Ahead of the release of the highly anticipated debut solo album ‘Anesthetic‘ (Read Our Review Here), Metal Wani’s Carl O’Rourke had an in-depth chat with Mark Morton. Below are the excerpts:
‘Anesthetic’ captures Mark in many different stylistic lights. Asked if there was any nervousness around releasing a record that might take fans by surprise, Mark said,
“It was actually the point. That was the catalyst we used to motivate the whole thing, but it sort of grew organically. I write songs just because I write songs. A lot of those wind up being thrash metal songs and some of those songs wind up being used in Lamb Of God, right? But then there’s rock songs, and 90’s kind of grungey songs and more bluesy songs that I write that I don’t really have a destination for. Then those things started coming together and piling up a little bit and I played a bunch of them for Josh Wilbur, my longtime producer, and that was kind of the beginning of the process. Anesthetic was really just the destination.”
[metalwani_content_ad]
‘Anesthetic’ includes the much-beloved track “Cross Off” which features the late Chester Bennington of Linkin Park. Asked if his relationship with the song changed after Chester passed, Mark offered,
“I guess it was delicate in some ways in terms of the process of bringing it to light given what happened. But in terms of my relationship to the song, when I hear Cross Off I think of the experience we had making it. And although the subject matter is dark in places and pretty heavy duty, the process we had written that, and that sort of creative dialogue we had and the vibe in the studio we had when we were writing it, when we were trying ideas was really, really positive and energized and super motivated, very genuine and trusting. It was a really cool experience is what I’m trying to say. So, to me, it still holds that kind of light. I think of what an awesome experience it was to have the opportunity to work with Chester on that song and to write that song with him.”
Mark touched on what he could with regards to new music from Lamb Of God in 2019, stating,
“I mean there’s not much to say at this point. It’s just a lot of song ideas, it’s a lot of music that we’ve put together. I wouldn’t call them songs yet. They’re just pieces of music. It’s a lot of, what I call raw material, resource material. It feels really good, it’s got awesome energy to it. Some of it’s really technical, some of it’s grooving as you would expect. But it’s exciting. It sounds like Lamb Of God. It’s exciting, it’s fresh, it feels good.”
[metalwani_content_ad]
