Anesthetic (album)

The album features guest performances by Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach, Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge, Chuck Billy of Testament, Mark Lanegan, Josh Todd of Buckcherry, Alissa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy, the late Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, Jake Oni of Oni and Randy Blythe of Lamb of God. According to Morton, he had been writing new material for his solo record for "quite some time".^[3]

Mark Morton outlined the difference between his solo album and his work with Lamb of God:

[Anesthetic is] just a little more rock than the music that I guess I'm more traditionally known for with LAMB OF GOD, which is kind of like a thrash metal band, extreme metal. The solo project, it kind of digs into my influences in terms of classic rock and blues rock. It's still hard rock, heavy rock, but it's just not quite as LAMB; it's a little more melodic. I guess a little more conventionally arranged. It just kind of explores my love of hard rock music. The songs themselves are collaborations with a pretty extensive list of artists that I admire as a fan or as a friend or both. I really worked with a large number of people. Most LAMB OF GOD albums are typically done with the band and the producer, so there's six people's input. This album was myself and my producer kind of mainly being the creative directors, then we had all this input from these amazing artists that we brought into the fold. It's very collaborative, diverse and dynamic in that sense. The inspiration, I really had these rock songs that I was writing on my own just in the course of my songwriting, what I do. I had these songs piling up and accumulating that clearly weren't appropriate to submit as LAMB OF GOD material, but were songs that I thought were worth developing. We took that ball and ran with it."^[1]

The first single, "The Truth Is Dead", was released on December 13, 2018, premiering on SiriusXM Liquid Metal. The song features Morton's Lamb of God bandmate Randy Blythe and Arch Enemy frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz on vocals.^[2][4]

The second single off the record, "Cross Off", which features Chester Bennington, debuted at number 18 on the US Billboard Hard Rock Digital Song Sales with 2,000 downloads and 209,000 streams in its first week.^[5] A music video for "Cross Off" was released on March 5, directed by Roboshobo.^[6] The music video for "Cross Off" features an empty microphone as a tribute to Bennington, who died in 2017.^[7]

Wall of Sound gave the album a 7/10 and stated: "On the one hand he has nabbed some great artists to assist him get this album a release, however I think he has missed the mark on half the tracks by playing along with the Lamb of God playbook too often."^[8]