Lamb Of God vocalist Randy Blythe has published an extensive and deeply personal op-ed expanding on his bleak outlook regarding the current state of the United States, directly condemning the actions and policies of the Trump administration and warning of what he sees as an accelerating societal collapse.
The piece, titled "All The Horrors Happening Around Us," was shared via Blythe's Randonesia Substack on January 27, and follows earlier comments linking his political and social concerns to Lamb Of God's forthcoming studio album, Into Oblivion.
In his newly published essay, Blythe goes far deeper — delivering a blistering, unfiltered critique of President Donald Trump, Republican leadership, and what he describes as the moral collapse of all three branches of U.S. government. Writing with characteristic intensity, Blythe describes exhaustion, fear, and anger after decades of warning against authoritarianism, corporate greed, and political extremism.
The essay opens with a reflective anecdote from Los Angeles in early 2025, shortly after Trump's return to office, before spiraling into a furious reckoning with what Blythe calls "all the horrors happening around us."
He denounces Trump's criminal convictions, economic policies, foreign relations, alleged corruption, and past associations, while also railing against what he describes as state-sanctioned violence, ICE-related killings of U.S. citizens in Minnesota, and the normalization of brutality.
On Good, Pretti, Greenland, and all the bullshit happening: "Like most of you… I am tired, y'all. So goddamned tired. The open moral collapse of all three branches our government is utterly exhausting. But it's not just the fact that the current President of the United States is a man found guilty by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman, not mention 34 other felonies involving hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels (may her name echo eternal in the Halls of Liberty as an unlikely-but-true American hero for standing up to this vile impersonation of a real man.)
"It's not just that that same deranged man now slumps like a giant rotting shrimp over the Resolute Desk in the gaudy faux gold-leafed remains of a half-destroyed White House as he fully embraces his bizarre Marie–Antoinette-meets-Liberace redecorating phase.
"It's not just the fact that we have a perpetual failure of a business man cosplaying as some sort of national financial father figure, hell-bent on destroying our economy with his foolish tariffs and endless trade wars, raising the cost of groceries and health insurance and every single other thing under the sun all the while enriching himself to the tune of at least 1.4 billion dollars during his first year back alone.
"It's not just because this poorly spoken buffoon, holder of the highest office in the land, flies to other countries only to publicly insult and demean our historical allies in endless slurring word salads of nonsense on the world stage, going so far as to threaten utterly pointless invasions of their sovereign lands in the name American national security, places like Greenland that we already have full access to through long-standing treaties.
"It's not simply because this draft-dodging rich kid, who against all common sense is the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces, has moved beyond threats and into action by invading another sovereign nation, kidnapping its admittedly terrible dictator in the name of stopping drug trafficking while leaving that dictator's even worse second in command in charge, thereby changing absolutely nothing except millions of American tax payer's dollars squandered.
"It's not just that the 'leader of the free world' was for years best friends with the most notorious child sex trafficker in modern history, Jeffrey Epstein, and is currently in the middle of a blatant cover-up in order to protect the interests of rich and powerful pedophiles (not to mention having made super-creepy pedophile-esque statements himself about his own daughter's physical attractiveness.)
"It's not just the fact that masked men now roam our streets, Gestapo-like, terrorizing the populace, openly killing two American citizens, shooting them in the face in broad daylight as their fellow citizens film these executions, then post videos of the killings to the internet, videos I cannot stop watching again and again.
"A video of a smiling 37 year-old mother's last words, words she spoke to the man who murdered her…'That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you.' A video that concludes seconds later with this masked thug calling her a 'fucking bitch' as her dead body slumps over the wheel of her minivan.
"A video of a 37 year old man, a beloved ICU nurse at a Veteran's Affairs hospital, as he struggles on an icy street to shield a woman with his own body as more of these masked goons pepper spray him, throw him on the ground, batter him, disarm him, then shoot him in the back like the cowards they are. Cowards.
"Videos of the women of Minneapolis screaming; screaming, again and again on a snowy street… 'What the fuck did you do? WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DO?' The pain in these women's voices, the horror in these women's voices… it is burned into me. All the horrors happening around us.
"If you are a citizen of the United States and have not watched these videos, do so. Do not turn away. Do not ignore this, do your best to move on and put it out of your head because you keep telling yourself you just can't handle it anymore. Do not be a coward. This is your country, and this is what is happening here right now, despite the blatant lies the President and his assorted cast of cartoon villains tell you to your face.
"'Domestic terrorists'… do not let their lies make you despair of your sanity. You have eyes to see the truth of the horrors happening all around us. You have eyes to see the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. No, my friends, you are not crazy. Things are bad. Really, really bad. This is not normal."
On coming together: "To my fellow musicians, writers, photographers, and other artists of all stripes who may be scared to speak out, to use your voice… know that this is our time.
"Swallow your fear, and speak truth to power— this is what we were put here to do. So raise your voices now, motherfuckers— NOW. I will leave you with a quote from Frederick Douglass: 'Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.'
"I, for one, will not quietly submit to anything. I haven't for thirty years so far— why would I start now?
"To the rest of my fellow citizens of good conscious, hang in there. I know this is scary, but we must raise our voices every chance we get. Come together and take heart. As well, and I know this is difficult for some to swallow in the face of the recent brutal state sanctioned murders, but I believe we must remain non-violent.
"The Orange Man would love nothing more than for violence and chaos to take over our streets, thereby enabling him to invoke the Insurrection Act— after all, that's what these ICE raids and violence is really about, not immigration. It's a wanna-be dictator pushing the envelope, testing the edges of his ability to exert control via terror.
"Trump is an agent of chaos, governing by tweet, and he has zero long-term plan for anything but maintaining control and remaining in office as long as possible— riots across our nation would only serve his purpose. From there, in a state of martial law, the mid-term elections could be severely disrupted or 'temporarily cancelled'- do not be foolish enough to think he would not attempt this.
"These are not normal times, and we are not dealing with a normal politician— in fact, we are not dealing with a politician at all, but a malignant narcissist of a reality tv star who has managed to shatter the historic guardrails that protect our democracy. The complete moral collapse of the Republican Party and the cowardly, willful impotence of establishment Democrats is ample evidence that normal, status-quo politics are over.
"Wake up, motherfuckers— business as usual is done. I am neither Democrat nor Republican, so I don't have a partisan dog in this fight. I just want this dementia-riddled sociopath and his cabinet of freaks removed from office and replaced with someone with a least semblance of care for the common good, hopefully before he drags us into World War III."
On speaking out: "Fuck the fascists. Do not comply. And the endless refrain of 'Shut up and sing' plays on and on… what in the flying fuck do you think I've been singing about for all these years? I'm still here, and I'm still screaming."
