Following up his previous report on LAMB OF GOD and their Grammy Award nomination, Malcolm Venable from The Virginian-Pilot has issued this follow-up:

For death metal act Lamb of God, getting nominated for a Grammy has brought out a part of them they never knew was lurking inside.

“It’s really an interesting double-edged sword,” said Chris Adler, the group’s drummer. “Back in the day, when (the Grammys) came on, we’d just turn it off. It was just all this crap music. We’re like, 'I don’t even know anybody that listens to this stuff.’ They were these weird albums that were, in my opinion, just horrible. I certainly never aspired to get one.

“Now that we’re in this spot to receive one, it’s obviously overwhelmingly flattering to be picked out. It does mean a lot. At the same time we’re kind of jaded, like, 'Did we do something wrong?’”

The band from Richmond, a nominee for best metal performance, attends this year’s Grammys on the strength of its song “Redneck,” from the album “Sacrament.” Two of the members are from the area – vocalist Randy Blythe attended Western Branch High School in Chesapeake and the Governor’s School for the Arts, and guitarist Mark Morton grew up in Williamsburg. They met as students at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1990.

“I worked at all the pancake houses along Richmond Road,” said Morton, a Lafayette High School grad who spent a chunk of his high school years driving up and down I-64 playing gigs with his then-bandmates.

There was a place called On Stage in Norfolk. We weren’t even old enough to be in there, but the owner would let us play. He wouldn’t give us any money, and he would make us stand in a corner because we couldn’t be drinking. We would drive down on Friday, play for free, go home and then drive back on Saturday and play for free again, and we just thought that was the best hook-up.”

Forward some 15 years, and Morton and his college chums will strut the crimson carpet on the biggest night in music. As hard-core metal goes, “Redneck” is considerably light. In fact, it was nearly chopped off the album for fear of alienating the group’s core audience.

“We initially thought it might have been too soft,” said Adler. “We knew it felt good to play, and when it came down to picking songs for the record, we were like, 'Why would we cut a song we had fun playing?’ It doesn’t mean it’s the only thing we can do. We did a funny video for it.”

Reminiscent of vintage Twisted Sister, the “Redneck” video is a campy delight. It features the band crashing a little girl’s birthday party in the bucolic suburbs after Mom innocently plucks LoG’s name from a phone book ad. It plays off two notions: that living behind white picket fences is, for some, suffocating – subversion is one of the band’s major themes – and plays off the confusion many have about LoG’s name. They’re frequently mistaken for a Christian rock group.

“We just thought it was a cool name for a band,” said Morton. “You can dissect it, but metal as a genre has always used religious icons – Black Sabbath, Judas Priest.” To wit: LoG’s original name was Burn The Priest.

“When we put the band together, basically as kids, it was all about offending and shocking. As we were garnering attention, we just felt like we were selling ourselves short, just doing it for shock value. We wanted something more serious, and I think Lamb of God is still kind of cutting edge because people don’t know how to take it.”

The Grammy nomination comes at a time that suggests an upswing for rock culture at large. Unlike 2004 – when OutKast, 50 Cent, Eminem, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z and other hip-hop artists were up for awards – hip-hoppers aren’t gunning for big awards outside the hip-hop categories. The Grammys also dropped the female rap category. “It’s definitely shifted towards rock,” said Adler, “but everything is cyclical. Now that you have metal and hard rock popular, that means that tomorrow it’ll no longer be cool.”

Metalheads, however, have a while to go before they totally take over: The award for best metal performance won’t be shown on TV.

“Because we’re metal we get no love,” Morton said. “They won’t show our part. But I prefer the hip-hop anyway. That’s what I spend most of my time listening to.”