“I would say we are estranged”: Lamb of God’s ex-drummer Chris Adler hasn’t spoken to his brother and former bandmate Willie in six years
As Oasis have proven, being in a band with your brother isn’t easy. Lamb Of God have their own case of familial estrangement, with the removal of drummer Chris Adler in 2019 putting a rift between himself and his brother, guitarist Willie Adler.
Speaking to Blabbermouth, Chris reveals that he hasn’t spoken to his brother at all in the 6 years since his Lamb Of God removal. “I wish him all the best; I’m wishing them all the best, and I think about him all the time,” he says. “But I would say we are estranged. Since that email that I got, where he was not even willing to talk to me about it, we haven’t spoken.”
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“At this point, I’ve got to work through resentments and regrets and all that stuff,” he notes.“I’m happy where I’m at. I hope [my brother is] happy where he is. Everything is cool with me.”
While Willie still remains in the band, Chris was replaced by drummer Art Cruz. Cruz had initially been a temporary stand-in whilst Chris was out of action in 2018 and 2019, a result of a motorcycle incident. However, Chris seems to think the incident put fear in Lamb Of God’s minds.
Chris believes that his permanent removal was the result of another physical issue he was struggling with – a movement disorder impacting that had been his foot since 2003. “Slowly, it got worse,” he explains. “By around 2016, I was touring with Lamb and Megadeth, and it was making a difference in the show in that there were points where I felt like I couldn’t control it.”
“I started going through all sorts of physical and occupational therapy,” he continues. “I ended up in a place in Richmond called Neurological Associates, which, because of the symptoms, had me bring in my pedals to solve what was going on… and I was diagnosed with a thing called musician’s dystonia.”
Task-specific focal dystonia causes involuntary muscle contractions due to it misfiring of nerves. In Chris’s case, the issue was his foot. “It happens to people who perform a repetitive motion for an extended amount of time,” he explains. “The nerves that are telling my foot to do this are worn out. Eventually, it stops doing what you want it to do.”
“It uses the muscles that [do the] opposite to the intended motion. If I were trying to depress my right foot, often it would lift, shoot to the side, or shoot back. It kept getting worse and worse.”
For drummers, Chris admits the diagnosis can be “a death sentence in many ways”. However, he is opening up about it due to Cannibal Corpse’s Alex Webster and Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair recently coming forward about their own experience with the issue.
However, Chris also believes an element of jealousy lead to his dismissal. “From my perspective, and I don’t mean to speak for anybody, I think when I took the Megadeth gig, that really strained things even further,” he says. “Nobody said, ‘We don’t want you to do it,’ or ‘You’re cheating on us’, [but] that was still the vibe. When Megadeth won a Grammy, that pushed it further.”
Despite Chris looking back and seeing the warning signs, the drummer has still struggled to accept how things turned out. “[It] was very difficult for me,” he reflects. “In many ways, that band was my identity. It’s everything that I worked for. I spiralled.”
“It was a big shock to me… I wasn’t given much of a choice. It was one of those emails: ‘Services no longer required.’ It took a while to dig out of that. I’m happy I did. It could have gone a different way.”
After a period of “spiralling”, Chris sought to re-invent himself. “I was just trying to find myself and even define what chapter two would look like; the only way around dystonia is to re-learn how to play,” he reveals.
To compensate for his nerve issues, Chris now drums with his left foot as his lead foot. “I worked out and talked to the doctors and specialists about changing it,” he says. “I have to build a different connection for it to work. That connection is now strong. I’m able to do it well, but not some of the things I was doing in Lamb.”
The post “I would say we are estranged”: Lamb of God’s ex-drummer Chris Adler hasn’t spoken to his brother and former bandmate Willie in six years appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
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