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Being an extreme metal musician comes with a lot of baggage.

For a band like Lamb of God, it can be amusing, drummer Chris Adler told The Daily Times this week. Fans expect the band members to be backstage, practicing black magic or carving pentagrams into their flesh or eating kittens raw.

Despite the brutal sounds of the group's brand of visceral, skull-rattling rock 'n' roll, nothing could be further from the truth.

"We get that whole stereotype not just from fans, but from our families, too," Adler said. "People expect us to be sacrificing things and worshipping the devil and all of that stuff. My mother-in-law told me, 'I don't understand -- why do you have to play this kind of music?' I told her that if I didn't play it, I'd probably be a pretty big (jerk).

"It's cathartic for us as much as it is the fans. It helps quell those inner demons that would get released some other way. But on the bus at night, we're just like everybody else -- we sit around and laugh and watch TV and drink a couple of beers. We're just normal guys, but we've got a hell of a job."

Lamb of God -- which performs tonight (Oct. 16) at The Valarium in Knoxville -- got its start in Richmond, Va., in 1994. It evolved out of a metal group called Burn the Priest, which started in 1990 with Adler, guitarist Mark Morton and bass player John Campbell. Originally, the group was an instrumental band until vocalist Randy Blythe was brought into the fold in the late 1990s.

"There wasn't a band out there that we set out to be like," Adler said. "We're influenced by many, many bands, but we never sat down to say, 'We want to sound like this band.' Mark plays in a country band when he's home; John is really into bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers; Randy is an old-school punk guy. So there are a lot of things that come to the table when we sit down to make a record, but we've never tried to sound like one thing or another."

After releasing a full-length album in 1999, the group changed its name to Lamb of God after running into reluctance on the part of booking agents to schedule a band with such an edgy moniker. In September 2000, Lamb of God released "New American Gospel," earning comparisons to Pantera and causing metal critics to take notice.

Adler's brother Willie was a member of the band by then, adding more guitar firepower to the lineup. And although sibling chemistry connected the Adlers on a level of musical intensity that was razor-tight, the incessant touring eventually spread it to the entire band, Adler said.

"I've had that chemistry with my brother for a very long time, but we all have been doing this for so long that we really do function as one now," he said. "We have that sixth sense, almost, where we know what each other is going to do before we do it. And as we continue to get to know each other better, we get better at what we do."

Successive albums have increased the band's success and visibility -- the 2004 album "Ashes of the Wake" debuted at No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart; it's follow-up, "Sacrament," doubled the sales of that and reached No. 8 on the same chart during its first week of release in 2006. "Wrath," released earlier this year, made it all the way to No. 2 during its first week, a feat that Adler credits to the band's originality as much as its brutality.

"The late 1990s and early 2000s were really full of a lot of commercial or gimmick-laden music products, and I think we've always kind of based what we wanted to do on that late-1980s speed metal vibe," he said. "Certainly, none of us have ever expected this kind of attention or results or success, if you will. I think what happened is that we were doing something different when a lot of music wasn't very good, and when people got sick of the fake reality-star music and the pendulum swung back around to real music, we were standing tall and proud."

Currently, Lamb of God is alternating between tours -- opening for metal icons Metallica one week and taking side jaunts with shock-rockers and fellow Richmond band GWAR on the side.

"With Metallica, they have the luxury of being able to play for a week on, then take a week off, so during that week off we've created this secondary tour with GWAR to keep making the doughnuts, so to speak," he said. "With GWAR, we come from the same town, and we're all literally good friends. In 2000, when we put out our first album, they took us on our very first venue tour.

"We had played a few places, but our first record had just been released, and I think it sold 60 copies in the first week. Nobody knew who we were and nobody cared, so now we keep that tradition going -- not that GWAR needs our help, but because it's fun and they're a good group of guys."

After a stop in East Tennessee, the band can look forward to another year of touring -- through 2010, Lamb of God will travel to South Africa, Russia, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. It'll be early 2011 before they begin thinking about a follow-up to "Wrath," and there are a lot of miles to log before that happens, but it's all good, according to Adler.

"Every day is a surprise, and we're just enjoying the ride," he said.