Ask a guitarist to pick a favourite from his own catalogue and you usually get a diplomatic non-answer. Mark Morton gave a straight one.
Talking to UK retailer Gear4music, the LAMB OF GOD guitarist was walking through the making of "Into Oblivion", the band's tenth studio album, released in March 2026 through Epic/Century Media. He said the group deliberately went looking for discomfort this time, having "rallied around this notion of re-engaging into — being willing to step out of comfort zones and that kind of thing a little bit compositionally."
Part of that meant going back to what was in the tape deck when LAMB OF GOD were first taking shape. Morton name-checked the wave of Swedish metal that shaped their early sound — THE HAUNTED, AT THE GATES and MESHUGGAH — singling out "Destroy Erase Improve" as "one of my favourite metal records." Whatever the starting point, the method has never changed: it "starts with guitar riffs" between Morton and Willie Adler, and everything else follows.
Which brought him to the question of his own favourite. Not "Ashes Of The Wake". Not "Sacrament". His pick is "As The Palaces Burn", released in May 2003 on Prosthetic Records — the record that got the band out of the Richmond underground and onto the map, and the one Morton hears as the raw blueprint for everything since.
He described it as "a very early representation of the elements of what LAMB OF GOD would eventually develop and refine," then reached for something closer to synaesthesia to explain the appeal. The album, he said, "sounds like the colours that are on the cover" — "really burning bright red and yellow."
Morton also spoke about drummer Art Cruz, now on his third album with the band and, by Morton's reckoning, finally writing from a position of full creative comfort. Cruz's encyclopaedic grip on the LAMB OF GOD back catalogue turns out to be a working asset in the room: he knows exactly where a new idea sits relative to twenty-five years of material, and says so.
"Into Oblivion" has kept the band on the road through most of 2026, including a European arena run booked into 2027 alongside FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH.
Source: blabbermouth.net