sure about that, bro? Yeah. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: My guitar player, mark said that one time.

Jordan Harbinger: I was just like,

Randy Blythe: this is like prison. I just looked at him. I'm just like, nah dude. Not really. No bro. Let's [01:14:00] think about this.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah, the Nazi prison, that was then probably like a communist gulag or something. Sure. And

Randy Blythe: then you go straight into the history of the Eastern block. The communist came from Russia and over Poland and Czechoslovakia at the time.

And Prague is a beautiful city. It is really. It's beautiful. But that's only since what they call the Velvet Revolution. 1989, their first president of the Czech Republic. Byla. Hovel, I believe that's how you say his name. He was a big rock and roll fan. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: I didn't know that.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. And the Velvet Underground, one of his favorite bands.

Very um, important political writer. People do well to read his stuff right now, but he, um, was the first president and he had done time in that prison I was in. Oh, wow. He was the first president of the Czech Republic. You go to Prague now, it's beautiful and colorful. But I talked to people, including a lot of my lawyers and people my age who remembered growing up under a communist rule in Czechoslovakia [01:15:00] and just gray.

The buildings were gray. You go to the grocery store lines, all they have is potatoes. Just grim, grim, grim. And I recommend anyone to go to Prague, beautiful city, great food, but it wasn't that way.

Jordan Harbinger: Have you been back since the acquittal? No. Is that? No thank you. Or is it like, oh, we just haven't had a tour there?

Randy Blythe: I will go and play Prague if the conditions are right, meaning that A, it would be for charity and B, that the family of the young man who passed gives me the blessing, but they have suffered enough. And if I went back to play the Czech Republic, it would be a huge news story.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So you don't want it to come out and they're like, oh, we're reliving this now.

I

Randy Blythe: don't want my face, my existence and my band's existence have caused them immense pain. I don't wish to do anything further to hurt them.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's understandable. [01:16:00] You're very passionate about this charity. Be the match. Yes. Which is funny because I've done this and I'm waiting for my. Call so I can pat myself on the back for saving someone's life.

But I just thought, oh, I'm gonna get a call like next week after the, it's been like 15 years. It's not like a blood type thing.

Randy Blythe: No. It's much more specific. And that is the two bookends of the story of my book. It starts with a story of a fan I befriended during the last couple of months of his life. He was dying of leukemia and I wrote a song in his honor called the Duke, and around the release of that, we released it as a single.

We did a. Fundraising thing where we raised almost $15,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. But we also raised awareness for the Be the Match, which is now called the National Bone Marrow Registry. Okay. But if you go to be the match org, it'll still carry you to it. We'll link to it in the show notes.

Yeah. '

Jordan Harbinger: cause people should do this. All you do is spit into a vial. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: So we wrote this song and we put it out, and [01:17:00] there's an awareness campaign to register for this particularly. Not that if you're white, you don't need to do it, but particularly for ethnic minorities, because blood marrow bone types are highly specific as you're saying.

And I think black or African American people are the most underrepresented group on the bone marrow registry. If you're white, I think you have a 70% chance of matching with a bone marrow donor if you're black. I think it's 20%.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's significant.

Randy Blythe: Yes. But so they need more from. Black people, Hispanic people, native people, Asian people here in America.

So we did this awareness campaign 'cause it's free. All you gotta do is spit in a tube. And I have a friend from another band who beat leukemia 'cause he had a donor. And then Lamb of God's old merch girl died of leukemia. She was diagnosed and a week later she was dead.

Jordan Harbinger: I didn't even know you could die that fast.

Yeah. That's terrible. Yeah,

Randy Blythe: it was awful. So pretty passionate about it.

Jordan Harbinger: How does it, I can't even wrap my mind around it.

Randy Blythe: I [01:18:00] don't know.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm like, oh, I'm feeling tired. And then it's like, you just die. Yeah. How is that possible? And then

Randy Blythe: she, she was dead, I think seven to 10 days later. Evie Corona. I miss her.

