Christian Rock

[Malachi425]

Skillet's new video for "Monster," for those interested (pretty cool):

Nice! I hadn't seen the music video for it.

I pretty much have to echo this lady:

Newsboys
Jeremy Camp
Barlowgirl
Fireflight
Casting Crowns
Third Day
Sanctus Real
10th Avenure North
Kutless
Relient K
David crowder band
superchick
flyleaf


And yes, I am excited about Winter Jam.

Those are all really good bands! I listen to most of them, but I have to add Jars of Clay, Falling Up, This Beautiful Republic, and TFK.

 

[LadyL]

I would also add TobyMac, but he's not a "band" anymore lol

 

[Revived]

Oh I love Christian rock! and I do still listen to secular music as well, due to I love variety when it comes to music. I'm a "jackie of all trades" if you like...LOL! trust me I can listen to country and folk one minute and be listening to grunge and hard rock the next. I'm not overly picky though I can say two genres I DON'T like are thrash metal and rap. blech! everything else is great

as for my fave christian artists I like:
Newsboys
Edison Glass
Jeremy Camp
Barlowgirl
Fireflight
Casting Crowns
Collective SOul
Creed
Sanctus Real
10th Avenure North
Kutless
Relient K
Disciple
Building 429
David crowder band
superchick
flyleaf
MercyMe
..and i think that's about it for my favorites, though I may have forgotten some..if you know me i have kind of a crappy memory but those are the ones that come to mine so they have to be my absolute faves.

This list is very similar to mine with the addition of TFK and without Collective Soul and Creed.

 

[EazyMack]

YouTube - Fireflight - Desperate [HQ] (Official Music Video)

 

[LeightonH]

The Awakening
Ashton Nyte
Aleixa
Monolithic
Delta-S
Circle Of Dust (I won't list Celldweller, due to the very clear distancing involved, even though I do listen to that material also)
Voxis (not counting Blue Stahli either, even though it's the same guy)
Argyle Park
AP2
Mad At The World (their first two albums, from 1988 and 1989)
The Echoing Green
Mortal
Skillet (mainly Invincible and Alien Youth, although Hey You..., Collide, and Comatose have representation)
Newsboys
Michael W. Smith

Although Klayton from CoD has claimed that he was never really into the faith and some of Aleixa's lyrics make me wonder as well.
Also, Mike Babbit from Monolithic is actually a Mormon although it isn't really apparent in his music, or at least not his first two albums which is all I've heard.

 

[BRISH]

Alright, one of my favorite topics to discuss.

Who are your favorite bands/artists? How long have you been into Christian rock? Do you still listen to secular?

I just started listening to Christian rock about a year and a half ago. I had no idea what I was missing! It didn't take very long before I was no longer even interested in secular music anymore. I'm always looking for more stuff on the internet. And I'm always burning mix CDs for friends & co-workers, too. I love the music, as it ignites a passion in me to not only pursue a closer relationship with God, but also to reach out to others.

My first favorite band was actually a ska band, the O.C. Supertones. From there it branched out into all kinds of different bands. I think my order of preference currently looks like this:

Red
Anberlin
Skillet
Disciple
Five Iron Frenzy
O.C. Supertones
Stryper

Just recently looking into these kinds of bands. I'm really loving Skillet and Anberlin so far....FIREFLIGHT!!!!!

I was raised to think that anything other than what you find in hymn books was satanic and believed it for a long time. (eventually outgrew that thought) We shouldn't disregard things just because they are "different". The Word even says that the things of God are "not common". He reaches us where we are...not everyone can be reached with hymns.

Lovin the thread already
BRING ON the rock about The ROCK.

 

[Qyöt27]

Although Klayton from CoD has claimed that he was never really into the faith and some of Aleixa's lyrics make me wonder as well.

Which songs? I've got both Honeylake and Disfigured, and I know there are pretty definite references to faith that would be hard to dispute (particularly in "Ultradramatic"). The liner notes also seem rather adamant about that too.

With Klayton, there's really only two things I've heard that I can remember - first, was an assertion that the band was simply a secular act on a Christian record label. The other, was what I understood to be the jadedness that comes with being disillusioned - which was primarily the industry's fault - and that he simply prefers to keep the spirituality angle private these days. After the dissolution of Circle of Dust in the late 90s and all the nastiness that erupted from the varying mainstream CCM components during the time the band was active, I can't really blame anyone for taking a similar view. The CCM industry can be absolutely toxic if it wants to be.

 

[BRISH]

Looking up some stuff on here listed.

