The ordeal is finally over for Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe.

A panel of judges in the Czech Republic ruled today (Tuesday, March 5) that concert promoters — not Blythe — were mainly responsible for the 2010 death of a teenage Lamb of God fan, adding that Blythe’s actions didn’t constitute a crime. The state attorney, who had sought a conviction for manslaughter and asked for the minimum sentence of five years, has appealed the decision.

Blythe didn’t face the press after the trial. However, before the trial, he had this to say:

“As I’ve stated previously, I do not wish to avoid my responsibility, and if I thought I were guilty I would plead guilty right now. I still believe I acted responsibly to protect myself, my band, our equipment and our audience. I did not strike anyone or run across the stage to push anyone.”

Blythe also posted the following comment via Instagram:

“I have been found not guilty & acquitted of all charges against me. I am a free man. This photo was taken by my friend @aceyslade- it says it all. Please remember the family of Daniel Nosek in your thoughts & prayers in this difficult time. I only wish for them peace. Thank you for your support- Randy”

Look for more updates as we get them.

The manslaughter trial of Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe resumed today in Prague, Czech Republic. Blythe, 41, is accused of pushing a teenage fan offstage in 2010 during a concert, which led to the teen’s death.

A three-judge panel said it could deliver a verdict by tomorrow.

WTVR.com, the website of Blythe’s local Richmond, Virginia, CBS affiliate, has reported the following updates:

• Randy Blythe trial has resumed after court was adjourned last month due to missing witnesses (two expert witnesses – criminal psychologist/psychiatrist and a girl who attended the concert).

• The presiding judge, Tomas Kubovec, said the opinions found in their reports were basically the same. However, during testimony, they disagreed on how aggressive/anti-social Blythe is.

• The criminal psychologist, Tereza Soukupova (appointed by the court) said that Blythe, during tests, demonstrated he had problems controlling his emotions. She said these features “were not deep” and that he was not mentally ill, but that he doesn’t take enough responsibility for his own actions, sometimes “crossing social norms.” She pointed to when Blythe was fined for speeding and urinating in public when he was younger.

For several more updates, visit WTVR.com.

As a side note, Blythe expressed his feelings about the situation last night via his Instagram account:

“Earlier today I walked across the Legion Bridge to see the Memorial to the Victims of Communism. It is a series of male statues going up a forested hill, each statue appearing to dissolve a bit more until only a single foot is left. It’s an amazing memorial. I climbed up the stairs and looked back towards the Vltava river and Staré Mesto (‘Old Town’ in Czech). This shot pretty much shows how I’ve been feeling for a whole now- torn in half, stuck in between two worlds, neither here nor there, waiting and watching for an answer to come, so that I can move forward again as a whole man.

“What direction I will move in, I do not know yet. Regardless, I am ready for the waiting to be over. I will move forward no matter what, and I will not be split in two anymore, no matter where I wind up. This is frustrating for me, but I am slowly learning to be a patient man. Life just happens. Deal with it.”

On Blythe’s Instagram account he wrote, “The last 2 or 3 days I have been getting ready mentally to leave my home & return to Prague to do this whole trial thing in early February. It’s not something I particularly WANT to do; but inside, my gut & heart tells me it is the RIGHT thing to do. I cannot turn my back in the right thing.”

Back in early December, Revolver reported that the courts had indicted Blythe on the charge.

Now, Lamb of God are back in the saddle, having recently played Slipknot’s Knotfest and preparing for a national trek with Hatebreed, In Flames, and Sylosis. When we speak to drummer Chris Adler, he is relaxed and articulate, obviously seasoned in the discussion of his band’s recent legal woes. He calls us from home, where he’s spent the summer with his daughter. “I’m a lucky man,” he says.

REVOLVER How are you feeling having your lead singer back safe and sound?
Chris Adler It’s good! It was a real scary situation, and it still is. Randy has to return to stand trial in January. But the process went from being very, very scary, when we first arrived in Prague, to a lot of frustration as we tried to jump through all the hoops put in front of us to get him home and try and make sense of the situation. By the time he did come home, we were very irritated trying to help, because we did everything we could and nothing was budging. It was most definitely a huge relief to meet him at the airport the other night, and just a few weeks ago we played the Knotfest in Iowa and Wisconsin, and it was great to get onstage and let that anger out. We would never market this as a comeback or anything, but there was a special energy among the crowd. They were really happy that we were there to do what we do.

