By Greg Maki
A dozen albums and more than three decades into its career, Lamb of God is as incendiary as ever on “Into Oblivion.” The Richmond, Virginia, quintet has been one of the 21st century’s most consistent forces in heavy music, and while reinvention is not the name of the game for this new record, the band attacks these 10 songs with a little extra fire and an enhanced sense of dynamics.
The hallmarks remain in place—rapid fire riffing, machine gun drumming, Randy Blythe’s ferocious bark—but to my admittedly untrained ears, the instrumentation feels more technical and intricate. The band also dips its toes into some new territory via the sludgy “Sepsis” and the soft-to-heavy transitions of “El Vacio” and “A Thousand Years.” The latter two show just how far Blythe has come as a vocalist over the years and not just with his cleans—his snarls and growls now have so much more power than the demented croak he employed in earlier years. And maturity has taken away none of his edge, as he sounds as enraged as he’s ever been ranting and raving about, in his own words, “the ongoing and rapid breakdown of the social contract, particularly here in America.” Thinking about that makes me want to scream, too.
Without a misstep in its discography, Lamb of God has played the game almost perfectly over years, never abandoning its core sound while subtly spreading its wings a little more with each new release. “Into Oblivion” easily ranks in the top half of the band’s output, reaffirming its place as one of the leading modern metal acts.
Rating: 9/10
Epic Records – March 13, 2026
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