SYSTEM RESET
PICTURES: NICK FANCHER
“Have you ever heard of temporary autonomous zones?” Randy Blythe asks, as we sit down in a quiet study room upstairs at the Richmond Public Library. Moments prior, Hammer had made an offhand comment that the sickly puce walls made it look like an interrogation room. With a bitter chuckle, he shot back, “I’ve been in interrogation rooms. This is a lot nicer.”
He wasn’t joking, either. But as Randy quickly makes apparent, he’s not a man who is fazed by much anymore. As the vocalist for one of the biggest heavy metal bands in the world, an accomplished photographer, a bestselling author and a former unhappy guest of the Czech prison system, the Lamb Of God frontman has lived and seen far too much for that. Instead, two blocks away from a greasy diner where he worked the grill back in his punk rock salad days, Randy kicks back in a stiff library chair as he expounds on a theory from controversial anarchist scholar Hakim Bey.
A ‘temporary autonomous zone’ describes an ephemeral period of revolutionary freedom experienced outside the structures of state control. As Randy explains, that’s where he sees the most viable solution for his own personal happiness – and the best kind of heavy metal experience.
“Throughout history, where people get together and go, ‘There’s no rules, let’s all get along,’ someone always comes along and crushes it,” he says.
“So, you enjoy that sort of freedom in that moment, because this