But, so that's the beginning chapter and it's pushing towards. Awareness and the chapter is about mortality. Basically because this young man who died, I befriended faced his own mortality with such grace and a very stoic demeanor, and I learned a lot from him. His inspirational guy named Wayne Ford. Six years after or so that song came out.

We are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nobody's touring, nobody's doing anything. And I'm walking one afternoon over a bridge in Richmond, Virginia, and I'm like, what's going on with my life? This is crazy. And I check my email and I get an email forwarded to me from our old publicist, from a dude who's like, Hey man, because of your song, I signed up for Be the Match.

And I matched. [01:19:00] With a patient, it's the late sixties person and I'm gonna donate. And I immediately emailed this young man, his name is Todd Seaman from Arkansas. We're great friends to this day, and eventually when the time came for him to donate his bone marrow, I went up to DC where he did it and documented it, photographer as well, and hung out.

And it was two days before Christmas and it was just wonderful. It was like the best Christmas. Gift ever.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Randy Blythe: You know, I felt like this song and my friendship with this guy who had died and a fan where we're doing something he donated and 'cause of HIPA laws. You can't know what happened to your donor.

Oh, that would drive me nuts. So after a year, you can write a letter. After a year, the recipient will make the decision. Whether or not they want to contact you.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. That would drive me crazy. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: Me and my buddy Todd, who donated through the whole year, we were like, I hope this person, 'cause we were told he survived after a couple months, but we didn't know [01:20:00] how long, whatever.

So we were talking about it and we joke too. We were like, what if he's like the grand wizard of KKK or something like it's just a total jerk. What if we did the wrong thing? Yeah. We joke about it. But after a year goes by, shortly after a year, my buddy Todd hits me. He's, dude, I heard from him, he's 69. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

He's a photographer, not in a clam. He's a photographer. He's a old rock and roll musician. He's awesome. And so he went and surprised this man whose name is Michael in Denver on his 70th birthday. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: that's pretty cool.

Randy Blythe: Then a few months later, I came to Denver on tour and I met this man who lives to this day.

And spent the afternoon walking around Denver taking photos with him. I love this 'cause of this song.

Jordan Harbinger: So be the match. We'll link to it in the show notes. And I know a lot of people say I'm scared to do it because they have to drill into your bone. No, they don't have to do that anymore.

Randy Blythe: No. They use what is called an apheresis machine.

It's very interesting. You sit there and you have to take this medicine a week before and what does is it basically makes your [01:21:00] bones leaky. They leak white platelet. It doesn't hurt. No, it doesn't hurt.

Jordan Harbinger: Just, I wanna make it clear 'cause I don't wanna scare people off. No,

Randy Blythe: it doesn't hurt. There's white platelets that come from your bones and then they put it into this machine, which is like a centrifuge.

They draw the blood from you, it spins it around and then the, the healthy bone marrow cells and plasma is separated by the centrifuge and then they put the blood back into you. So from the machine. So you're just sitting there hooked up to an ib. You're basically fancy

Jordan Harbinger: giving blood on your, playing on your iPhone for a two hours.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. And it used to be. The drill, the painful thing. And in rare cases it still is. And my buddy though, who did it, he's like, they, they drill me. I don't care. Because once you know, dude, if I do this, this person might have a chance.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you would do it. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: You meet this guy, Michael, and talk to him who's alive because of this stuff.

It's like he gets more time with his grandkids. Exactly. You can't put a price on that.

Jordan Harbinger: You mentioned, oh, I hope he is not a grand wizard of [01:22:00] the Kku Klux Klan. I think honestly, there would be some rich karmic justice in me as a Jew donating blood to this person. I had to write him a letter and they're like, yeah, I'm a grand wizard of the clan.

And I'm like, I got some bad news. I do. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: But you now have Jewish blood in you. In a sense. He would be Jewish now. That's right. Because your DNA, he takes on in a sense. He is you. Ooh.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's weird.

Randy Blythe: So like people who do this, theoretically, one of them could commit a murder. And DNA found on the scene of the crime.

