I’m gonna put about much effort into this intro as Twilight fans put into critical analysis of their favorite piece of literature/cinema/horse shit.

We begin today with Demon Hunter’s video for “LifeWar.” I don’t really like Demon Hunter and I don’t really like this song, but I do admire Ryan Clark’s beard, and I appreciate the fact that the rest of the band put their egos aside and opted not to be in the video in order to ensure that said beard got the proper amount of screen time. Also, gee, there sure are a lot of crosses in this video, eh?

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As you might guess from the header image, I am anything but a Christian. That said, I’ve always been a huge fan of both Christians and their music — the vast majority of them are genuinely nice, thoughtful, considerate people who are great to be around and a positive influence on everybody. I love them! And when it comes to music, for whatever reason, they’ve always been a little ahead of the curve — I can only assume it’s because they had wealthy, supportive parents, unlike those of us who were raised by broke, alcoholic losers who ‘didn’t believe in organized religion.’ Thanks, mom :/ #losing

Anyhow, the truth is that many of the best metal and hardcore bands of the last 10-15 years are Christian, and I think it’s time we gave them the credit they deserve. Let’s put aside the dull, redundant debate over whether Christianity has a place in music or not (hint: the correct answer is “who gives a fuck”) and focus on what is important: these bands rly know how to MOSH 4 CHRIST!

In this post, I will list a few of my favorite Christian bands. I will skip many of the obvious, big names that all of us know about and focus on the older, smaller bands that haven’t gotten enough props- and as always, there will be a few bands who probably should be on here, but couldn’t be included because I ran out of space and/or my memory failed me.  Thanks to Christian Hardcore Records blog for refreshing my memory on a lot of this stuff– check it out if you are into any of these bands!

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Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli to get in on today’s needless-listing fun…

Demon Hunter — 7
The World Is a Thorn
Solid State

Admittedly, I’m just singling these guys out. My dream version of Decibel = no Jesus bands under any circumstances. Mind you, that version also entails a Hall of Fame on Nine Inch Nails’ Broken EP, which would have included a sidebar about the long-form video’s cock torture, butt rape and sewage guzzling. If Peter Christopherson and Bob Flanagan weren’t dead, that is. Good thing I’m not in charge.

GET ISSUE HERE.

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Demon Hunter to good taste: “Hey, let’s take a little walk in the woods, whadda ya say? Oh, these shovels? They’re just, uh, our walking sticks. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Demon Hunter, one of approximately eighteen thousand insanely successful metal bands whose appeal is completely lost on me, are streaming a new song, “The Wind,” here. It comes off of Happy Christmas Volume 5, a Tooth & Nail comp consisting almost entirely of bands I’ve never heard of. (Ivoryline? Sent By Ravens? Thousand Foot Krutch? Who are you people???)

And the song sounds an awful lot like a song that I myself wrote about fifteen years ago, right around the time I realized I had no talent and I would never punish the world with my crappy guitar playing and sub-par song composition skills again. But I guess Demon Hunter has no conscience, so they went ahead and made a career out of this. Swell.

Side note: when I googled the words “demon hunter the wind” to try and get more details of the song, the first website to come up was called jesusfreakhideout.com. Then my computer started to burn up and cry out “I’m melting! I’M MELTING!!!”

-AR

I’ll admit it: I still do check Blabbermouth from time to time. Hard not to. It’s kind of a metal institution at this point. Here and there, when they publish first week numbers, I’ll read those if they concern a band I like, or am curious about for whatever reason.

I’m not a Demon Hunter fan, but I was down at Audiohammer when Jason Suecof was mixing their record, and so I’m familiar with their new record by twist of circumstance. (Believe me, I would have never gone looking on my own.) Anyways, when their first week numbers were published, I decided to check on that, and goddamn guys. 14k approximately. That’s what Suicide Silence does. That’s what DevilDriver does. That’s what bands that tour all the time and are always in the media do. Good for them. Congrats dudes.

Here’s why I find this interesting. Demon Hunter has never really been a touring act. They’ve never really been in the media too much before the present.  So what explains them selling records on par with bands that are always out there hustling? To answer this, I thought about what some bands in the past have pulled off without too much touring.

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Many of you expressed a deep satisfaction last week when I goofed and [accurately] proclaimed Demon Hunter’s “Collapsing” a Figure Number Five-era Soilwork ripoff, not realizing that Bjorn “Speed” Strid actually made a guest appearance in the song. Oops! Congratulations folks, you really pwned me on that one. But hey, guess what? You still like Demon Hunter and therefore fail at metal. QED.

