In a recent interview with The Downbeat Podcast, LAMB OF GOD guitarist Mark Morton discussed the band's upcoming tenth studio album, "Into Oblivion", which drops March 13 via Epic.

When asked if revisiting the band's earlier sound was a conscious decision for him and his mates, Mark replied: ""So I'll tell you, and we all come into these things with our own perspective and mindset.

LAMB OF GOD is very collaborative, and there's no meeting before we get going about what our premise is gonna be or anything like that.

But I do think collectively we were having conversations about, 'Well, what is it that we've gotten away from?' Not because anything was necessarily wrong, because some of the more recent work we were feel really excited about — 'Ditch' is a monster, from the last album; we play that almost every night.

And 'Resurrection Man' — those are all new songs that are big in the live show and we're into.

'Memento Mori' was massive.

But it's, like.

what have we gotten away from that was really at the genesis of this thing that was really the cornerstones that we built it on?",Mark continued: ""So two things happened for me.

And I don't remember exactly where we were in the writing process, but we did a tour that was the 'Ashes Of The Wake' 20-year tour.

So that had us, and me, going into those songs and learning them inside out.

Some of those songs — I think a couple of the songs we'd never played live.

I don't know the stats on that, but certainly most of them we hadn't played in a long time.

So I was digging into those songs.

So when you learn something like that and rehearse it so much, you start to understand the patterns that you're not really… 'Oh, I don't really do that move anymore.' You know what I mean? 'But I'm doing it now ’cause I’m learning this thing that’s 20 years old.’ And kind of jumping off of that, I also — rather than go back and listen to '[As The] Palaces [Burn]' or go listen to '[New American] Gospel’, which I’ve listened to these records from time to time, just [for] nostalgic reasons… So, for me, I decided to kind of start going back to the music that I was listening to when we wrote those records.

So I started going back and listening to THE HAUNTED and to AT THE GATES and to early MESHUGGAH and all that kind of Swedish stuff that I was so excited about at that point in time.",Mark elaborated on his love for Scandinavian extreme metal bands, including a nod to MESHUGGAH's 1995 album 'Destroy Erase Improve', saying: ""’Destroy Erase Improve’, that’s one of my favorite metal records, for sure.

Some of the stuff, they get so abstract that I don’t… I’m probably impatient as a listener for some of the stuff that they’ve evolved into.

And that’s not a criticism.

It just means for me, the sort of essence of the basic groove that ‘Destroy Erase Improve’ has, that weird groove with an extra angle but it still grooves, that was a big influence.”,"The band's drummer Art Cruz also contributed to the new LP, which is set to be released on March 13 via Epic.

In response to whether Cruz felt more comfortable expressing himself this time around than he did on 2022’s "Omens" and on 2020's self-titled effort, Mark replied: ""I think he felt more comfortable.

This is Art’s third record [with LAMB OF GOD].

So, the self-titled record, I think there was probably a little bit of more intense focus on the drum parts, just because we had such a large body of work with Chris, and that sound, it's the LAMB OF GOD sound.

So to change drummers and have the drums be drastically different didn’t feel — it didn’t feel right for us, it didn’t feel fair to anybody, including the listeners.",The band will embark on a spring North American tour beginning March 17 with support from KUBLAI KHAN TX, FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY and SANGUISUGABOGG.

Tickets and VIP packages are available now via Lamb-of-god.com/tour.