Roundtable Review: For Today – Fight The Silence

Label:  Razor & Tie

Release Date:  4 Feb 2014

Songs:   12

Length:  44 Minutes

Genre:  Metalcore

Studio Albums:   This is fifth album

Location:  United States (Iowa)

Theme Thursday: Faith Metal

There are countless amounts of themes that come up in various metal songs.  In my opinion, out of all the genres of music, in metal, you will find the most diverse sets of lyrics and imagery between the insane amounts of great bands creating this style of music.  Unfortunately, the mass public sees the often aggressive nature of this music and quickly associates the bands famous for their darker imagery with Satanism, the occult, and the glorification of violence.  Well, there are plenty of bands that thrive on that kind of stuff, but it’s only a small percentage.  I mean, even a band like Slayer, whose lyrics often deal with war, are a group of people crying for peace by showing and making known the horrors of violent conflict.  Black Sabbath were shunned against for their philosophical lyrics based around occult ideas and imagery.  Upon closer inspection their songs more closely resembled Christian and Buddhist philosophies.  You could not only call them the ‘Fathers of Metal’ but also the ‘Fathers of Faith Metal’.  Not everything is what it seems, but I do have to agree that the Dark Lord does get a lot of press and his counter point a lot of negative in the metal realm.

What I’d like to do this week is give the White a spot to shine.  Some call this ‘genre’ Christian Metal, but I don’t really care for that term.  I’m not Christian and don’t always agree with their teachings and don’t share the same stance on many social subjects (if you’re curious, I lean more towards the teachings of Buddhism for my placement of faith/philosophy), but I do think there are lots of good lessons to be learned in the Bible.  I think the term Faith Metal fits this ethos in thematic elements of the band’s music much better.  It doesn’t confine itself to one religion nor one single flavor of metal.  One thing that all these bands have in common is they often profess to a higher power and include teachings of their religious book of choice in their songs and their lyrics and themes are on positive energy side of the spectrum.  And honestly, isn’t one big thing about metal being counter-culture?  Well, Faith Metal is the ultimate counter-culture countering the counter-culture established by metal and at the same time countering the popular culture.  What’s more metal than that?  As one should always do in life, keep an open mind and check out some great music by a nice variety of Faith Metal artists.  Who are some of your favorite Faith Metal bands?  Enjoy!  Peace Love and Metal!!!

Album Review – Theocracy – As the World Bleeds

As a youth I grew up in a Catholic household and attended Catholic school.  During that time many things in the form of something ‘hip’ that the kids would enjoy and connect with were thrust upon me and my peers.  Many of these ‘hip’ things came in the form of books, video games, and music.  For the most part they were just mediocre rip offs of what was cool at the time, and that time being the early 90’s you can just imagine how horrible some of this stuff was.  The music was what was used the most by my parents and teachers to ‘save’ me since it was well known I was a huge fan of it, especially heavy metal.  But none of the music that they gave held the passion for the music like my favorites at the time, they all just sounded watered down, self-serving, and felt more concerned with converting people or just repeating ad nauseam ‘Jesus Saves’ instead of educating about religion and faith or telling cool stories from the Bible or recounting positive life lessons.  Even at a young age I saw through all the b.s. and grew to immediately label anything faith-based as lame(I do have to say there were a couple of bands that were decent, and Stryper is way under-rated).  Enter Theocracy and their album As the World Bleeds.  If more bands in the Faith Metal/Music genre had their passion and approach, maybe I would have thought a bit differently in my early years, because what I really wanted then is what I want today.  Great music, no matter the ideals behind it.