E-Mail This Article to a Friend Pure and not so pure Lamb of God’s Ashes of the Wake, Atreyu’s The Curse BY SEAN RICHARDSON

As the year moves toward its close, the rise of metalcore continues to be one of the biggest stories in rock. Once the provenance of VFW halls and college radio, the genre is now a fixture on MTV2 and the Billboard charts. It has also just seen the release of its first major-label CD, Lamb of God’s Ashes of the Wake (Epic). The Virginia band have come a long way since their indie-label debut in 2000, when their retro-thrash mayhem was as anti-mainstream as it gets. Their music hasn’t changed, but the marketplace has: now they’re on the same label as rock heavyweights Ozzy Osbourne, Korn, and Mudvayne.

"We’re kind of outside the boundaries of what a major-label would normally sign," Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe admits. "We were like, ‘If we’re going to do this, you’ve got to let us do our thing, because we’ve been doing it on our own so far and it’s worked.’ They’ve been really cool about that. The reason my guys got together and started making this music is that in the early 1990s, they weren’t hearing any good thrash. So they started making it themselves. Music is cyclical. Right now, thrash is coming back, and it’s pretty cool. But once this revival is over, something else will take its place. We’re just enjoying the ride."

Blythe is on the phone from Charlotte, North Carolina, where Lamb of God are launching a six-week tour, their first since a triumphant Ozzfest 2004 run. With fellow headliners Fear Factory in tow, the show hits the Palladium in Worcester this Friday. Although Blythe says that Ozzfest was an "incredible" experience, he also reveals that it may have been the beginning of the end of one of the band’s signature stage moves, the Wall of Death. Immortalized on their recent DVD Terror and Hubris, this involves splitting the crowd down the middle and telling the two sides to attack each other on cue, Braveheart-style. "We did it the first two or three days, and then someone from Clear Channel put it on the Internet. The Ozzfest insurance company freaked out and called [tour organizer] Sharon Osbourne. We’re like, ‘Tell these guys to calm down.’ "

Blythe isn’t saying he’ll never again lead a Wall of Death, but he has since grown wary of the health risks involved. "People have been getting really hurt. This guy broke his femur, which is a very hard bone to break. It’s a potentially fatal injury. We’re kind of freaked out."

With or without the Wall of Death, expect a raging dance floor at the Palladium. "Laid to Rest," the first single from Ashes of the Wake, climaxes with a crushing breakdown straight out of the Hatebreed school of hard knocks. The track also recalls other members of the metal elite: the band’s off-kilter rhythms could stymie Meshuggah, and Blythe is a fuming descendant of Pantera’s Philip Anselmo. "Console yourself, you’re better alone/Destroy yourself, see who gives a fuck," he hollers, using the disc’s first chorus to ward off sellout charges.

Guitarist Mark Morton, who with Blythe writes the band’s lyrics, penned "Laid to Rest" in New Orleans last Thanksgiving. "We were down there on a day off," Blythe explains, "and his girlfriend had flown in. They got into a big fight. It’s a personal song he wrote about his relationship, but it could be applicable to anyone that you have a relationship with if they’re not taking care of their end of the bargain. He calls it a love song. That’s par for the course for us — the lyrics are kind of screwed up."

"Laid to Rest" aside, on Ashes of the Wake, Lamb of God are more concerned with political issues than personal ones. "Send the children to the fire, sons and daughters stack the pyre," Blythe yells on the seething "Now You’ve Got Something To Die For." "Hourglass" and "One Gun" also use the band’s lethal precision to condemn war, and during Ozzfest, Blythe was an outspoken critic of the current administration. "We don’t have a specific platform, although we do not like President Bush. We think he’s screwing up the world. We’re just throwing out what pisses us off. If people can relate to that, cool; if they can’t, then don’t listen to the record."

The title track is a prog-tinged instrumental that ends with a spoken testimony from an unnamed officer: "I don’t believe in killing civilians, and I’m not going to kill civilians for the United States Marine Corps." Guitarists Morton and Willie Adler trade gonzo solos on the tune with two special guests, Megadeth’s Chris Poland and Testament’s Alex Skolnick. (Skolnick, who these days performs straight-ahead jazz versions of rock songs, is at Ryles in Inman Square this Wednesday, October 20.) "Our guitar players are huge Testament and Megadeth fans," Blythe says. "They freaked out when Skolnick was in the studio doing his solo. There were 10 guys crammed into this tiny room, just staring at him like, ‘Holy crap, it’s Alex Skolnick playing on our record.’ It’s a huge honor."

