Lamb Of God guitarist Mark Morton recently discussed why newer bands copy groups like Gojira and Killswitch Engage but do not seem to replicate Lamb Of God’s specific sound, sharing his thoughts in an interview with Heavy Interviews.
Morton explained his perspective on how younger bands draw influence from their peers and why he finds the lack of direct Lamb Of God copycats surprising.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Morton said. “It’d be interesting to know. I wish I had a clever answer for you. I don’t really know. I stand by that. I feel like it’s surprising.”
He then compared his band’s situation to other prominent metal acts who have seen many groups emulate their style.
“You see bands like Killswitch [Engage], who had such success, and then you saw 20 bands come out that sounded like Killswitch,” he explained. “And I don’t see that with us. Even Gojira, who are so great, and you hear Gojira references in all kinds of new bands.”
Morton clarified that his observation was not meant as a complaint, but rather as a point of curiosity regarding their musical legacy.
“And that’s not a dig; it’s not a criticism,” he continued. “If anything, I find it curious that I don’t hear at least a successful rendition of the Lamb Of God kind of character in newer bands. But I know that we have influenced a lot of younger bands, ’cause they tell me that. I hear bits and pieces.”
Morton’s comments touch on a much longer history of influence within American heavy music, and the bands he names each played a distinct role in shaping the sound of the last two decades.
Killswitch Engage became a major part of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, and younger acts such as Bring Me The Horizon and The Word Alive have cited them as an influence. That helps explain why Morton hears so many newer bands echoing the Killswitch sound.
Killswitch Engage’s early albums buried nu metal and sparked the metalcore revolution, with the band drawing on classic hardcore, the thrash of Slayer and early Metallica, and the melodic savagery of the Gothenburg scene. That formula spread quickly, and dozens of bands followed in their wake.
Not everyone in Killswitch Engage is convinced they deserve all the credit. Guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz told Metal Hammer, “People always say we’ve influenced so many bands, but each band has their own identity.” His remark echoes Morton’s own ambivalence about how much influence a band can truly claim.
Lamb Of God, for its part, holds a similar place in that same movement. The band helped usher in the New Wave of American Heavy Metal alongside acts like Pantera and Mastodon, bringing back credibility to the genre after years of nu-metal dominating the charts and radio. Their blend of Pantera-style riffing and aggressive modern metal became a defining part of that era.
Lamb Of God has been described as one of the “big four” bands of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, alongside Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, and Unearth, and critics have long noted Pantera comparisons in the band’s early work. That standing is precisely what makes Morton’s observation about a lack of direct imitators so curious.
Gojira’s trajectory followed a different path but arrived at a similar level of influence. The French band emerged from relative obscurity in the late 1990s to become one of the most artistically consequential acts in modern progressive death metal, influencing a generation of musicians to value compositional complexity and thematic depth.
