Musical performances on U.S. talk shows usually come from upper-echelon indie artists or pop acts with a new album coming out soon, so Lamb of God guesting on last night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live might have seemed like an odd choice. Then again, they’ve been around since 1994 and have been one of the biggest bands in metal during that period, so I guess having them on the show also brings their built-in audience’s eyeballs to the screen. Regardless, when a band that deviates from the norm so much gets screen time on national television, you’re going to experience some weird stuff you’re not used to. The group performed “512” (which you can watch above) and “Still Echoes” (below) on the Kimmel stage.
The Dio horns and gravelly vocals can be enough to deal with if you don’t get it–for the record, we get it–but they are still relatively tame fare, even in relation to everyday rock music. Where it got weird for metal outsiders was the different crowd formation called a circle pit, a type of mosh pit. We’ll let Urban Dictionary handle the definition: “A form of violent, aggressive dancing or ‘slamming’ during punk shows that stays within the confines of an open, circular area in the middle of the floor.”
The circle pit on Kimmel last night didn’t include much more than light shoving, but it could have been a lot worse: In 2008, ABC News published an article titled “Mosh Pit or Death Pit?”, and WikiHow has a page devoted to not getting injured in a mosh pit. Although with Samsung’s name plastered all over the stage, we’re thinking the possibility of a full-out brawl on national television was pretty low. That would have made for great TV, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn9uaBkTzW0
