Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton recently appeared on “The Jasta Show” to discuss his 2024 memoir, “Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir.” During the conversation, the musician reflected on the unlikely trajectory of his career, the technical challenges of recording the audiobook, and the reality behind the writing process.
According to Morton, the book—co-credited to Ben Opipari—is a convergence of three distinct narratives: his personal growth, the band’s ascent, and his battle with substance abuse.
“It was just a weird thing, man. The book is called ‘Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir,’ for your listeners that don’t know. It’s been out now for a year and a half. And it’s really kind of three stories in one kind of all blending together. It’s basically this story of me being this sort of anxious, kind of shy, uncomfortable kid that finds guitar and finds the music and it just takes over my entire psyche. And then it follows the journey of [the pre-Lamb of God band] Burn the Priest into Lamb of God that is really the most unlikely story, really. I mean, it’s kind of a trope; it’s like a Cinderella story. The degree of success we’ve had would’ve never made sense at any point if you’d have tried to have said ‘script that’ or ‘plan that’. And it all sort of happened by accident, and it kind of details that. And then it also details just my descent into alcoholism and dr*g addiction, and then my coming out of that. And all those things, stories kind of intertwine. And there’s some tragedy in there and there’s some comedy in there, some funny stories and some sad stuff, too.”
When asked why he chose to narrate the audiobook himself rather than hiring a voice actor, Morton revealed that the decision was deeply personal, stemming from a tragic chapter in his life.
“Really, that boils down to — there is a section of the book where I discuss the birth and death of my first daughter. And I frankly just would never want anyone else to tell that story. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with someone else voicing that story. And beyond that, I didn’t have any reason not to do it.”
However, he admitted that the technical aspect of voice work was more difficult than anticipated.
“I’ll tell you this, and you know this — I didn’t know this until I did it — doing voice work is tricky. It’s a skillset that I didn’t have, and by the end of it, ’cause it took me, like, five days to do the book, to read it and record that. And I did it in a studio with a producer, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s a tricky thing. You become very well acquainted with your own sort of speech impediments and idiosyncrasies and throat gurgles. And you learn when to not eat, when to eat, how much to eat, what to eat, when to drink water, when not to drink. You can’t be too hungry, but you can’t have just eaten, and your body’s just making all this noise that you gotta work around. It’s wild.”
Morton also took the opportunity to clarify the extent of his involvement in the actual writing. While Ben Opipari is listed as a co-writer, Morton emphasized that the words on the page are entirely his own.
“I didn’t co-write it — I wrote it. I wrote every single word.”
He explained that Opipari, a friend and English professor, acted more as a consultant and editor than a ghostwriter.
“Ben was a friend already. And the way the book came to be was, he has a place down at the beach in North Carolina, and we go down to that area of North Carolina, outer banks in North Carolina, pretty much every summer for vacation. And he was down there at the time. We were having coffee, and I was telling him some goofy story, music stuff. And he was, like, ‘You’ve got a book in you, man. You should write a book.’ And he’s an English professor, and he works teaching lawyers how to write better and that kind of stuff. He’s like a consultant. And he’s, like, ‘Let’s write a sample chapter, just for fun, and see if we can get any interest.’ And I was, like, ‘All right, I’m down to go that far.’ And we wrote one chapter, sent it to the one publishing company. We were, like, ‘If we wanted someone to put this out, who would it be?’ So we sent it to that company, and they were, like, ‘Let’s do a book.’ I was, like, ‘Oh, no.’ So then I had to decide, like, am I gonna do it? I wrote every word. And the interesting thing about that is I don’t type very well, so I wrote a hundred thousand words [very slowly]. So it took a lot of time on my laptop. So, hours to dollars, I probably made five bucks an hour writing this book. And then Ben would sort of edit and fix grammar, and if I said something twice, he would sort of — he just kind of cleaned it up. But no, he didn’t write anything. I didn’t recite anything. It was all written. Um. And so when I read it, it’s not like I was reading something for the first time. I wrote every word.”
Despite the heavy subject matter, Morton pushed back on the idea that the process was a healing experience.
“To your question, I did not feel — it wasn’t cathartic. It wasn’t some self-discovery. That makes for good bylines, taglines about a project. But it wasn’t, because everything in there, it’s my story, it’s my life. So all that stuff I’ve lived and I have as learned and lived experience.”
