Lamb Of God's Sacrament, the album that nearly broke the band, turns 20

Sacrament, the fifth Lamb Of God album, has reached 20. It arrived as the Richmond, Virginia quintet's first real mainstream breakthrough, debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200 and bringing the band their first Grammy nomination for the lead single Redneck.

They worked at it like a job. The writing ran eight hours a day, six days a week, and drummer Chris Adler described the sessions in a 2006 press release as intense and productive in a way that had paid off. Producer Machine, who had handled 2004's Ashes of the Wake, came back for the record. Pre-production began in Richmond on March 13, 2006, before the band moved to Spin Studios in Queens and Sound of Music Studios in Richmond.

The press language understated what was happening. Adler later told Revolver that the material would not leave him alone, even on a New Year's holiday in Amsterdam. "The music would not go away; I just couldn't get it out of my head," he said, and he was blunt about the friction the perfectionism caused inside the band.

The change of subject is what dates the record and also what preserved it. Where 2003's As the Palaces Burn aimed at government and foreign policy, Sacrament turned inward, shaped by exhaustion, strained relationships, alcoholism, depression and permanent touring. Vocalist Randy Blythe told Metal Hammer around the release that repeating political slogans had stopped achieving anything and that it was time to write about themselves.

Guitarist Mark Morton has said the band were stretching creatively and stylistically, and that it did not come easily. Fourteen tracks made the standard edition, running past an hour. Now You've Got Something to Die For and Omerta are treated as high points of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, the loose movement Lamb Of God helped shape alongside Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and Unearth.

Two decades on, Laid to Rest has outlasted the rest. It anchors the live set, gets covered constantly, and functions as something close to a standard for the genre. Walk with Me in Hell, by contrast, carries the fingerprints of exactly when it was written.

The band arrived at the album already carrying expectations, having released the live DVD Killadelphia and moved into arenas. Anniversaries keep coming round in metal, among them Iron Maiden's Wasted Years at 40, while newer records such as Immolation's Descent keep the field moving.