How did it feel landing in Prague and being confronted with a situation like this as you step off the plane?
It was surreal. Let me just walk you through what had happened. We had just played in Norway, and we’d been out on tour for about three weeks, for six days a week, with one day off. This was our day off. So after three flights from Norway to Prague, we land at about 7 or 8 o’clock, and the plan is to go from the airport to the hotel, maybe have some dinner, lick our wounds from the road rash and be ready for the show the next day. We finally get off the plane and get out onto the jetway, and there are a couple of plain-clothes airport officers pulling people aside to check their passports. This isn’t unusual in Europe—people checking passports, visas, it happens all the time. And I get pulled aside and still don’t think anything of it, but I realize pretty quickly that it’s just our band and crew that are being pulled aside. I begin worrying that something has happened with someone’s family while we’ve been in the air, but I wasn’t thinking we were in trouble—or at most, that somebody had forgotten about something in their suitcase that they shouldn’t bring on a plane, but that was the worst-case scenario in my mind. So they hold us there, and once they have 12 of us there, they very cordially corral us into this room, where they have this line of guys who look like they’re dressed for the apocalypse. They’ve got black ski-masks on, all of them look like they could be linebackers for the NFL, they’re wearing all-black bullet-proof gear, they’ve got knives and guns strapped everywhere. They have enormous machine guns, not semi-automatic weapons but end-of-the-world type guns. The minute we see this, it’s like, Holy fuck, what is going on here?

So finally they say they’re investigating a homicide. So even then, it doesn’t occur to me that we have anything to do with it. I assume that something has happened in the five and a half weeks we’ve been on the road, that someone got hurt backstage, maybe somebody that we know got trampled or pushed too hard. We just got done playing to 110,000 people—things like that happened. But then they hand us a piece of paper, written in broken English, that explains that they’re investigating a homicide that happened at a show two years ago, that it was us, and a kid had died at a show. We’d never been made aware of it. So immediately, we’re all in a state of shock that a kid has died at our show, which is the exact opposite of what we want—we do this because we love it, we have a good time, we would never want anyone to get hurt at our show. So we all felt kind of terrible about that. And then they tell us that they’re charging us with this, specifically Randy. So then there’s these two emotions—the first is, How can you take Randy away from us? But the second is this sadness that a kid had died. So I think everyone was just in a surreal state for the next couple of days of wondering what was going on, how we got into this situation, and how were we going to get out of it. It was a terrible experience, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and I never want to go through it again.

That sounds nightmarish.
It was—especially for Randy, who was obviously there longer than us. But it was also frustrating for us because for all of the hoops we had to jump through, nothing moved forward. There’s certain expectations that you have, and we came away with a pretty good understanding that this is not the way things work all around the world. We’ve seen enough of the world, but it was still kind of a shock.

At least now you’re a scholar of the Czech legal system.
I’d like to think I am, but it’s still a huge mystery to me! After a while, it was just, Randy’s getting out Monday, now it’s Wednesday, now it’s Monday… And then it got to the point where we had to cancel the Dethklok/Gojira tour, because those bands had to get on with their lives and promoters were getting scared about selling tickets to see a band whose lead singer is in jail in another country. But we’re doing our best to respect their system, and I know that they have legit questions, and Randy is 100 percent interested in going back and telling his side of the story and clearing his name and meeting with the family. He really wants to see this through.

There was a lot of public support in the press and the metal scene, but did you take any flack for cancelling that tour?
Besides the odd ticket holder who had a problem with getting their refund from wherever they’d bought the tickets, not really. Those bands are our friends, and they really waited ’til the very last minute to cancel that tour, but they had promoters to deal with who didn’t want to sell tickets to a show where the headliner might not show up. It was disappointing for us because we were paying people to set up the show, talking about production costs with Dethklok about the video screens…so it was a disappointment for everyone. Us because we wanted to play this tour, our families because this is our job–this is how we keep the lights on, our crew who also have families, everyone. It has a trickle-down effect.

