RANDY BLYTHE: TWITTER EXTRAORDINAIRE, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, BLOGGER… METAL VOCALIST

Randy Blythe is a busy man these days! Amidst his hectic barn-storming Presidential campaign schedule the Lamb of God frontman has somehow found time to stay active in the press and on the social networks. Or maybe all that stuff IS his Presidential campaign? Sly, Randy… sly.

Blythe has been quite an active user on Twitter lately, engaging in direct Q&As with fans — often for hours at a time — much like Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter did this past fall. Blythe explained his love affair with the social media outlet in an in-depth interview with Metal Insider earlier this week:

And the other thing with me with Twitter is I actually like engaging people and discussing topics that interest me and might make someone’s head turn a little bit. They might think a little bit after arguing with me—I love arguing as well. And I do that quite a bit. And that’s another thing, it’s funny, a lot of people on the Twitter are like, “How can you argue with your fucking fans!” And I’m like “I’m not Mr. heavy metal robot. You don’t just press a button and say ‘rock on dude’.” If I want to say something, I’m gonna say it. And you’re a human being, you have a brain, if you disagree, you and I should talk and hash it out. And Twitter is kind of good for that. And with that being said I have something now approaching something like 24,000 followers, that’s a whole lot of people to discuss with. So it can get kind of hectic and I waste too much time on it sometimes. But it is pretty useful.

But the pros of directly interacting with 24,000 fans are also the cons of directly interacting with 24,000 fans; anything he says, good or bad, will get out immediately. In Randy’s case, I think he’s been doing a great job of making himself accessible as a real human and not “Mr. Heavy Metal Robot,” particularly in the context of having a brand new album to promote. But I think he slipped up last night by announcing to the world via Twitter that Resolution has leaked, even though he qualified that announcement by saying the leak is horrible quality and that fans shouldn’t download it. I didn’t know about the leak, and I guarantee most of his followers didn’t either… and now all those people do, as do the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people who are now going to read all about it today on metal websites like this one the world over. Seems to me like the best thing Blythe could’ve done if he didn’t want people downloading the leak was not to mention it at all.

Blythe’s got a lot of great stuff to say, though. Highly recommend you read the Metal Insider interview (which has lots of great non-Twitter topics too), check out his personal blog Randonesia, and, of course, follow him Twitter.

Let’s see Lamb of God and Chimaira get together for the 2012 “Twitter as a Weapon Tour.” Do it!

-VN