By Scott McLennan

There are similarities between Randall Blythe’s music and his prose; both acknowledge the inescapable turmoil, darkness, and tragedy that bedevils everyone.

Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head by Randall Blythe. Da Capo, 320 pages, $31.

When he’s on stage performing with the band Lamb of God, Randy Blythe is a pacing, lurching man-beast — lanky, snarling, ready to pounce as he leans into his band’s heavy, menacing songs.

Is this the guy you want to go to for advice?

Turns out, yes.

Blythe is also a thoughtful writer, as borne out (again) in his second book Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head. 2015’s Dark Days is grounded in Blythe’s horrific experiences of being charged with manslaughter and jailed in the Czech Republic; in contrast, Just Beyond the Light draws its inspiration from many sources, arriving as a well-paced and finely crafted series of thematic vignettes that fit together into a philosophical tapestry.

Coming a decade after Blythe’s first foray into book publishing, this volume benefits from the fact that he was able to marinate a bit longer as an artist. In addition to being a musician, Blythe is also a photographer, and his writing bears the impact of his eye for visual detail and variety.

Just Beyond the Light‘s introduction, 10 chapters, and epilogue take their titles from songs that have been important to Blythe, tunes recorded by bands and artists ranging from punk rock icons the Ramones to gospel songwriter Albert E. Brumley. This  naming device is apt because Blythe’s discussions about the power of art are all about connecting people and, in the process, creating change. At its heart, Just Beyond the Light is a book about gathering what’s needed to evolve as a human being.

But Blythe is not a bright-eyed cheerleader, promising rainbows and unicorns if one follows his or her own creative paths. In fact, he shuts that idyllic notion down pretty hard in an early chapter on creativity, where he proclaims

Despite the flaming load of feel-good horseshit that some suspiciously self-helpy books about creativity try to tell you, not everyone is an artist. Sorry it’s just true. And that’s OK. Not everyone has to be an artist.

This observation, however, is not driven by arrogance. Blythe explains that being an artist grants him no special privileges or powers to do away with the book’s titular wars in our heads. His mission is to encourage people’s natural urge to develop whatever they are good at and to be open to change and growth, to recognize the myriad forces – internal and external – that interfere with that process.

Author D. Randall Blythe. Photo: D. Randall Blythe

The musician contemplates what he was taught from time spent with elderly relatives, his surfing buddies, with a couple of Lamb of God fans, one leukemia-stricken, another who learned through public-awareness work (by the band) how to become a marrow and blood stem cell donor. Blythe moves between the personal and the political, ably weaving dynamic shifts in focus between lessons supplied by heavy, dark burdens and rewarding fulfillments. He evokes the anger provoked by school shootings, political repression, ecological disasters, and violence in South American towns ravaged by the drug trade; he also talks about maintaining sobriety, letting go of dogmatic beliefs, overcoming fear, and recognizing the ramifications (good and bad) of his actions. Blythe is as adept at maintaining a see-sawing rhythm across 290 or so pages as he is in a 5-minute heavy metal song.

The ongoing push and pull fits into Blythe’s larger narrative, bookended between the fan who loses his life to leukemia and the fan who helps save a life threatened by the same disease. His observations form a unified thematic web, suggesting that nothing occurs in isolation and the only thing with any real permanence is death.

Lamb of God is an extreme band, hugely popular in the heavy metal world, but one that would probably be frightening to other musical tastes. However, knowledge of or appreciation for Lamb of God is not necessary to understand or enjoy Blythe’s writing in Just Beyond the Light. There are similarities between Blythe’s music and his prose; both acknowledge the inescapable turmoil, darkness, and tragedy that bedevils everyone. As in his music, Blythe’s writing serves as a source of inspiration, a fierce plea that we not become buried under those negative forces.

Consider Just Beyond the Light essential heavy-metal lit.

Blythe’s spoken-word and Q&A tour for Just Beyond the Light will hit the Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave, Somerville, on Feb. 23.

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to The Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to The Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.