Oh, it would match precisely. Now you're

Jordan Harbinger: scaring people off from donating the platelet. No, no, no, no, no. It's just, it's a thing. I don't wanna get caught

Randy Blythe: for murder, but they match. The person who receives this will inherit any allergies You have

Jordan Harbinger: no kidding? Yeah. Oh wow. I don't even know.

Randy Blythe: Neither do I alcohol a breakout and in handcuffs.

But he, at a 70 years old had the immune system of a 30 5-year-old man because his DNA changes, sometimes it [01:23:00] replaces, sometimes it's an additional set, but it would be really neat if you could turn the Grand Wizard into one of the chosen people.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Randy Blythe: Boom. Shalom buddy.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Oh man. Now you gotta come over for Passover.

Randy Blythe: You can't eat shrimp anymore, bro.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Yeah. Remember all those guys you used to make fun of? You're one of them. Now here's your hat. Tell me about punk rock guilt. This is such an interesting concept. It's essentially like. You make money by doing something that's great and then you're like, oh, I gotta feel bad about this now.

Randy Blythe: Yes. In the punk rock scene, at least in in the scene as I came up, I'm not talking about just, I. Pop punk stuff. You might hear on the radio singing about boys and girls. There is a strong anti materialistic, anti-authoritarian, anti, I don't know, pursuit of riches vibe.

Jordan Harbinger: You gotta live in the gutter and got that metal spike bracelet.

Randy Blythe: That's can be if you take it the wrong way, but it's more this sort of consciousness. Sure. Being like some sort of rich, famous person that why would you [01:24:00] aspire to that? And the thing with the punk rock scene is when you come up in that, and the bands you love most of which amazingly enough, I'm friends with now the bands that I listened to in high school, all of them, I know 'em all basically, but they're alive.

Yeah. So when you come up in that scene, there's a very anti rockstar mentality. You are a regular person. So when you come to see with like the first show I ever saw was ZZ Top right. I saw ZZ Top when I was 12, I think at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, and they're these gods on stage and they have lasers and all that's cool and stuff, but after their show's gone, poof, they're gone.

They're disappeared. They're these magical creatures, these exalted creative types that are rather otherworldly In the punk rock scene, you go see the bands that you like, and then you want a t-shirt, and you go to the merch table and the bass player's selling the t-shirt to you, right? Sure, yeah. The drummers loading the equipment.

So [01:25:00] there's this sort of purposeful erasing of the barrier between the audience and performer, and that's the world I come from. As my band got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I'm not in a punk rock band. I'm in a metal band with punk rock roots in parts, so I'm not in a strictly punk rock band. As the band gets bigger and it goes away from, I.

The sort of punk rock touring environment and stuff, and you actually start making a living and stuff and being able to support family. There's this strange guilt thing. It's a strange thing. In some ways I think it's good because people could be a bit more conscious about, I think the things that they view as valuable or things to aspire to.

Being a super rich dude does not interest me.

Jordan Harbinger: I can relate.

Randy Blythe: It does not interest me. I'm not allergic to [01:26:00] making money, don't get me wrong. But having money for the sake of having money to sit around and buy designer things is zero interest.

Jordan Harbinger: It doesn't seem like a worthwhile goal. No. At all.

Randy Blythe: No. And that is not something that I aspire to.

And I think with the youth once again, and social media and influencers and all that stuff, you gotta have this. You gotta have this. No, you don't. That doesn't say anything about your worth as a person. And you don't need to have money to have worth as a person or the latest Jordans or the fanciest car or any of that crap.

You don't need that. You're a good person no matter what you own. So in a sense, I think punk rock guilt is good in that it makes you keep it real and not forget where you come from. But in the other sense, it can be counterproductive. Because punk rock guilt. The reason why I write about it's 'cause I have a reforestation project in Ecuador and I bought this property at the beginning of the Covid to 19 pandemic when things had gone just sideways in my life [01:27:00] personally.

And for everyone, it was a nightmare. And my job had disappeared because I am a glorified traveling black cotton salesman. That's how musicians make their money. T-shirts,

Jordan Harbinger: black cotton salesman. Okay, that's right.

