The biggest story of the summer was Randy Blythe being charged with manslaughter in Prague over an incident at a 2010 show. We've documented it thoroughly, and the case awaits trial. In the newest issue of Metal Hammer, Blythe recalls his experience this past summer in great detail for the first time. The magazine released this teaser where Blythe recounts exactly what happened in the Prague airport where he got arrested:
“It still didn’t sink in that something weird was happening with my band, but as soon as I got to the top of the ramp, the first thing I noticed was four or five really large men with guns and great pig pointy knives, pistols and facemasks. All you could see was their eyes and their mouths and they looked like they were there to apprehend a terrorist.
“After a minute this woman goes, ‘Mr Blythe’, and I said, ‘Yes?’ and she’s looking at my passport, then she hands me a piece of paper that said I was to be charged with…well..we’re using the term ‘manslaughter’ because it’s the nearest translation in English. It said I was to be charged with, what I think in English would be, GBH, grievous bodily harm with malicious intent resulting in someone’s death.”
“I was in the car with three plain-clothes homicide detectives, and one of them sort of spoke English, but not very well, and he started asking me, ‘So, what do you remember of this incident?’ Very conversationally. I was like, ‘You know, I really don’t know what’s happening right now so I want a lawyer’. When they hand you a piece of paper that says you’re being charged with manslaughter you know you aren’t just going to answer a few questions then walk out the door.”
He also talked about how one of the guards was a metalhead at the prison:
“One of the guards who drove me was a metalhead. He knew who I was. He was like, ‘I’m sorry you have to be here. I like Finntroll and Rammstein.’ It’s a remand prison, so a little less than half the prisoners there are awaiting sentence and the rest are serving time, but I believe they’re mixed together. It’s a prison, not a jail, but from what I understood, the super-violent offenders were kept in their own ward.”
You can order the magazine here.
