catapult magazine

thread was started in response to Would Jesus Mosh? How ?Christian? is Christian Metal?, published by Ransom Fellowship. -*cino staff[/i:ee16491db5]

Before Heavy Metal came into existence, Rock was shunned by Christian leaders as "Un-Christian" and music for the uncouth alcoholics and drug addicts. Now, these leaders move this shun to Heavy Metal and now Rock is not as bad as it used to be. So, what is next?

These leaders seem rather content to keep shunning Heavy Metal as being the most evil musical genre ever created. Christian authors that agree with them like Mr.David J. Seel, Jr. (Mr. Seel) claim that, "we (would) find Jesus at a heavy metal concert … but his face would be strewn with tears."

My question for them is: What happen to your shunning of Rock?. What about Rap and Hip-Hop? Their secular bands tend to have as sexually explicit language as secular Heavy Metal bands plus they usually have scantily clad women dancing in their videos, which are not seen as much or at all in Heavy Metal music videos. P.O.D. (Mr. Seel labels them in a part of his article as a band with hard rock and rap, and later as heavy metal in his condemnation of Christian Heavy Metal. In reality, P.O.D. has no Heavy Metal roots in any of their music and Nu Metal is the only one that could be stretched to include them), Toby Mac, Pillar, and other popular Christian rap, hip-hop, and rock bands receive extreme praise from Christian leaders and are even used by Christian ministries(e.g., a ministry down in California that uses rap to reach out to people in their community).

So if rap/hip-hop is being used to reach people that like that genre, what so wrong about Christian Heavy Metal bands using their music to reach people who like Heavy Metal? Apparently, moshing that is present and only present at some Heavy Metal concerts makes it more violent than Rock, Rap, and Hip-Hop, which also have moshing at their concerts. Also, it seems to them that heavy music with singing guitars is worse than music with unskilled chord strumming (e.g., what is present in Rock, and if there is even guitar playing in rap and hip-hop the same as Rock).

"There is no such thing as heavenly music or secular music, the one (thing) that (does) (exist is) heavenly lyrics and secular lyrics." To see some Christian Heavy Metal bands’ lyrics, go to http://www.metalforjesus.org/lyrics.htm.

Long Live Heavy Metal!

Thanks for the link, Dan. That was really funny. I also like the King of the Hill episode where Bobby goes to a Christian rock festival and his dad says those things don’t make Christ look any better, they only make rock’n’roll worse. And on South Park, Cartman becomes a Christian music pop star and sings "love songs" to Jesus which sound more than slightly homoerotic ("The body of Christ—all muscled up and toned…I want to get down on my knees and keep pleasin’ Jesus" etc.)

I have been wondering lately if maybe the reason much Christian music sounds so lackluster is because the musicians purposefully try not to put too much effort into it. It’s like they expect Jesus to do all the work as long as they just really mean what they’re saying. There is such a huge difference between a typical CCM song and Radiohead’s "The Bends". Radiohead is really laying everything out there. But the CCM stuff just feels like someone vegging out in a drug-less escapist high. The perfect state, apparently, for worshiping the Most High God. We wouldn’t want to scare him away, after all, with all our energies, frustrations and ugliness.