Blythe shifts gears on the doomy "Omertà," which shares its title with a latter-day Mario Puzo novel. "I’m a Mafia-movie freak, and omertà is the Mafioso code of silence. If you have problems within the community, you don’t appeal to the authorities. That song’s about taking care of your own problems and not being a wimp. I’m not claiming membership in the Mafia or advocating some of their activities, but I find the concept interesting."

OTHER THAN SIGNING to a major-label, Lamb of God have done nothing to annoy metal purists. They didn’t hire a big-name producer, opting instead to work with Machine (Clutch), and there remains little room for melody in their menacing grooves. One of their Ozzfest tourmates, Atreyu, have earned a similar level of success by going the opposite route. The current The Curse is Atreyu’s second CD for Victory, the rock indie that most resembles a major these days. It was produced by GGGarth, whose hitmaking résumé (from Rage Against the Machine to Trapt) is beginning to rival that of fellow Vancouverite Bob Rock. And the Southern California band write hooks to compete with those by labelmates Taking Back Sunday, whom they’re joining on the road for a month-long stint that’ll arrive at Avalon in Boston on November 18.

Atreyu’s "Right Side of the Bed" is one of the year’s most exhilarating all-ages rock tracks, even though it’s somehow fallen through the cracks on radio. The band’s formula is familiar enough: frontman Alex Varkatzas writes the lyrics and handles the screaming while drummer Brandon Saller sings the melodies. The chorus is more glam than emo, despite all the sobbing: "Who’s sleeping on my side of the bed tonight/Have you ever cried so hard/Baby, you just died." The cock-rock vibe extends to the video, which includes lots of kissing and old-school guitar flash. The verses are mosh-worthy, but serious metalheads are filing this one under "not quite," next to Mötley Crüe and Limp Bizkit.

That’s just further proof of how Atreyu are joining fellow SoCal natives Eighteen Visions and Avenged Sevenfold in tweaking the definition of metalcore to their own specs. These guys can hang with Hatebreed when it comes to hardcore cred, but they’re also not afraid to wear eye make-up. Instead of thrash virtuosity, they go for corporate-rock professionalism: star producers are a must, and Atreyu session bassist Tom MacDonald hails from major-label signees Flybanger. Then there’s the goth obsession, which explains the vampiric lingerie model on the cover of The Curse.

If Avenged Sevenfold are the progs of SoCal metalcore, then Atreyu are its pop-savvy romantics. Make that bruised romantics: Varkatzas wears his heart on his sleeve, and most of the songs here deal in rejection. "The Crimson" is his most graphic revenge fantasy: "I feel it welling up inside and Robert Smith lied, boys do cry/And with blood tears in my eyes, I’m an Anne Rice novel come to life." He toughens up on "You Eclipsed by Me," which ditches girl trouble in favor of an old-fashioned grudge match. "This Flesh a Tomb" finds him blinded by lust, but the euphoria doesn’t last long. Varkatzas gets existential on "The Remembrance Ballad": "Does it all simply end in a blanket of darkness/What of my soul, what of my soul." The track’s swooning guitar harmonies seem designed to court the mainstream, as does the Korn-goth muttering the singer adopts at the end.

Guitarists Dan Jacobs and Travis Miguel keep up with Varkatzas in terms of flamboyance, sometimes even flirting with Poison-style kitsch. But the band’s songwriting is tight enough to keep things from getting too pretentious. They spend the second half of the album cursing their erstwhile lovers before coming to an appropriate close on "Five Vicodin Chased with a Shot of Clarity." Varkatzas ends up in a "self-made hell" on that song, but he rallies the troops to help him out of it with a mosh-pit sing-along: "This is life/This is struggle/This is love/This is war." Atreyu may be their ex-girlfriends’ worst nightmare, but their bloodsucking party metal is a boon for glam-happy hardcore kids.

Lamb of God perform this Friday, October 15, at the Palladium, 261 Main Street in Worcester; call (508) 797-9696. Atreyu open for Taking Back Sunday on November 18 at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call (617) 262-2424. Then on November 20, Atreyu and TBS move on to the Webster Theatre, 31 Webster Street in Hartford, Connecticut; call (860) 525-5553.