Here’s the video for “Rejection Role,” the opening track on said Soilwork album. This video is particularly appropriate because it features a guest appearance by Soilwork’s own forebears in In Flames. The difference is that this song doesn’t suck.

Soilwork are working on their new album The Panic Broadcast right now… as in probably right this very minute. They’ve been posting updates over at The Deciblog, including this nugget from Speed in the most recent entry: “… we really feel that it’s a schizophrenic masterpiece. There’s a lot of surprises and trippy parts and sometimes so full-on that it leaves you absolutely breathless. It is the most intense Soilwork album so far, without a doubt.” That quote gets me more excited for the new album than watching bassist Ola Flink do his goofy stage moves… and those get me really excited!

-VN

If the you young ‘uns don’t know Stryper, well, they were like the Underoath or Demon Hunter of their day. Which is to say, they played Christian metal. Their songs had names like “To Hell with the Devil,” and “Calling On You,” and for their 1985 album, they even covered “Battle Hymn of the Republic (Glory, Glory, Hallelujah),” which may still be the single lamest metal cover of a non-metal song ever, which is really saying something.

Now the band is working on a covers album, which will include their take on songs by the homos in Judas Priest, the blasphemous, drug addled guys in Black Sabbath, and the Jews in Kiss.

I don’t really have much else to say about this… it just made me laugh. Fingers crossed that they add a song by Slayer or Mayhem to the mix…

-AR

Apparently all those goody-two-shoes Christian values don’t mean anything when it comes to ripping off your heroes. Demon Hunter’s new song “Collapsing” is a pretty damned good Figure Number Five-era Soilwork impersonation, right down to the hollow-sounding drum production, razor-sharp synth sounds and sing-songy chorus. All it needs to do is be better and you’d have a dead-ringer for Soilwork circa 2003.

-VN

Thanks: Samuel A Favata

Demon Hunter are a Christian band, so when I heard that their new song is called “Driving Nails,” I assumed it was about… y’know. And while the lyrics are certainly spiritual-ish (“I was the light/I was the quiet heart”), the chorus leads me to believe the song is not actually about Christ – at least, not in any literal sense: vocalist Ryan Clark sings “It’s driving nails into my soul,” and as the Bible tells us, nails were driven into much more than just Jesus’ soul.

ANYWAY, you can listen to the song here. It’s terrible, which should come as no surprise, because it’s a Demon Hunter song, and the nicest thing you can really say about Demon Hunter is that the Clark Brothers (one of whom, Don, is no longer in the band) are talented graphic artists. But what is up with the effect they laid over Ryan Clark’s vocals? Was that an aesthetic choice, or is he just that terrible a singer that they needed to mask his pipes? It sounds like Gary Suarez on the Invisible Oranges Crustcast.

“Driving Nails” will be on DH’s new album, The World is a Thorn, which comes out March 9 on Solid State.

-AR

Axl and I have never been partial to Demon Hunter (with one exception), in no small part because, well… news flash, we’re Jewish. But the fact that this band sits atop the Christian metalcore pantheon with legions of devoted followers is not lost on us. In all fairness, it is entirely possible that they’ve got some pretty decent music beneath all that Jebus rhetoric and we just don’t know it (although we ignorantly doubt this to be the case). Since they released the triple-disc set 45 Days yesterday, I figure that’s as good an excuse as any to open up the floor for debate. Here’s the live video for “Lead Us Home” (to Israel?) from that album. Have at it.

-VN

I haven’t listened to this album, and after hearing the first single, I feel pretty confident I never will; I mean, really, I’d be hard pressed to think of band whose music I care less about.

That being said, every time I make some joke about what a lard ass their drummer is or what a simple-minded yokel their singer is, a few of you get crazy and tell me I must have self-esteem issues – I mean, I do have self-esteem issues, but that’s not why I make fun of Demon Hunter. I make fun of Demon Hunter because they blow goats and like it.

ANYWAY, the band’s latest leaked over the weekend and Don’t Kill the Musica has it. So, for those of you who enjoy this kinda thing, have a nice time with it. Solid State will release the actual physical CD in stores on November 6.

-AR

Multiple choice question: what do the following music videos all have in common? Is it:

a) They’re all both totally trendy and completely generic.

b) They’re all for songs that found their way onto my iPod after lots and lots of illegal substances ingested during TiVo’d episodes of Headbanger’s Ball made them seem like frickin’ masterpieces.

c) They’re all by Christian metal bands.

d) All of the above.

If you guessed “d,” you win… nothing. But if you want to see the videos to which I refer, click through the jump. Then feel free to rip into me like Demon Hunter’s drummer rips into a bag of Funyuns.

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