You’re about to embark on this tour with Hatebreed and In Flames. Is everything set to go on that?
Definitely. We’re already talking about doing some new things, bringing out some new tunes. We’re really excited to get out there—the energy we had at the Knotfests was really special. One of the silver linings of this situation, for me, was that when something like this happens, you realize how fragile this all is makes you realize how lucky you are to get to do it. I’m super-excited to tour with Sylosis—one of the my favorite bands right now, who we’ve traveled the world with. It’s going to be great.

You guys have grown up with In Flames and Hatebreed. Is it still a fun time touring with them, or are you guys over that? Is backstage still a party, or is it all just, “I have to get to bed, I have blisters you wouldn’t believe”?

Are there any other bands like Sylosis—more underground bands—you’d like to play with?
I’m a big fan of Decapitated—love those guys, classic death metal. And I’m a big fan of Periphery, who’re pretty neat. And most recently, again, I’ve been listening to the new Sylosis record. I can’t stop listening to it. Every morning, that and Edge of the Earth are my way of starting the day.

Resolution was a huge album when it came out earlier this year. Why do you think Lamb of God has remained prominent while some of these other bands have fallen by the wayside?
It’s hard to say. There are so many steps we could’ve taken that could’ve meant the end for us, or for any of these other bands. It’s not entirely a surprise. We’re lucky to continue to do this. Getting on best-of lists, putting out Billboard Top Ten records, getting Grammy nominations, that stuff is absolutely insane. I just don’t know where half of it comes from, because that was never something we tried to do. We just love to make music, we respect each other, we enjoy working with each other. So I think one of the missteps a lot of guys make, and it’s difficult to deal with when you’ve been in a band for 17 years, is keeping a consistent lineup. It’s easy to get fed up with each other, or the cycle—having to head out on the road, or be creative at a certain time. Or it’s the friendships. Through a lot of this, you’re in a metal tube of some kind traveling the world with each other 24/7 for years at a time. We’ve had that. But we really respect each other, and realize that together we are capable of so much more than any one of us individually.

With Blythe back in the United States, the band are ready to make up for lost time with a headlining tour that’s slated to feature support from In Flames, with Hatebreed and Hellyeah splitting the second support slot and Sylosis opening.

Unfortunately for Canadian fans, Blythe’s ongoing legal woes prevent the band from heading to Canada this time around, but the band promise to make it up to their fans up North as soon as possible.

Lamb of God Tour Dates

Tue/Oct-30 — Phoenix, AZ @ Comerica Theater
Wed/Oct-31 — Los Angeles, CA @ TBA
Thu/Nov-01 — Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues
Sat/Nov-03 — Lubbock, TX @ Lonestar Pavilion
Sun/Nov-04 — San Antonio, TX @ Sunken Garden
Mon/Nov-05 — Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom
Wed/Nov-07 — St. Louis, MO @ Pageant
Thu/Nov-08 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room
Fri/Nov-09 — Milwaukee, WI @ Eagles Ballroom
Sat/Nov-10 — St. Paul, MN @ Myth
Mon/Nov-12 — Louisville, KY @ Expo Five
Wed/Nov-14 — Stroudsburg, PA @ Sherman Theater
Thu/Nov-15 — TBA
Fri/Nov-16 — New York, NY @ Roseland
Sat/Nov-17 — Silver Spring, MD @ Fillmore
Mon/Nov-19 — Orlando, FL @ House of Blues
Tue/Nov-20 — Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
Wed/Nov-21 — Charlotte, NC @ Fillmore
Fri/Nov-23 — Wallingford, CT @ Oakdale Theater
Sat/Nov-24 — Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
Sun/Nov-25 — Boston, MA @ House of Blues
Mon/Nov-26 — Niagara Falls, NY @ Rapids Theater
Tue/Nov-27 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
Wed/Nov-28 — Richmond, VA @ The National
Fri/Nov-30 — Chicago, IL @ Congress Ballroom
Sat/Dec-01 — Detroit, MI @ State Theater
Sun/Dec-02 — Columbus, OH @ LC Pavilion (no HELLYEAH)
Mon/Dec-03 — Grand Rapids, MI @ Orbit Room
Tue/Dec-04 — Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom
Thu/Dec-06 — Houston, TX @ Bayou Music Center
Fri/Dec-07 — Dallas, TX @ Palladium Ballroom
Sat/Dec-08 — Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater
Mon/Dec-10 — Denver, CO @ Fillmore
Tue/Dec-11 — Farmington, NM @ McGhee Park
Thu/Dec-13 — San Francisco, CA @ Warfield
Fri/Dec-14 — Medford, OR @ Medford Armory
Sat/Dec-15 — Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory
Sun/Dec-16 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox SODO

