Lamb Of God guitarist Willie Adler takes a break from remodelling and building a deck on his Virginia house with his father-in-law on a sunny Saturday afternoon to inform Your Music Magazine about their summer tour with Slayer, and their new record titled “Sacrament.”
By Rawker Rachel

RR: How have you been? What have you been doing since last summer?
Adler: I’ve been good. We’ve been in the midst of recording! After Sounds of the Underground last year, we took time off to write, then went to Europe for 3 weeks, came back to the States and had the holidays off, then back to writing in mid-January. We went back into the studio a month and a half ago to record, and now all that’s left is to record vocals, and we’ll be done!
RR: Tell me about the tour with Slayer? Are you excited about it?
Adler: It’s going to be fun. It’s been a long time since we toured and Slayer has been such a huge inspiration for us; it’ll be good to go out and support. However, going out after being home so long will be hard because we get used to our home routine of waking up at noon. It’s hard getting back into touring mode when you’re living on a bus out of a suitcase with the same guys everyday and having a weird schedule in sometimes foreign cities, not to mention no space on the bus. But we’re fortunate to have good people on our crew that make the most unbearable things at least tolerable.
RR: Why did you decided to do a summer tour as opposed to large festival like Ozzfest or Sounds of the Underground again?
Adler: We headlined Sounds of the Underground, why would we do it again? Sounds of the Underground again this year would be a step back for us. We weren’t into Ozzfest this year because of the line-up and the politics—just didn’t suit us. Slayer offered us their tour and everything seemed right about it. Seemed like the best thing to do this summer. There’s an awesome like up and the turn out will be really good.
RR: How did you like Sounds of the Underground? Any moments from last summer that really stick in your mind? What about 4th of July in Canada?
Adler: Being stuck in Canada on the 4th SUCKED. Everyone on Sounds of the Underground were our bros that we had hung out with all summer, and we were all homesick and it was just too ironic that we were in another country on the 4th of July. But we all barbecued and shot off fireworks anyway and had a blast.
RR: How do you think this summer is going to compare to last?
Adler: It’s definitely going to be different. I honestly don’t know though; we’ve never been on tour with Slayer other than 2 consecutive shows we played with them in London one time. It’s was too short to really get a feel on how a full tour would be. We’ve been offered to tour with Slayer before, but we’ve always had to turn them down because we already had other things planned, like Sounds of the Underground or Ozzfest. It was just a huge timing issue for us, but now we’re finally going to and it will be amazing. I really want to see the reaction from fans, [the reaction from] older fans of bands like Children of Bodom and us, and younger fans to Slayer. It will be interesting.
RR: Tell me about Randy’s ass beating in Glasgow.
Adler: I was on the phone with my wife down the street, and I came up to the bus and there was a guy sitting outside the bus as I was about to get on, and he told me I didn’t want to go in there. I could hear yelling and loud banging coming from inside, so I light up a cigarette to wait outside, and as soon as I knew it I saw Randy and Mark come rolling around from the other side of the bus. I didn’t realize what was going on until I saw the cameraman filming the whole fight. There was a lot that was left out of the whole incident, but when he was decked enough and finally hit the pavement, the sound of his head hitting made my stomach turn. I swear I thought there was going to be a pool of blood leaking out from under it. But after 9 straight months of touring with the same guys in a small, crowded space, tension builds up and someone eventually cracks. You just need to get it out of your system, and then once you do, you pick each other back up again and you’re still family.
RR: Tell me about the new record. What’s it called, when does it come out, what do you think of it?
Adler: The new record is almost done. It should be out by late August? And it’s called “Sacrament.”  It’s less political and more personal than “Ashes of the Wake.”  It’s very dark and creepy; you can definitely tell there’s something going on behind it that you can’t explain. It has a very dark theme. Mark and I will write our guitar riffs and compare and contrast our ideas, then Chris will put his own twist on the music and work with John who will write his bass lines. After that is all said and done, Randy and Mark will write lyrics to the songs and Randy will lay down his tracks. We recorded the drums at Spin Studios in Queens, New York and tracked guitar, bass and overdubs at David Lowry from Cracker’s studio called Sound of Music in Richmond, VA.
RR: What brand of instruments do you use?
Adler: I use ESP guitars, Mesa Boogie amps and Framus Cabinets.