During an appearance on B&H Event Space’s “Leica Stories”, LAMB OF GOD frontman D. Randall “Randy” Blythe spoke about his upcoming book, “Just Beyond The Light: Making Peace With The Wars Inside Our Head”, which is due on February 18, 2025 via Grand Central Publishing (GCP). He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “My first book, the main theme was personal accountability, about some legal problems I had, that I went through, that some people are probably familiar with. But the second book is about perspective, as far as I can tell after writing it, because I didn’t have a very clear plan when I started writing it. It’s about looking for outside perspectives from people or experiences I’ve had in order to have me course correct and not to make so many of the stupid mistakes I’ve made over the years.”For me, the only way I’ve ever been able to shift my perspective to a more balanced perspective is listening to people who have experienced things and come out on the other side of it a better person,” he explained. “So that’s what I was trying to do. And there is a lot of self-searching in it. I don’t know if you would describe the book as a memoir, but it’s a collection, maybe, of essays or something. And I’m writing about my experiences that I’ve had with other people or just in life. And so I’m questioning myself, and I was questioning myself as I was writing the book. I knew I wanted to write about a couple of things, but everything else was a mystery. So, it’s a lot of self-questioning.”Something I really want for the reader — hopefully that’s the main point — is to think about their own perspective on life and to ask themselves about their own perspective and how they can change it for the better.”Blythe went on to say that learning from past experiences is a fundamental aspect of personal growth and development.”Nobody, as far as I know, has ever lived a perfect life, at least no one that I’ve met,” he said. “And God knows I haven’t. But that doesn’t mean I need to sit here and castigate myself and flagellate myself and crucify myself forever. I need to learn from these experiences and hopefully become a better person. If I just sit there and [say things to myself], ‘Oh, you’re horrible,’ and beat the crap out of yourself, it’s really just the other side of the egomaniacal narcissism coin, really. Because if I’m just sitting there thinking I’m just the worst person in the world because I did something wrong, then I’m still just thinking about one person — myself. And I think as I grow older, my life goes a lot smoother the less I think about me. [Laughs] When I try and reach out and think about other people, my life tends to go a lot smoother. If I’m stuck here up in my head, it’s no good. My head’s a bad neighborhood. I should never go up there without adult supervision.””Just Beyond The Light” was previously described by Blythe as a “tight, concise roadmap of how I have attempted to maintain what I believe to be a proper perspective in life, even during difficult times.”Last month, Blythe announced more spoken-word and question-and-answer events to promote “Just Beyond The Light”. The special “evening with” event includes a spoken-word performance, an audience question-and-answer session, a copy of “Just Beyond The Light” and an opportunity to have the book signed.In a recent interview with Radioactive MikeZ, host of the 96.7 KCAL-FM program “Wired In The Empire”, Blythe was asked if “Just Beyond The Light” picks up where his debut book, “Dark Days”, which focused on his ordeal in a Czech Republic prison and his subsequent acquittal, left off or if it’s a completely different book. Randy said: “It’s a completely different book. It’s a collection of — I wouldn’t call ’em essays, but different chapters about, basically different people and experiences who have [changed] my perspective for the better.”As I get older, I try not to make the same stupid mistakes again and again and again and again,” he explained. “And surprise, surprise, if you look at people who — you look at them and you think, ‘Man, this person has their life together,’ or, ‘They’ve acted in a manner that I find admirable,’ if you pay attention to them and follow their example, you don’t do stupid things yourself. I’m not saying that I don’t still do stupid things, but I’m trying fully in my old age to learn from others more.”When Radioactive MikeZ noted that it’s “interesting” that Randy actually interviewed his then-94-year-old grandmother for the book, Blythe said: “Yeah, she passed away. There’s a chapter. Well, I didn’t interview her for the book. I interviewed her because she was 94. She lived to be a hundred and a half. And there’s a whole chapter about her. She raised me for part of my childhood and she was raised during the The [Great] Depression. She did not screw around. She was a very real person who lived through a whole lot. But I interviewed her when she was 94, just for the fact that I heard so many stories from her of growing up in a different time. And I was, like, ‘She’s not gonna be here forever. I might as well get all this stuff down,’ just for my own purposes and for my family to have. She was the last of that generation in my family. So when I started to write this book on perspective and people I’ve learned things from, she was a natural choice. Luckily, I had that interview to draw on. So if you have old people in your life — this is what I’m gonna tell you — if you have old people in your life, interview them now… I’m gonna have to do that with my parents soon. I mean, they’re not ancient or anything, but your memory starts failing as you get older. So it’s time to get that stuff before it disappears.”Blythe told RVA Magazine about “Just Beyond The Light”: “It is about trying to maintain a balanced perspective in the world right now, and in order for me to do that, I have to look to other people I admire. One of those people I write about is my grandmother, who was 94. I was beside her when she died, and I was grateful for that because it was post-COVID. I interviewed her over the course of two days and learned about her life. I asked her what the biggest difference is between [her generation] the modern age we’re in right now — she didn’t say computers or globalism; she said people are not as close as they used to be.”Asked if he feels like we’ve lost that sense of interpersonal connection between people,” Randy said: “In many ways, but I don’t think it’s totally gone. I think it’s dormant. I think it’s buried under the iCloud of bullshit, and it’s going to come back and bite us on the ass. In one way or another, you’re going to need help. People don’t know their neighbors; there’s not the sense of community there used to be. In this hyper-connected world, people are lonelier than ever — particularly young people. They’re interfacing with the world through this digital medium, and it’s providing an illusion of connection, but real connection requires friction. There has to be a push and pull when you’re in person, and that is absent via digital communications when there is a wall of anonymity.”In 2012, Blythe was arrested in the Czech Republic and charged with manslaughter for allegedly pushing a 19-year-old fan offstage at a show two year prior and causing injuries that led to the fan’s death. Blythe spent 37 days in a Prague prison before ultimately being found not guilty in 2013.Blythe’s prison experience inspired two songs on LAMB OF GOD’s 2015 album “VII: Sturm Und Drang”: “512”, one of his three prison cell numbers, and “Still Echoes”, written while he was in Pankrac Prison, a dilapidated facility built in the 1880s that had been used for executions by the Nazis during World War II. It also led him to write the aforementioned “Dark Days”, in which he shared his whole side of the story publicly for the first time.[embedded content]