Aside from LoG’s triumphant return to the stage, one of the highlights of the weekend was Blythe’s appearance alongside Prong for a cover of the Misfits’ “London Dungeon.” Check out fan-filmed footage of the performance below.

In late June, Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe was arrested in Prague on charges of manslaughter, resulting from an incident where he allegedly pushed a fan back into the audience at a 2010 concert, leading to the fan’s death. In July, it was determined Blythe would be allowed to travel home, after several bail revisions—prompting support from his peers in the metal scene—and, after 37 days in the Czech Republic’s Pankrác Prison, he was finally released on August 2. His stay in prison forced the cancellation of Lamb of God’s tour with Dethklok and Gojira, which Revolver had actually interviewed him about in the July-August issue, but he and Lamb of God will perform at Slipknot’s Knotfest in Iowa and the Minneapolis area this weekend.

Since then, he’s made an official statement and spoke with Rolling Stone about his day-to-day life in prison as well as the future of the case. Revolver conducted an in-depth interview with him over the weekend about a variety of other subjects, ranging from performing at Knotfest to seeing his elderly grandmother again. One thing is for sure, though, he’s happy to be back. He tells Revolver, “It’s nice to be able to talk to someone.”

REVOLVER Has your experience changed at all the way you’ll act onstage?
RANDY BLYTHE No. What else am I going to do? We don’t have a big production set up or anything. We don’t have purple dragons that fly out of the sky and breathe fire. We’re just a bunch of dudes who get up there and rock and roll. This incident that occurred, it was an unfortunate occurrence. A tragedy. And there’s a lot of details that need to be clarified that came out of this, and hopefully they will in court. But it’s not going to change the way we do things, because I didn’t do anything wrong. So why should I change what I’m doing? They’re saying I committed a crime of intent, like I went out and hurt someone. That’s total bullshit. Why would I try and hurt fans of my band? That’s ridiculous. So no.

If anything good comes out of this, as far as a change to how we operate, I would hope it would be a more far-reaching thing than just my band. I would hope it would raise the awareness for the need for adequate security, not just for the band but for the audience as well. Most of the time, none of this stuff is an issue because security is entirely adequate. Security knows how to keep the kids from getting hurt while letting them have a good time. To the outside world, to people who aren’t in our scene, it all looks like a great big violent mess. They don’t know that everybody’s just having a good time. There is a very big need for security, though, to ensure—especially if kids are going to be crowdsurfing and coming over the barricade and stuff—there’s got to be guys there to catch them. So if anything good comes out of these, I hope we will lessen any injuries incurred by concert-going folks.

Your big return to the stage with Lamb of God is coming up next weekend at Knotfest. How are your preparing for that?
Well, I’m really excited to play these two shows. Right now I would not be able to go on a tour this soon, because my head is still just decompressing and dealing with family and friends and answering a million text messages. But these two shows are perfect for me to do because I’m really looking forward to getting onstage and letting it rip. These guys, a lot of the band that are playing, are friends of ours. I’m really stoked to see them.

Machine Head is on there. When I was in prison, the laundry section where the inmates were, you had to go there every now and then to get your clothes or whatever, but these were some guys who had been in there for a while, so they had some freedom, but they were metalheads. So on the wall there’s posters of Metallica, Slash, Zakk Wylde, Dimmu Borgir and Machine Head. So I walk in and I’m like, “Oh, I know them. I know them. I know them.” And I’d wave at the little poster of Robb Flynn and the boys and be like, “Hey dudes, what’s up?” It’s like a little visit with my friends. So I’m looking forward to seeing them. Like, “I haven’t seen you since you were hanging on a prison wall in the Czech Republic.”

