When I first moved to France, I was surprised by how much English-language rock/pop music was on the radio. I was also suprised that sometimes christian rock would be played between something like Nirvana’s Rape Me and Bloodhound Gang’s The Bad Touch. I mentioned it to my colleagues and they were like, “wtf is Christian rock?”
That is weirdly true.
Both are corpo-sanitized.
It’s like averaging out anything- the temperature of your porridge is the average of all porridges, the new movie you’ve been waiting for just uses the most common tropes in its writing, the quality of sex you’ll have next is the average of all sex you’ve already had
Ok, I’ll take the average sex. But the other stuff needs to go.
I’ve had the misfortune of having my ears raped over and over by Christian rock and metal. Can confirm: it’s horrid, empty, fake,…
it’s horrid, empty, fake,…
Just like Christianity itself 🙂
There are legitimately good Christians and Christian churches, the problem is they actually practice all the “woke” bits in the new testament. They’re humble, empathetic, and quiet – so they get drown out by the human garbage that also call themselves “Christian”.
There’s a few Unitarian Universalism churches and their offshoots around my city that piss off the “real” Christians by speaking out against fascism and flying pride flags.
Taste is a real talent. Whether it comes to decor, music, apparel, etc it fucking matters. When people have really horrible highlights or facial filler, it matters. Beauty matters. Try living in a beautiful environment and then an ugly one and the ugly one hurts.
I judge people harshly on this matter and I’d be a much happier person if I didn’t. I feel something close to physical pain when something is ugly.
One of the extremely few exceptions is Extol.
That chorus riff is unreal. Killer riffs and drumming all around.
Well yes, but they are THE exception. And by a long shot at that.
There are a few others that are worth mentioning.
But guess what=> the Christians usually don’t go for those because it’s too weird or it doesn’t mention Jesus overtly enough (which obviously means it’s a ploy by Satan).
100% agree. There’s a lot of Christian bands but only 0.01% of them are remotely good. Extol is an absolute diamond in the roughest of rough.
I’m an atheist, but Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In The Sky” is a banger.
Otherwise yeah, this meme nails it.
Creepy though.
When I die and they lay me to rest,
I’m going to go to the place that’s the best.I actually looked up the song after I commented. Apparently Norman is Jewish and wrote the song after watching a gospel performance and said “Hey, I could do that.” He then wrote the lyrics in 15 minutes…
Nah. There are a lot of bad Christian rock/metal bands, but there are quite a few good ones too.
To name some I still come back to, even though I no longer identify as a Christian:
- Skillet is an obvious one (not my thing anymore, especially everything after Awake, but can’t call them bad)
- Silent Planet
- August Burns Red
- Underoath (well, they used to be)
- Fit For A King
- Wolves At The Gate (though their lyrics can be too much on the nose)
- Flyleaf (when Lacey Sturm was still on board)
- Love & Death
- Children 18:3
I’m just going to tack a few more on here so I can find some of yours later, but I’d like to add:
Nine Lashes, which are probably more overt than some
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, for the entirety of Don’t You Fake It, and a few other songs
Red
Demon Hunter
Switchfoot, don’t @ me Dare You To Move is a banger
Disciple
Pillar
Disciple is probably more overt than Nine Lashes though, no?
DH I’ve gotten uncomfortable with since Exile.
Probably? I’ll be honest, there’s only a few songs by Disciple that I’ve really listened to, but I liked them. Kind of the same with DH, I really like Black Stained Glass
How did you literally forget Reliant K?
Cause I never listened to them for some reason
Personally I still have a soft spot for Newsboys. Mostly just Shine, and Take Me To Your Leader. Those two still feel good.
Initially I kinda liked Audio Adrenaline, but looking back with what we all know now about the impact of a car based society on the world, I gotta admit, “Chevette” didn’t have an ounce of gospel in it, and was a much worse take on crappy cars that probably leaked toxic trash everywhere they went than Adam Sandler’s “Ode to my Car”.
I like Half Alive
Almost real.
The word “intelligence” means nothing when referencing most “AI”, just like the word Christian means nothing when referencing most “church-goers”.
POD was awesome tho
I kinda hate how well their best single aged 🫤
Last day of the rest of my life 😢
I hate being the youth of the nation
Insteada takin the test, I took two to the chest
Skillet?
As someone that grew up in a Christian household and wasn’t allowed to listen to non-Christian music, I listened to a LOT of Skillet as a teenager. It was one of the few bands I could listen to that I actually liked. I also liked DC Talk as a kid.
There are definitely exceptions. But this is often true.
I’m trying to imagine how something can LOOK like something SOUNDS.
Try to come up with an outfit that looks the way a murmuration of birds sounds.
Paint a mural that looks the way your favorite song sounds.
It’s one of those “you had to be there” kind of things. Christian media is one of those rabbit holes that outsiders often don’t quite grasp at first.
Hate AI ‘art’. Love me some Icon For Hire. But they mostly sing about mental illness with pop-metal hooks, and rarely anything spiritual.
I would not call icon for hire christian rock. You can glean they are christian, and you can draw parallels in their messaging, but at the same time it would be easy for a non christian to say and espouse the ideas in their lyrics all the same.
I don’t think I’ve ever considered icon for hire to be Christian rock/metal.
In general this is super accurate. Doopiidoo is the only exception I know of, but no other music videos have envisioned hell with more clarity so… Exception that proves the rule I guess.
Christian rock?