Randy Blythe: Black cotton. I'm a black t-shirt salesman. The taxes say musician. In reality, I'm slinging merch, so I bought this catlan.

What's

Jordan Harbinger: cattle land? What's a catlan?

Randy Blythe: Cattle lands Cattle. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: cattle land.

Randy Blythe: Pardon my southern name saying, man, cattle land. I was like, what that, is

Jordan Harbinger: that like a catamaran? Is that Cata Land

Randy Blythe: Boy. Got it. But I bought this because I have Ecuadorian friends who are doing a lot of the same things and I was like, I'll just make my money back once I go back on tour.

But that didn't happen, so I didn't go back on tour. 'cause Covid. Yeah. And we live in Richmond, Virginia, where the expenses are not what they are. Although it's gotten much more expensive in say, Los Angeles or New York or wherever. [01:28:00] Cost of living is comparatively doable. But even not making any money.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Randy Blythe: I need to make this money back somehow in this company cameo who?

Oh yeah. Celebrity greetings. Right, right. Which I don't think of myself as a celebrity at all. They had been bothering me for years. You need to do this, you need to do this. And other friends of mine had done it. One of my buddies did it to pay his back taxes.

[Laughter]: Oh geez.

Randy Blythe: I finally, I'm like, okay, I need to make my money back.

I don't have any other way to making money right now, and I don't know when my job is gonna come back. I better start singing some happy birthdays. Yeah, exactly. One reason why I didn't do it is 'cause punk rock guilt for so long. Who do you think you are? Do you think you're Elvis? The dudes in black flag never sang happy birthday for $20.

I also used it for charitable purposes. I raised money for respirators in India at the beginning of COVID-19. 'cause our guy who books us in India and another girl I know, they're [01:29:00] like, they're burning bodies on the sidewalk outside.

Jordan Harbinger: So gross. That's post-apocalyptic?

Randy Blythe: Yes, post-apocalyptic and sent me videos and I got video of people on fire.

Oh

Jordan Harbinger: my God. On

Randy Blythe: the sidewalk. 'cause it's wild.

Jordan Harbinger: Ecuador is a crazy place, man. Isn't that where they shot the presidential candidate? And then the TV station got taken over by gangsters. That was like a Batman movie. Sadly.

Randy Blythe: Yes, they did. This is cartel activity. Yeah. And Ecuador, which was formerly known as Ila Depa, I believe that's how you say, in Spaniel Island of Peace in between Columbia and.

Peru, I think two big cocaine producing nations. Ecuador was not part of that. And over the last few years, it's gotten worse since I've been there. The cartels have moved in. Geez. Also, the Colombian crime syndicates who are producing the cocaine 'cause it, it's a shipping lane. They aren't really producing cocaine there, but it's become a really valuable shipping lane.

And also the Armenian Mafia. Very strange. That's a weird connection. Very strange. Armenian mafia, [01:30:00] Colombian crime groups and the Mexican cartels are there and it is now a contested shipping lane. So there's violence. It's gotten a little bit better. Recently. They had a young president come in who? Did some No nonsense, like

Jordan Harbinger: El Salvador type stuff.

Yeah. Like I'm just gonna arrest everybody with tattoos. Yeah. Yes.

Randy Blythe: That kind of stuff, which is bothersome for human rights. But the other thing is that my friends there, dude, like bodies hanging from bridges. Scary. And the cartels did come into the national TV station during broadcast and with guns to, and they tell the politicians to leave us alone or else

Jordan Harbinger: that was crazy.

People should look this video up. It literally is, oh, is this a Batman movie trailer that,

Randy Blythe: no, no, no, no. It is very real. Yeah. And the last time I was there, one of my homies was driving me and my girl. To a village where I have some property and surfing spot and we were getting on the outskirts of the village [01:31:00] and I saw a motorcycle accident on the side of the road and people were gathering around and I'm like, honey, don't look.

This is gonna be bad. Motorcycle accidents are not pretty. Yeah. We get up closer and I look and this man was laying on top of his motorcycle. That's not how motorcycle accidents happen.

Jordan Harbinger: No.