Started listening to CR just the past few months.
I'm open to anything really, but I do pay attention to lyrics and the overall feeling I get when listening to it. Being stamped christian/secular doesn't always mean one thing or another. I've just not listened to secular much at all lately, but I don't discount anything. Some good stuff out there with no ill intentions. Same goes for christian music. I love flyleaf, but sometimes I feel at odds with some of their songs. Goes either way.

Klove, is my favorite channel. , but for more of a "get up and move" type inspriation there is Air1. Give it a try.

 

[BRISH]

List of Christian rock bands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wiki...cuz we all know it's "word". (j/k)

...but anyways..a list to go over
I'm finding you put in "rock" and the results you get back aren't really rock, but alternative or punk....IMO, or not rock at all. Hey, great stuff regardless.


(Jennifer Knapp- kind of throws me back to the Fiona Apple 90's female era..likeing her)

 

[Qyöt27]

I'm finding you put in "rock" and the results you get back aren't really rock, but alternative or punk....IMO, or not rock at all. Hey, great stuff regardless.

I'm about to nerd-out for a second here. Just fair warning.

This is more to do with music theory. 'Rock' is not actually a genre, it's actually a category* (although 'Rock & Roll' and 'Rock-a-billy', the two forms most people associate with the beginnings of Rock music, are genres). Sort of like how 'Classical' could mean Baroque, Neo-Classical, or so on. Alternative and Punk are in similar situations - they are distinct enough that one knows what they are, but they still have subgenres. Often what distinguishes a genre from a category is that a category can broadly be said to tell you how the instruments are used and perhaps what sorts of chord progressions and time signatures are common in them, but not how it sounds. Genres, on the other hand, tell you what the music sounds like - at least usually. Industrial and Alternative Dance both fall under the Electronic subcategory (Rock->Electronic->[genre]), which tells you that both make heavy use of synthesizers and other 'Electronic' standards, but it's whether you call it Industrial or Alternative Dance that has more bearing on what it actually sounds like. Some genres can branch into categories as the form grows (like Punk did - you can point to the New York scene or the British scene, but largely the British scene is what made more of an impact in the sense of what counts as Punk nowadays, while both scenes seemed to have equal, or at least more cooperative, influence on the development of Post-Punk, which later spawned New Wave).

Genres can also be grouped under several categories. Goth Rock is technically a form of Post-Punk that separated from its parent fairly early on (Post-Punk started coagulating between '75 and '77, Goth Rock did anywhere between '79 and '82, depending on who you ask and what measure they use - '79 for the release of "Bela Legosi's Dead", which is often cited as the first truly Goth Rock single, whereas the early 80s has more to do with the Goth subculture coming into its own and the Batcave night club opening for business). Many of the early Goth bands were also broadly Punk at an earlier point as well, but underwent a stylistic shift later on. For a comparison with Christian Rock, just look at Skillet - their first CD is pretty typical Post-Grunge from what I can remember of it (my cousin had the CD, I've not heard it for perhaps 10 years or a little longer), the next three were solidly Alternative Dance or Industrial, and then they fell into step with the Hard Alt. Rock that's been dominating the contemporary rock stations for the last 5 or 6 years. There is practically zero Industrial-ness to them now, but it's the dominant style on Alien Youth and to a point on Invincible.

*Category does mean that it has certain things in common, so they are like genres in that regard, but the line doesn't stop with them. The pop music du jour is usually a subgenre of Rock, Country, or R&B (R&B itself is so intertwined with Rock that it's sometimes hard to distinguish one from the other - Rock sprang out from Blues, after all).

 

[BRISH]

......duuuude.....
(hehe)

Really likeing her: Jennifer Knapp "Undo me"
http://edlives.xanga.com/videos/6c614964837/


------------
This is what I consider "plain" rock

YouTube - Skillet - Comatose (Lyrics)

 

[LeightonH]

Which songs? I've got both Honeylake and Disfigured, and I know there are pretty definite references to faith that would be hard to dispute (particularly in "Ultradramatic"). The liner notes also seem rather adamant about that too.

Well, at best they were irresponsible in their lyrics. Whenever you profess to be a Christian band and you deal with topics such as suicide or murder, you'd better be putting them in a biblical context which I didn't see from Aleixa. It's one thing to write honestly about your own thoughts, but if your own thoughts are of hate, murder and suicide, it raises some serious questions.


Spark:
I've got a knife that's up in the kitchen
I've got a knife that's ready to take the plunge
I've got a knife that's ready for marriage
I've got a knife that wants to have some fun

I've got a life that ain't worth living
I've got alife that I wanna give back
I know you'll be better off without me
there's too much pain baby there's too much pain

free me...cause life has lost its spark...

it's late at night and I'm all alone again
it's late at night and no one's around
I can't hear your voice calling out to me
there's too much pain baby there's too much pain

I wish you'd come to take it all away
I wish you'd come and make me all right
I just wanna lay me down to sleep
there's too much pain oh God there's too much pain

free me...cause life has lost its spark...


