LAMB OF GOD's MARK MORTON On His Solo Album: 'It Was More Work Than I Initially Anticipated'

Lunchbox and Promo Brady of the “DomKast” podcast recently conducted an interview with LAMB OF GOD guitarist Mark Morton. You can listen to the entire chat via the Spreaker widget below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On how his debut solo album, “Anesthetic”, differs from LAMB OF GOD:

Mark: “I guess the primary way it differs… Well, there’s a couple of ways that come instantly to mind. It’s just a little more rock than the music that I guess I’m more traditionally known for with LAMB OF GOD, which is kind of like a thrash metal band, extreme metal. The solo project, it kind of digs into my influences in terms of classic rock and blues rock. It’s still hard rock, heavy rock, but it’s just not quite as LAMB; it’s a little more melodic. I guess a little more conventionally arranged. It just kind of explores my love of hard rock music. The songs themselves are collaborations with a pretty extensive list of artists that I admire as a fan or as a friend or both. I really worked with a large number of people. Most LAMB OF GOD albums are typically done with the band and the producer, so there’s six people’s input. This album was myself and my producer kind of mainly being the creative directors, then we had all this input from these amazing artists that we brought into the fold. It’s very collaborative, diverse and dynamic in that sense. The inspiration, I really had these rock songs that I was writing on my own just in the course of my songwriting, what I do. I had these songs piling up and accumulating that clearly weren’t appropriate to submit as LAMB OF GOD material, but were songs that I thought were worth developing. We took that ball and ran with it.”

On whether LAMB OF GOD is working on a new studio album:

Mark: “We are, yeah. We’re pretty far along into the writing process. We got a fair amount of touring coming up as well. There’s a whole lot going on.”

On whether writing and releasing a solo album was harder than he thought it was going to be:

Mark: “I guess the subjective phrase in there is ‘hard,’ like difficult. It was more work than I initially anticipated. I kind of naively was thinking, ‘Well, I’ve made a bunch of records with LAMB OF GOD. I know what the process is. I know what it’s like to put out albums. I got the songs pretty much together. We’ll go in there and track ’em and put it out and that will be that.’ Not the case. It turned into something that’s so much bigger than I really anticipated, which is an absolute thrill. It’s a blessing to have people respond to the songs and just be as into this project as they’ve been so far. But that created a whole lot of press. I did press tours in Europe. I wound up doing a concert tour for this, which is something I really hadn’t anticipated when I first started doing this. We got some more offers for live shows, so it really created its own little monster that now I’m thrilled and having a blast with it. Yeah, I was a little naïve in the beginning, thinking I would be dropping a studio project and maybe get a couple of spins and it would live on YouTube and that’s not been the case. I’m very lucky. I’m very, very lucky.”

On initially leaving LAMB OF GOD when they were called BURN THE PRIEST to pursue his master’s degree:

Mark: “For my master’s, it was international relations. My undergraduate work was in political science with minors in international relations and African-American studies, then I was going to grad school for international relations. I was going to be a college professor. That’s what the goal was. I wanted a job where I could chase girls and drink, so I thought I would leave the college professor thing and be a rock star. [Laughs]”

“Anesthetic”, produced by Josh Wilbur and executive produced by Jake Oni, was released on March 1 via WPP Records/Spinefarm. Guest artists on the LP include late LINKIN PARK singer Chester Bennington, Paolo Gregoletto and Alex Bent of TRIVIUM, Jacoby Shaddix of PAPA ROACH, ALTER BRIDGE‘s Myles Kennedy, STONE SOUR drummer Roy Mayorga, KORN drummer Ray Luzier and ALICE IN CHAINS bassist Mike Inez.