…and into the fire
[Video]
[3.00]
Brad Shoup: Though I was a major backer of the ForeFront catalog back when, I never got into Skillet. None of their iterations — Lemonheads-style crunchrock, the obligatory worship phase, Evanescence/Three Days Grace-indebted mook music — interested me (although there was a decent power-pop period in there). They’re holding fast to the modern-rock bombast, it seems, and that’s fine. People rag on CCM for its meteorological fixation on the shifting winds of culture, but if you thought of your music as ministry, you’d be similarly inclined to tailor your message to the times. I still don’t have the stomach for this black mixture of choked strings and chug, and while Jon Cooper’s Adam Gontier impression is eerie, it’s the other vocalist (Korey Cooper, I’m assuming) who really fouls the works. She’s left too many vowels strangled on the studio floor. There’s a smidgen of the industrial touches they’ve flirted with, but I’m really bummed about the power-metal fakeout of the intro. That’s where the real bombast is.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Boy, they sure do hell a lot. So do the strings.
[2]
Josh Langhoff: “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” has always been my favorite of Christ’s Seven Last Words, so clearly I should learn more about these platinum selling Christian conceptual artists. Though I haven’t yet heard their latest album Rise, I get the feeling that this song, track four, is sort of a parody of modern Christianity’s obsession with clinging to the physical mechanics of life, and that by album’s end they wise up to the Gospel paradox of Christian rapper Thi’sl, whose song “Signed Up To Die” I continue to flog.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: The addition of a woman’s voice makes the boneheaded chug of “Not Gonna Die” more compelling. Unfortunately, that voice is ultimately treated as just a detail instead of one worth focusing. The bulk of “Not Gonna Die” still centers around the “no, you shut up Dad!”–isms of some dude.
[2]
Anthony Easton: This reminds me of being 15, and then I realised a thesis I had about music and being 15. It is the age one learns how to parse either irony or earnestness. Later, you can note exactly where irony becomes earnest, or that neither of those are mutual. But, when I was 15, I was all Stephin Merritt and Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill. Listening to this, makes me wonder what would happen if my door slamming followed music like this. I feel like the only way to know how to read this text is to bring myself back into that teenage space. But, you know, it took me a decade after high school to realize what the advantages were.
[4]
Mallory O’Donnell: This kind of sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing act proves only that both the saved and the lapsed have a very poor selection index when it comes to plundering the 90’s.
[1]
Katherine St Asaph: The New York Times was surprised Skillet sold over a mil, which is stupid. There are millions of the following in the world: evangelical kids, may-or-may-not-be kids who like Evanescence and Switchfoot and Flyleaf, kids who like Nickelback and who couldn’t give fewer shits about rock’s “decline.” They deserve their songs too — although maybe not two of “Bring Me To Life.”
[4]