When you finally made it to New York City, where you flew before going to Richmond, how did it feel?
It felt just freaking’ amazing, man. When I left Prague, it was a great sense of relief. When I touched down and actually got off the plane and walked out into security, it was like, Holy crap, this is really real. It was kind of surreal. I was like, Oh my God, thank God I’m back in America.

When I walked out of customs, there was this woman named Lia there. I’d never met her before. She said, “Hey Randy, I just wanted to let you know I’m happy you’re home. I’m glad you’re out.” She was like, “I don’t want to bother you.” I’m like, “No, let’s kick it. Let’s have coffee.” So we had coffee and talked for an hour or so. We called her boyfriend who had to work. She didn’t really know which flight I was going to be on; she found out the time I was leaving Prague, I guess, through the internet. It was a really super special kind of moment for me. It felt really good to just talk to someone.

I’m sure. In other interviews, you’ve said you weren’t aware of how much people were talking about you here.
Yeah, there was no internet, I can’t read Czech papers. The mail there was very slow because it went through censors. I got a postcard from a guy in Seattle who had just signed with Metal Blade, who I think he had to be in Prague, because it was mailed from there. And then I got a nice letter from this guy from Tennessee, he and his wife, and he had enclosed a couple internet clippings. My friend, Alex Skolnick, had done a blog about me. It was just a couple of cool things just to let me know that people were thinking about me. And that was really hugely important. I don’t know if he ever got my letter, but I’m going to write him soon. Beyond that and my lawyer, I saw my wife once, and my American lawyer was over there for a couple of days. I had two or three meetings with him. They said that people were speaking up, but I really had no idea of the amount of support I had. It was pretty crazy. I couldn’t read any of the Czech papers, which were not very supportive of me. One day I walked out into the yard for a walk and a prisoner came up to me and said , “Ozzy Osbourne says, ‘Good for you.’” And I’m like, “Wow.” Because it was in their paper, but that’s about it.

I know Municipal Waste. Phil Hall, the bass player, his brother, I skateboard with him. And he saw me yesterday and said they were in Prague and they tried to go visit me, since they’re from Richmond. But you’ve got to have all of this shit written in advance and you’ve got to write this form and the guard yelled at me that I hadn’t written it right for people to come visit. It’s got to be at least a week in advance and you get only one visit every two weeks. So I was kind of isolated.

How did you handle the loneliness?
I really try to stay in the moment. When I went to prison, I was like, OK, you can either just sit here and feel sorry for yourself or you can try and make the most of your time. And I just didn’t allow myself to feel sorry for myself. If I did, I quickly mentally kicked myself in the ass and said, don’t be such a sissy.

Dude, I toured Auschwitz about a month before I went to this prison. I walked around Auschwitz and Birkenau all day long by myself, listening and reading at all these places where all these people were killed in this one tiny area. That puts stuff in perspective. I also try to remain grateful for what I had. I had food, clothes and shelter.

We recently toured places—I’ve been to some pretty brutal places on tour on my days off where you see people starving in the streets. And in our media, of course, there’s all sorts of crazy shit going on in the Middle East. Our soldiers are getting shot at in Afghanistan and Syria’s blowing up. If you think about all these things, I wasn’t in such a bad place and I just reminded myself of that. I could eat, I wasn’t freezing or sweating to death, and nobody was shooting guns or throwing grenades at me. So I was like, I’m just going to sit here and make the most of my time and read and write. And learn a little bit.

Were you writing songs?
Yeah, I wrote some songs. I wrote a country song for Hank Williams III. I’ve been threatening to write him one for years, and he’s like, “All right, man, bring it on.” And I was in prison, I was like, Man, if prison isn’t the place to write a country song, it’s made for it. So I wrote him a song. I wrote some songs that will probably wind up on some Lamb of God stuff, based on the projects. I journaled a lot. I wrote some really wacked-out poetry. I wrote the outline of a novel that will take place partially in Pankrác Prison.

