catapult magazine

catapult magazine
 

discussion

Re: Would Jesus Mosh? How ?Christian? is Christian Metal?

Default

RFT
Feb 22 2006
07:15 pm

I too originally listened to Heavy Metal for the same reason, though the music I was listened to I later found out was actually Hard Rock, Rapcore, and Nu Metal (e.g., 12 Stones, Linkin Park, etc.). When my brother pointed this out to me and showed me bands like Metallica, I started to realized there was much more to Heavy Metal than I had been told or preceived. It is particularly more artistic than other musical genre in its hard guitar solos. So, I started to listen to Heavy Metal more and more for the solos, and even Christian bands that fit this criteria like Stryper, Rob Rock, As I Lay Dying, Extol, etc.

Screaming actually is more prevalent in Nu Metal bands like Korn. Yea, some Christian Heavy Metal bands like Extol and As I Lay Dying tend to have a lot screaming. Though, there are Christian Heavy Metal bands that don’t have screaming in their songs like Stryper and Rob Rock plus there are Christian bands that are not Heavy Metal like 12 Stones and Kutless that having screaming in their song.

Heavy Metal includes many sub-genres like Power Metal, Progressive Metal, Thrash Metal, Death Metal (sub-genre of this Melodic Death Metal; e.g., In Flames), Classical Metal (e.g., Yngwie Malmsteem), etc. Some of these sub-genres like Power and Progressive Metal have bands that have singers that sing high rather than the lower growl of most of the other sub-genres.

As most people know, the Metallica band members were alcoholics like James Hetfield, who eventually went throught rehab for alcoholism. So, like The Beatles who were known to be doing drugs when they wrote some of their songs ("I am the walrus…"), you can’t take Metallica too seriously in their songs. For instance, I originally thought Master of Puppets was just a song about death and killing. Then, I paid more attention to the song and realized it was about a drunkard and the voices of the demons of alcoholism in his head ("Laughing at my cries…"(drunkard), "Crushing your dreams…..now I rule you too…"(demon)). Also bands like Britney Spears and similar aritists sing about sexually explicit messages, so I’d rather hear an environmentalistic song than how some rapper is doing his girlfriend.

Your whole argument seems to be an obsession over your personal dislike for the style of some Heavy Metal bands and then you use it as a generalization that you apply to all Heavy Metal bands.

Note to all, the purpose of the blog is not to "convert" you to Heavy Metal but as counter-argument to the article "Would Jesus Mosh? How ?Christian? is Christian Metal" by David J. Seel, Jr.

LLHM!!!

P.S. Nu Metal is somewhat of an invalid name for this musical sub-genre in that it’s more of a new muscial genre that mixes mostly Hard Rock and Rap with just a significant amount of Heavy Metal, so that they can claim to be a Heavy Metal sub-genre.