Randy Blythe: We get a little bit closer back of his head is blown off.

Jordan Harbinger: Ooh. So

Randy Blythe: they know me there. I ask some questions of people and they're like, he was handled, he was a bad person.

And the locals

Jordan Harbinger: Oh I see.

Randy Blythe: Handled just one of those

Jordan Harbinger: where nobody saw anything.

Randy Blythe: Yeah, that's right. He got handled and then that's how it is there. But it wasn't like that, man. It's gotten better now, but the cocaine trade has made it bad man. Friends of mine. Not good things happened. Not good things happened.

So people can sit up snorting crap and talking insincere shit all night long. And I've done enough Peruvian marching powder to keep this whole block of Los Angeles awake for a year. So I'm not an angel. Gotcha. [01:32:00] But I've seen the human cost of this up close. And people need to think about that.

Jordan Harbinger: It's hard to ethically wrap your mind around that.

And now you get a single grain of fentanyl in there and you're dead. So it's not worth it anymore. Dude. I

Randy Blythe: have friends who are dead because of it. Yeah. I'm in the music business and in that scene and people still party and look, man, stick to your MDMA or whatever. You can't trust anything now. Yeah. You can't trust anything because I loved pills.

So did my guitar player, mark. He's six years clean and sober now. Wrote a book about it. I'm not talking outta school, but he got real bad on opiates. Luckily I quit before this happened, but now there's counterfeit prescription pills. I.

Jordan Harbinger: That's really scary.

Randy Blythe: They have their own pill presses and it's fentanyl.

Jordan Harbinger: It's not even all drug addicts. I read an article about this. It'll be like, let's say that you don't have healthcare. You're an undocumented person or something like that, and you are existing off the good graces of your grandkids who are giving you a hundred bucks a month. So you get your prescription for your back pain.

This is $300. Oh no. There's a guy down the [01:33:00] block that sells 50 50 bucks. One down the block. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it looks the same, so why not? But it's counterfeit. Juan's making it in the kitchen and it's got a gram of fentanyls mixed in with a thousand grams of the real whatever. Or it was fentanyl diluted to the, you could take it orally.

Oops. I misread the dosing and the decimals moved over one place. Yeah. Goodnight. Grandma

Randy Blythe: know and people go to get cocaine and stuff, and I was asking why is there. Fentanyl in the cocaine. Why? That makes no sense. Cocaine makes you go up.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Randy Blythe: And someone's like, oh, to make it more addictive. And I'm like, I don't think that really makes sense.

Just an

Jordan Harbinger: accident. Just sloppy,

Randy Blythe: sloppy mixing. And sometimes machines, they use that to process fentanyl.

Jordan Harbinger: They're not gonna clean their pill. Press in a way that sterilizes it. Yeah. They're just gonna throw the cocaine in after the fentanyl and Oh, well the first batch is a little gross. Whoopsie, but whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Typically somebody making drugs in their kitchen is not gonna be the most terrible Right. Conscientious supplier of, or medical devices, pharmaceuticals, man. You said you'd look at everything in your life as building blocks [01:34:00] for a potential song is fuel for a creative reality. What's that process like?

Do you have an example of like, oh, I'm gonna make a song out of this particular. Thing that I saw

Randy Blythe: or learned? Sure. When I was in the Czech Republic waiting trial, I love history and I learned a lot about the history of the Czech Republic during World War ii and. Further into, and it was Czechoslovakia then, then through the Communist era.

But did they let you read in there and stuff? Like what did you do in prison? I finally got some English books. I wrote a lot before, no English books. I read my insurance card like a million times over. That was really cool.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh

Randy Blythe: man. And then I, my lawyer finally brought me some English books. But no, I did not do much.

I worked out and read and wrote. But anyway, the World War ii, the Nazis obviously invaded and took over. And the only, I think, high ranking Nazi official to be assassinated happened in Prague. And [01:35:00] his name was Reinhard Heidrich, I think that was his name. He was known as the Butcher of Prague.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah.

Randy Blythe: And there was a.

