Lamb Of God are being forced to step aside from one of their
arena concerts on the upcoming Subliminal Verses Tour with Slipknot, because of their name Lamb Of God and former moniker Burn
The Priest.
The venue, The Forum in Los Angeles, is owned by The Faithful Central
Bible Church, who decided to impose a ruling to ban Lamb Of God's performance at their venue.
Lamb Of God have come off of several extremely successful
headline runs through L.A. in the last year, so this move comes completely
unexpected for the band and the tour as a whole. Los Angeles is, and has always been, a huge
market for the band, building steadily with each one of their releases and
tours as well as and exploding with the bands current CD, Ashes of the Wake (Epic).
In deciding to ban Lamb Of God's
performance, The Faithful Central Bible Church are imposing on the public's
freedom of speech, choice and assembly; the band's art along with the bands
ability to conduct commerce.
Drummer Chris Adler commented,
"The 'situation' in L.A. can only be described as
ridiculous. It's already been a huge waste of energy trying to turn this
around. The powers that be aren't interested budging — or doing their research
apparently — and we've never been a band to placate anyone to get our way, smooth
things over or make anyone feel better. They have made it clear that they don't
want us because of our name, our show and our crowd — because of that
ignorance, Lamb Of
God is not being permitted to appear on the Subliminal Verses concert in L.A. It's truly a shame for the show
overall, especially for our friends and fans in L.A. that are being forced to miss our
part of the show. Trust that this was not our decision, we'd love to kick some
ass in L.A., but apparently the word from the powers that be is that Lamb Of God is
not the wholesome family fun that the good people of Los Angeles deserve."