Lamb of God are riding on the crest of the new wave of American metal. The band hails from Virginia, and like all southern boys they know their Bibles. It seems they’ve rejected the message of the Scriptures, but retained the language and imagery as inspiration for their songs. It gives their work a feeling of depth and substance, a feeling which is sometimes misleading.

Wrath is their latest album, a follow-up to the 2006 hit Sacrament. Old school fans complained that Sacrament was too polished, and so Wrath is a return to a rawer, more primal sound. Every song is like a slap in the face, ferocious speed metal licks combining with Randy Blythe’s classic death metal growl. Fans and critics have been equally thrilled, and the album has been Top 10 all across the globe.

A quick scan of the lyrics show that Lamb of God inhabit a godless world, a world marked by despair. Songs like In Your Words, Choke Sermon and Fake Messiah reveal a deep-rooted cynicism toward religion. Yet the overall message is more nihilistic than anti-Christian. The song Reclamation seems to sum up their world view -

Humanity’s a failed experiment
Walking the path to extinction
Spinning it’s wheels endlessly
Grease them with oil and uranium
The earth will shake
and the waters will rise
The elements reclaim what was taken

But there is also a song called Grace on the album. I listened, hoping for something positive, but I was disappointed -

Sunken, sooner or later
We crawl our way back into our favorite hole
Drunken, swallow the savior
And follow him to hang from the highest pole

Forgiving the father
Read the story on my skin
Tell me more about the man I should have been
I’ll be the martyr
Falling from his grace again
This is where the end begins

Like the others, it is a song about despair and hopelessness and failure. It’s not clear whether the father in the song is God or an earthly father. It hardly matters. In rejecting the faith of their youth, Lamb of God have truly fallen from grace (in their own words). Yet the godless reality that remains is a horrible black hole. These men are without hope and they know they are without hope. They are embracing hell with eyes wide open. We can only pray that one day, they might again behold the true Lamb of God.