Group of Cze and Slovakian dudes who had gone to England, they had already been out fighting by the time the Nazis took over, so they were in England. When the Nazis took over, they trained up in Scotland as gorillas and paratroopers, special forces. They parachuted back into, uh, Nazi occupied, went into Prague, and then two of them made an assassination tip on Reinhard Heidrich.

As he was driving his car, the butcher of Prague, and one of them's machine gun jammed. The other went through a grenade and it went off beneath he's car. And they thought they hadn't gotten him, but they did because the upholstery had horse hair in it. The shrapnel pushed horse hair into he's blood and poisoned him.

He got sepsis and he died.

Jordan Harbinger: He didn't die right away. So he thought [01:36:00] they failed. No, he died.

Randy Blythe: So this group of paratroopers go into hiding and eventually they wind up hiding in this basement. Of a church in the crypt where they buried people and they get ratted out. I can't remember. I think one of them turned and ratted them out.

And so for full 24 hours, something like seven dudes held off 1400 Nazi storm troopers, or 900, they had to flood them out. Eventually the Nazis came into the church. They held 'em off to guns, eventually retreated to the crypt. They were trying to flood them out. They were throwing grenades down there and stuff.

Finally, at the end, they ran out of bullets. They tried to dig out through the tunnel into the sewers. They couldn't do that. And finally, they only had a few bullets left, so they shot themselves. This was known as Operation Anthropo. There's a movie called Anthropo you can watch and you can go into the basement of that church and you can [01:37:00] see where they were trying to dig out, and you can see the bullet holes in the inside of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Randy Blythe: But these were hard men.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. They knew they were gonna die. Suicide mission. That's crazy.

Randy Blythe: Yeah. But they went and touched the great butcher of Prague. They're like, ha, we're here. And they gave the Czech people hope. Even though the Nazis did bad, reprisals, they wiped a whole village out of existence.

Killed several thousand people. But I wrote a song called Anthropo, and it's written from the perspective of those dudes in the basement of the church waiting to die.

Jordan Harbinger: That's an interesting way to look at, you said, once you start to view your life this way, things begin to appear very differently and that everything is fueled for a song.

Just how a skater views an urban environment vary differently than a nons skater does. Which I thought was a really good analogy. I used lifelong skater.

Randy Blythe: Yeah, mostly surfing. But I look everywhere. I was doing it yesterday. I saw a bank. I was like, Ooh, that looks good.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a really cool way to look at things because I always wonder how [01:38:00] people get inspired to.

Write songs. When I hear an interesting story, it's a pretty easy straight line to would this person make a good interview? Yes. And I just get that story. Other stories, other elements of their life. It's not that hard, but you're creating, essentially you're splitting poetry about something that's historical.

Right,

Randy Blythe: or,

Jordan Harbinger: or

Randy Blythe: something that happens in my life. I never know. I think that is one of the main building blocks of being an artist, is just being a noticer, just noticing something that everybody else might pass by and shining light on it. That's what art

Jordan Harbinger: is. You described the artistic writing processes boxing with yourself.

What do you mean by that?

Randy Blythe: I mean, when I'm sitting down to write, particularly at the beginning of the process of every day before I develop any sort of flow and, and get into it, I'm sitting there like, oh my God, I have to find something worth saying. I have to express this in [01:39:00] a sentence that will not make me sound like an idiot.

Do you write every day or cliche? When I'm working on a book, yes. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: okay.

Randy Blythe: And lately, more and more I've been on this book tour averaging I. Five hours of sleep on this tour. 'cause a lot of, oh,

Jordan Harbinger: that sucks. That's terrible. A lot of

Randy Blythe: flying and then speaking two and a half hours every night and stuff. Oh, I could not do that.

So I, there hasn't been the room to write, but as soon as I get done with this, I've been feeling the need to do it. But I think people have a misconception about writing that people sit down and write, they're immediately spilling out these beautiful sentences. Yeah. And it's, everything is just perfect.