The whole thing was when I was arrested, even when I was arrested, I was like, “This sucks, but you need to pay attention to every single thing that’s happening to you right now, because all of this is going to be useful in some way creatively one day.” What an experience. You go to a foreign prison. Nobody speaks English. You’re snatched at an airport all of a sudden and you’re given these ludicrous charges saying that you’re going to be charged with manslaughter. It’s like, Wow, all this stuff is just crazy but this is something I should pay attention to. It’s a pretty momentous occurrence in my life. If I don’t pay attention to it and learn from it and better myself from it, and use it to the best of my ability, then it’s a shame. Otherwise, I’m just treading water and making the motions of living.

It sounds like you used your time in prison to do a lot of things to enrich yourself.
I tried. It’s not something I would recommend. I’m not saying people should go off and go to prison for 37 days, but man, make the best of what you can get.

At what point were you able to get in touch with your wife?
She sent some emails over via my lawyer. He would print them out and I would see them pretty quickly. But the mail there, as far as written letters, is really slow. I guess I’d been in there for three weeks and they told me she’s coming for a visit. So she came and I got to see her for 90 minutes. We were in there and there were a bunch of people visiting their families in little cubicles. There wasn’t any glass. You didn’t have to speak through a thing in this place. I even got to kiss her, which was nice. So it was really a huge relief for me to see her and to hear from her mouth how things were at home, how my family was at home.

I was mostly worried, while I was in there, about two things. I have an elderly grandmother; I wanted to make sure she was OK. And she is OK. And we have an 18-year-old cat and I was worried about him. I was like, Please God, don’t let the cat die while I’m in prison. My wife, she’s had that cat longer than she’s had me. I love the cat, too. I like to kick it with him. And he’s good, he’s chillin’ now.

What were the first things you did when you got back to Richmond?
Well, it was midnight, so I said hello to all of my family, including my 90-plus-year-old grandmother who was at the airport. I scolded her briefly for being up past her bedtime. I said hello to my band. I said hello to my family and some friends and some supporters who had showed up at the airport. I went home, and I took a nice, long shower and shaved this goatee off. They have really crappy razors in prison, so I tried to shave as little as possible, so I started growing a goatee. And I went to bed, dude.

When I woke up the next day, I went out to my backyard and sat out on my back deck and just looked at the trees, drank some coffee. It’s just nice to see green instead of grey prison walls.

You’ve said in the past how walking around Richmond, people know you, whether or not they know your music, and stop you to say hello. What kind of support have you gotten since you’ve been back?
It’s been crazy. Everywhere I go, there’s people just like, “Hey, I’m glad you’re home,” or if I go to Starbucks, they’re like, “I want to buy you coffee.” Wherever I go, people I’ve never met before are just saying, “How are you? We’re so glad you’re home. We were worried about you.” And that means a whole lot to me. Everybody in my town is super supportive.

Yesterday, I went skateboarding with my buddy Josh from Cannabis Corpse and we went to this spot and came out. And this little guy was driving his beat-up-ass hoopty car away from the scrap-metal yard out near where we were skating. His wife was like, “Hold on!” She got out and said, “You’re that boy that was in prison.” She jumped out of the car, had a beer in her hand. She said, “I’m so glad you’re out,” and gave me a big hug. It’s that Southern warmth, man, you know? That’s one reason why I love it down here. It’s just been really cool wherever I go. People toot their horns at me, they wave at me if I’m walking down the street. It’s great.

Lamb of God group photo: Travis Shinn | Randy Blythe: Dante

While Blythe awaits the chance to clear his name, the singer has released an official statement regarding the incident, which can be read in its entirety below.

“Greetings. This is D. Randall Blythe, checking in from my beloved hometown of Richmond, VA, United States of America. I was recently released on bail from Pankrác Prison in Prague, Czech Republic, after over a month of incarceration. Now that I am out for the moment, I would like to say a few things.

“1. While in prison, I had minimal knowledge of how my case was viewed anywhere but the Czech Republic. I was told by my attorney that I had a lot support from peers in the music industry, my hometown, fans, and of course my family. I cannot express how emotional it made me upon my release to read about even a fraction of the voices that were raised on my behalf. From legends in my music community, to fans across the world, and even people who were previously unaware of my existence but sympathized with my plight- I am truly humbled. I cannot thank you enough for your thoughts and prayers. I would especially like to thank the people of Richmond, VA, for standing by me. In the 48 hours I have been home, many people I have never met before have stopped me on the street, waved and smiled as I passed by, or said hello in a restaurant. All have said “We are glad you are home, Randy”. You all make me proud and grateful that I call Richmond home.

