Heavy hymns
The trials and tribulations of Christian metal
By Chris Mastrovito 12/10/2009
An air of decadence and often wickedness has always accompanied heavy metal’s loud and aggressive approach to music. Lyrically, metal bands have been fascinated by themes of sex, drugs, occultism, nuclear war and death. But in the mid-’80s, a small movement of Christian bands appeared, stripping heavy metal of its more sinister connotations. Orange County’s Stryper, which titled its 1986 album To Hell With The Devil, tossed Bibles to crowds at shows. In fact, Black Sabbath, which some believed to be satanic, actually used religious themes in many of its early songs (see “After Forever” from 1971’s Master of Reality), and those that did feature with the Devil, did so to warn against him, using the imagery of hell and Satan as consequences for the deeds of politicians and those who choose evil (“War Pigs” from 1970’s Paranoid).
Of course, the musical landscape has evolved dramatically in the last 30 years, and rather than being influenced primarily by the blues, most bands in the metal genre today borrow at least to some extent the musical characteristics of the extreme metal genres that developed in the late ’80s, such as death metal and black metal, both of which originally fashioned their sound around bleak subject matter such as satanism, anti-Christianity and violence — and this is where it gets awkward for contemporary Christian metal.
The fact that dark subject matter and the musical style are historically bound would not in itself make Christian extreme metal so paradoxical, had the two not been inextricably linked conceptually. Death metal and black metal, the most influential movements in the genre today, were invented to honor the forbidden, the ugly or the completely nihilistic, and their sound shows it. The concept of Christian extreme metal as a genre is therefore loaded with ironies, primarily because these bands adopt specific musical qualities, extremely low minor keys and guttural, monster-like vocals, which were conceived with the intent of matching a dark overall aesthetic, then re-branded with a Christian message. Perhaps oddest is when the anti-melodic shrieked or growled vocal style is coupled with evangelical lyrics.
(Imagine the disturbing reverse: satanic gospel music — dozens of smiling draped choir singers clapping their hands and sing-ing about the vengeance of Lucifer.)
Perhaps for this reason, being a Christian metal band is very much taboo in today’s extreme metal community, something that the all-Christian, Ohio-based melodic metalcore band The Devil Wears Prada knows a thing or two about. The band members (who, not unlike other metalcore bands such as As I Lay Dying, chose the name from a book title, only in this case to be later identified with a film starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway — whoops) proudly proclaim their faith onstage, even before crowds who are less than receptive to the message.
“We definitely received flak from it,” vocalist Mike Hranica told metal magazine Highwire Daze of the 2007 Sounds of the Underground Tour with secular metal bands like Amon Amarth and Darkest Hour. He said they “got flipped off and [had] some stuff thrown at us.” But the band insists that coming clean with its spirituality at shows is a responsibility they feel to God. “Like what kind of Christian wouldn’t say that because of a certain crowd?” says Hranica, pointing to an important challenge for Christian metal bands like his: how to hook in secular metal fans with the music long enough to drive the religious message home. To this end, Hranica perhaps cleverly keeps the spirituality in his songs under the cover of humorous or nonsensical titles such as “HTML Rulez D00d” and “Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over” to the effect that your average Trivium or Atreyu fan could potentially pick up The Devil Wears Prada’s new album, With Roots Above and Branches Below, and be none the wiser. With the new CD out and two songs featured this year on the popular video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero, The Devil Wears Prada has plenty to preach about this winter.
The Napalm and Noise Tour teams up The Devil Wears Prada with like-minded Christian metal bands All That Remains and Haste the Day, and secular post-hardcore band Story of the Year on Thursday, Dec.10, at the Ventura Theater, 26
S. Chestnut St., Ventura. 653-0721, www.venturatheater.net.
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