Hemingway just sat down. This is great. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: This typewriter, Ryan Holiday talks about this, right? He is write 10 shitty pages a day. 100

Randy Blythe: Pressfield, 100% Pressfield Genius. His book, war of Art, great book. Don't know him, but shout out to you, Steven Pressfield, and I mentioned him at the book, but for me, it's really about trying to punch above my weight intellectually [01:40:00] and stylistically I'm right.

Trying to write above and beyond my capabilities. I really am. And I think good writers do that. Not everybody sits around and speaks profound thoughts.

Jordan Harbinger: Tell me about it.

Randy Blythe: Tripping off the tongue effortlessly. If,

Jordan Harbinger: if they did my job it would be a lot easier.

Randy Blythe: Not everybody does that. And I think also, I think that's rather indicative of everybody's need to share everything all the time.

Ba ba ba now like would dial it back. Maybe you'll say some smarter shit if you think about it a little bit first. Yeah, exactly. So like that's what writing is for me. Yeah. It's a process. If I have a thought about your watch and it reminds me of the way a wave breaks and I want to write a poetic paragraph about it, I just don't sit down and like Har harbinger's watch curled to the left, like the way I like to surf and it, it doesn't come out perfectly.

I have to right and think and look for a path to make it beautiful.

Jordan Harbinger: What kept you going in [01:41:00] the early days when basically nobody cared about your music at all. Nobody paid attention. You guys are on stage. People are just like, now's a good time to pee and get a drink while these, whoever this is, finishes up.

Randy Blythe: We want to make music. We didn't start making music for other people. And I Say this again, again. Internal

Jordan Harbinger: motivation basically. Yes.

Randy Blythe: Again and again, we make music for the five dudes in Lamb of God. And it's wonderful that we have fans and it's wonderful that they have provided us with this living, which is beyond my wildest dreams.

And it's wonderful that our music helps people and it brings them joy. It's all that is great, but that's not the reason why we make music. We make music 'cause we are musicians. And there is a need to express yourself through that chosen medium. That's why I write, I hear songs all the time. I. Just like I see pictures or think about possibilities for stories, it goes back to seeing things through the eyes of an artist.

I can [01:42:00] still remember things from prison that I want to put into rhythmically, into songs.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's interesting. When I think of things and don't write them down and then I can't remember them later, that is painful for me. Sure. I hate that feeling.

Randy Blythe: Sure. Yeah. I can still hear when they would do inspections, they'd bring a stick and they'd come in and you had your metal locker and they would go boom, and it would go clink cl clink with the stick across the spines on the frame of your bed.

So it was always boom, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, and really echoy a lot of natural reverb in this prison. I can still hear that. And I want to put that rhythmically into a song.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I see. That's fascinating. So this basement prison was made outta stone and stuff, right? This is so old. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is like, you're like in a castle dungeon type situation and that's spooky. It's pretty

Randy Blythe: gross.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You say in the book, expect to be mocked as an artist. Expect for people to root for you to fail. Never give it a crap about anyone's opinion who isn't successful at what you are trying to do. That's pretty wise.

Although it's gotta be hard to not care about people's [01:43:00] opinions. It's taken me 18 years and I still get reviews and I'm like, this person is 15 years old. But they're like, I hate your show. And I'm like, I don't take it personally, but it's still in there somewhere. Sure. It's

Randy Blythe: in there. So when you put yourself into something, whether artistic or or any project and someone just poo-poos it for no reason 'cause people are dicks.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Randy Blythe: Particularly online

Jordan Harbinger: on the internet,

Randy Blythe: it's remove this impulsive thought. Filter. That's what I call, because in real life the impulsive thought filter is there. 'cause you might get punched in the mouth if you say some dumb shit.

Jordan Harbinger: Face that negative body language where you've made someone sad and Yeah.

That's when you go, oh I'm, that

Randy Blythe: wasn't nice of me. I've seen that in some conversations on the internet before where someone actually bothered to write back, hey. That hurt my feelings. Yeah. Why are you doing this? And a person would respond. I am just having a bad day. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry about that, but don't take that out on me.

