Randy Blythe microphone

In 2001/20002 lamb of god toured on our first album, New American Gospel. 
Sometime during that period, we played a venue in Denver, Colorado named The 
Bluebird Theater. During the show, I ALLEGEDLY broke a microphone, the Shure 
SM58 you see in the picture. The venue took $100 out of our pay for the cost of 
the microphone, the price of a brand new one. When I say "our pay", I mean MY 
PAY- even though I am certain the mic was already screwed up before we took the 
stage, and was falling to pieces, I got charged, and a hundred bucks was most of 
a month's rent for me at the time (I was living, literally, in a green closet in 
the ghetto). A fan even offered to give me a hundred bucks for the mic that 
night, but I didn't feel right about selling a broken mic to someone. Screw 
that. I was pretty mad about it, so I took my broken microphone and left Denver 
in a huff.

When I returned home to my green closet in the ghetto, I told my housemate, 
Peter Frank (who was renting me the closet), about the microphone. Peter said he 
could fix it, so he took it, soldered some wires, sloppily wrapped some duct 
tape around the cracked handle, plugged it in, and hollered into it. It worked! 

"HAHA, Bluebird Theater, now I own my first SM58," I thought, "look who's 
laughing now!"
 
After touring was done for New American Gospel, we drafted Devin Townsend to 
produce our second record, As the Palaces Burn. When we first started tracking 
vocals, he was having me sing into a fancy mic on a stand. I have always hated 
doing that, but that's the way most people track vocals. After a bit I told him 
I wanted to go handheld. It's the way I do it live, and the way I feel most 
comfortable. We tried a few different mics and finally I pulled out my $100 
Bluebird Special. Blammo. There it was.

Every single song on "As the Palaces Burn" was tracked using this microphone. 
From that first scream in "Ruin", to "Smite the shepherd and the sheep will be 
scattered" ending the last track, "Vigil", this captured it all. I believe there 
were a few spoken/background vocal type things I did on "nicer" mics, but 95% of 
the record's vocals were done with this screwed-up SM58. This is the mic I feel 
I first started learning how to really track with, how to track MY WAY- it just 
worked. I use 58's live to this day. They are THE standard. 

When I was done with Palaces, I went home and put the mic away. Then I had a 
brief nervous breakdown (not kidding- making that record was brutal). It hasn't 
been used since. I was just glad it was over, but I knew even then I had a 
little piece of one of our contributions to metal's history. I LOVE this mic- it 
means a lot to me. It's not pretty to look at it, but it's real and it got the 
job done well, kinda the same way I think about our band. I hope it finds a good 
home, literally and maybe even on another record by one of the next generation 
of metal bands.