I Could Murder:
What will you do when you're stripped down
what will you do when you have nothing left
you'll never step on me again
no, you'll never hurt me again
you should learn about the social graces
an art for that you do not know
yeah you know there must be a god
He's in my outside he's in my outside

I could murder
I could kill
there is something something inside of me
I could murder I could kill
there is something there is something

you're really ugly ugly on the inside
much uglier than I am
who do you think you're fooling
where's your god? He's not on the inside
you think that you're pure
you think that you're on the right path
I feel nothing but hate for you
Oh God oh God

I could murder
I could kill
there is something something inside of me
I could murder I could kill
there is something there is something

 

[Revived]

ChristianRock.net is a good way to find bands/songs ...

ChristianRock.Net - The best Christian rock on the planet

 

[Im_A]

I listen to secular probably 98 percent of the time, if not 99 percent. My favorite Christian band will always be Grammatrain.

 

[Qyöt27]

Well, at best they were irresponsible in their lyrics. Whenever you profess to be a Christian band and you deal with topics such as suicide or murder, you'd better be putting them in a biblical context which I didn't see from Aleixa. It's one thing to write honestly about your own thoughts, but if your own thoughts are of hate, murder and suicide, it raises some serious questions.

I had a feeling "I Could Murder" was going to be one of them. I suppose it's a matter of perspective; I don't feel that it's right for Christian music - well, any music, really - to pull its punches or soften things up just because the Church culture most CCM chases wants things sugarcoated and punishes or condemns any inkling of doubt or struggle in its congregants. It almost feels like the real situations and circumstances people go through spiritually are ignored or have morality plays shoehorned in just to make sure you don't offend those who aren't even the group you're speaking to, or that have this view that faith is pretty much a happy-go-lucky sunshine and roses state of bliss that shields you from everything wrong with this world (taken from that perspective, I kind of agree with the assertion that religion is the opiate of the people; but that only applies to a specific set that have essentially been conditioned to think and act like clones*, not faith or religion in general, and not even most who profess - I do often tend to be harsh in my opinion of pop-religion for that very reason). "Rain In The Air" is actually one of my favorite songs period, without regard to any label placed on the album or the band. I don't really find "I Could Murder" that bad, except for those children - I do think they're a little creepy. I generally see the song as actually that of either voicing it from the perspective of another character, or to illustrate the error in the sentiment, not a condoning of the subject matter.

*yay for the Steve Taylor reference.

Just thumbing through the lyrics booklet (and taking note of the liner), I just get the impression that the point for those being there is the contrast - a form of not ignoring the elephant in the room, as in real life those topics are typically not felt through a religious lens, so trying to tie them back to that in every way often feels a bit put on. Not that I don't think there can be good examples where faith does come into play in these situations, but in context it often doesn't (Laing's first album Groove is a prime example where I think the overall topic of religious crisis was handled fairly well, although it's literally soaked in references to faith; I'm not crazy about the stuff he's released since then, though, from a stylistic standpoint). This review for Disfigured touches on the controversy over the dark imagery on the first album. It's times like this that I really wish I could get all the backissues of Automata+CD (as the very first one of them dealt with it, at least judging from one of the interview summary comments), but unfortunately that's pretty much impossible.

 

[EazyMack]

ChristianRock.net is a good way to find bands/songs ...

ChristianRock.Net - The best Christian rock on the planet

I am part of that forum, but I prefer Jesusfreakhideout.com: Christian Music, Contests, Reviews, Interviews, Devotionals, Free Music, Movie Reviews, Giveaways, Tuesday Releases to discover music.

Just to throw it out there.

 

[EazyMack]

For those who may like to see it, here is my first-ever attempt to make a music slideshow, done to the song "Already Home" by Thousand Foot Krutch. It took hours to make it, but if it is glorifying, it was worth every second:
YouTube - Slideshow - "Already Home" - Thousand Foot Krutch

 

[Tallerthanatree]

YouTube - SCHALIACH S06 on a different day

 

[EazyMack]

Very interesting rock/rap group that I just stumbled across a few min. ago. They're awesome!
YouTube - Shachah "Deliver Us" Music Video ft. John Wells -The Tonic

 

[Revived]

Very interesting rock/rap group that I just stumbled across a few min. ago. They're awesome!

Good stuff bro! Just curious, are you familiar with Lecrae?