So that impulsive thought filter is not there. That being said, when you put something out, like you put yourself in this, [01:44:00] I put out a song or something. If someone doesn't like it and they're just poo-pooing it outta nowhere, there's a little sting.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Randy Blythe: there's a little sting. But the way I look at it is I come from a band where we were playing on the floor of squats and basements and in bars and stuff.

If you've never had a beer bottle thrown at your head while someone else, I have not. You suck. That puts things in perspective. Yeah, that's true. Okay. That's a little bit more real life than, I don't like your show on Instagram or whatever. And also, I can't remember. Who said this? I've read it a few times recently.

Why would you pay attention to someone commenting if they're a person you wouldn't take advice from?

Jordan Harbinger: That's a good point.

Randy Blythe: And I think about the people I would take advice from that I value as friends, advisors, mentors. None of those people would ever go on the internet and talk shit.

Jordan Harbinger: No.

Randy Blythe: And so the trolls and the thoughtless people, I think they're really [01:45:00] ultimately only damaging themselves 'cause they're unable to deal with conflict in the real world.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a really good observation. What's this about being caught in a riot in Asia?

Randy Blythe: Oh, I've been a few riots over the years.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You can pick any riot you want. I just chose the,

Randy Blythe: yeah, we were in Thailand and we were in Bangkok and there was the red shirts protest. I believe that was going on. What is that?

I

Jordan Harbinger: don't even know what that is.

Randy Blythe: Thailand is a monarchy. That king and queen of Thailand are very revered. The new king is a weird dude. Look, this was the old king.

Jordan Harbinger: He was well respected. Yeah.

Randy Blythe: You don't talk smack on the king or the queen. Like I have friends who expatriates who live in Thailand. I met them in Bangkok and when they referred to something weird, the king was doing out in public, they called him Elvis.

Where if they're like, we don't like that Elvis did this, they don't want anybody to know that they were talking about the king.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Randy Blythe: It's real serious there. Yeah. So there was some political strife going on to [01:46:00] where these people had come into Bangkok, into the financial district, I guess, and had taken it over and they were drawing buckets of human blood, like people were donated blood and they were throwing it on, I think it was the Prime Minister's house or something.

Just buckets. That's

Jordan Harbinger: gross in

Randy Blythe: protest. And they were there for like a month,

Jordan Harbinger: man,

Randy Blythe: and, and we landed. In the middle of all this, and I'm like, what? It's a very

Jordan Harbinger: metal scene. Blood everywhere. What's going on? Was choir here before us? What's going on? Yeah, exactly.

Randy Blythe: Dear friends of ours. And they were still peaceful.

It was peaceful. Then we went on stage that night and two minutes before we went on stage, the government had enough of these protesters who had taken over all of downtown Bangkok and they were like, okay, martial law is in effect and you gotta go home, or you're gonna go to jail. And nobody left our show.

We played the show, whatever. And so then I, to my friends, I'm like, I want to go downtown and see what's happening. I. They're like, are you sure? [01:47:00] Can't get enough of foreign prison? Yeah. Well, this is before I went to the other one. I'm like, yeah, I want to go down there, man. I wanna see what's going down. And I went down there and all these people were gearing up and they had homemade armor and like all this crazy stuff.

Wow. And I got pictures with the several of these people. They gave me a red headband for their cause or whatever. They're like, oh wow. I have it somewhere at home. And then it started kicking off as I was leaving. It wasn't too bad the first night, but as we were flying out the next day, all of a sudden, like 37 people were dead because, oh geez.

Including an American, I think Japanese journalist. The cops just,

Jordan Harbinger: oh my God.

Randy Blythe: So it popped off real hard. Man, you

Jordan Harbinger: guys go to some crazy places and some crazy times. Well, you, Hey, I looked you up a little bit. You, yeah. You've managed to get in a little trouble over since we are those outcasts, man. The kids that grew up, oh, you don't like sports?

How about some reading? How about go to another country and get arrested? Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot in common, [01:48:00] actually. Yeah, we sure do. And thanks for coming in, man. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Jordan.

Randy Blythe: Appreciate it.

Jordan Harbinger: It was a lot of fun. All things Randy Blythe will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com.

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