“2. I would like state that I suffered no abuse, from either authorities or inmates, during my incarceration in Pankrác. I received no special treatment, and was in general population with everyone else- make no mistake, it was prison, not some celebrity rehab tv show. But I was treated fairly by the guards and kindly by my fellow inmates. People are dying of starvation all over the world. Men and women are losing their lives daily in the Middle East and other war torn regions. I had food, clothes, shelter, and no one was trying to kill me. I cannot complain over a short stay in prison while many people elsewhere fight to survive on a daily basis.

3. If it is deemed necessary for me to do so, I WILL return to Prague to stand trial. While I maintain my innocence 100%, and will do so steadfastly, I will NOT hide in the United States, safe from extradition and possible prosecution. As I write this, the family of a fan of my band suffers through the indescribably tragic loss of their child. They have to deal with constantly varying media reports about the circumstances surrounding his death. I am charged with maliciously causing severe bodily harm to this young man, resulting in his death. While I consider the charge leveled against me ludicrous and without qualification, my opinion makes no difference in this matter. The charge exists, and for the family of this young man, questions remain. The worst possible pain remains.

“It is fairly common knowledge amongst fans of my band that I once lost a child as well. I, unfortunately, am intimately familiar with what their pain is like. Therefore, I know all too well that in their time of grief, this family needs and deserves some real answers, not a media explosion followed by the accused killer of their son hiding like a coward thousands of miles away while they suffer. I am a man. I was raised to face my problems head on, not run from them like a petulant child. I hope that justice is done, and the family of Daniel N. will receive the closure they undoubtably need to facilitate healing. I feel VERY STRONGLY that as an adult, it would be both irresponsible and immoral for me not to return to Prague if I am summoned. This is not about bail money. This is about a young man who lost his life. I will act with honor, and I will fight to clear my good name in this matter. Thank you for reading this, and I wish you all peace.

Photo: Dante Torrieri

Blythe was arrested in late June on manslaughter charges relating to a 2010 incident which saw a fan die from injuries, allegedly after being pushed from the stage by Blythe. Since his arrest, Blythe has faced numerous obstacles to release, including having his release on bail challenged on multiple occasions by the prosecution.

While Lamb of God’s headlining tour with Dethklok and Gojira has officially been cancelled (it was slated to kick off on Wednesday), the band will be rescheduling these dates for October. Next up for Lamb of God will be Slipknot’s inaugural Knotfest, which takes place on August 17 and 18 this month.

According to a press release, Blythe will make an official statement next week.

As of the writing of this article, Lamb of God frontman is still in Czech prison, where his release on bail has once again been challenged by a prosecutor in his case.

“In light of circumstances beyond our control, the upcoming Dethklok and Lamb of God with Gojira summer tour has been canceled,” said an official statement from tour sponsor Adult Swim. “Refunds will be available to customers who already purchased tickets through their point of purchase.”

Lamb of God also released an official statement regarding the cancellation which reads: “Due to the continued incarceration of Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe in the Czech Republic, the band’s co-headline tour with Dethklok scheduled to begin August 1st in Seattle is being cancelled. The band regrets the decision but the uncertainty of Randy’s release makes it impossible to carry on with the tour. Upon Randy’s release, it is the band’s intention to rebook a tour in the fall and at this time the band fully intends to participate in the Mayhem Cruise in December.

“Lamb of God wishes to thank Dethklok, Adult Swim and Gojira for their support and patience as well as all of the promoters who had dates on the tour. Last but certainly not least, the band thanks all of the fans who bought tickets for the tour and who have been supportive of Randy and the band over the last month that Randy has been held in Prague. Without the fans, there is no Lamb of God.”

Blythe was arrested late last month on manslaughter charges stemming from an incident in 2010 in which he allegedly pushed a fan from the stage, resulting in injuries to the fan that eventually proved fatal.

“In the two years since, we were never notified of anything related to this incident,” said the band in an official statement. “The best we can do is to stay positive and continue to support our friend that we know is innocent. We know justice will prevail, and we will continue to do our part to support our friend.”