BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE HAVE A PRAYER TEAM?
Becoming the Archetype’s latest album, Dichotomy, is pretty rockin’. It’s kinda like Gojira’s The Way of All Flesh, only, y’know, not a complete masterpiece. But it’s melodic death metal willing to think much further outside the box than most melodic death metal these days and is, if nothing else, a very enjoyable listen.
SO. In an effort to do some research on Becoming the Archetype, I headed over to their MySpace page, where I found they have… a prayer team.
Seriously.
I’m not even offended by the idea of a heavy metal prayer team (And I’m assuming in this instance that the word “team” is synonymous with the word “group” – there’s no such thing as competitive prayer, is there?) – I mean, the band is signed to Solid State, so I knew they were Christian, and while some of their lyrics take on clear religious meaning if you know they’re Christian, they’re just vague enough that if you don’t (or pretend they aren’t), they can seem like typical non-specific bullshit metal lyrics (To wit: “Their foolish hearts were darkened/ Their vacant minds deceived/ The lies that they exchanged for truth/ Became all that they believed.”). So while I freely admit that I’d rather have my lyrics without any kind of religious subtext (Christian or otherwise), I’m not especially turned off by the fact that Becoming the Archetype are down with G-O-D.
No, mostly the idea of a heavy metal prayer team just baffles me. I can’t reconcile the concept of people huddled around, praying to Jesus for peace and love and all that, and then cranking aggro mosh music which is heavily influenced by artists who want nothing to do with peace and love (or, for that matter, Jesus). The – ahem – dichotomy of it just makes my head spin.
(Also making my head spin right now: that the prayer team lists four people as being their main influences – Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, Paul the Apostle, and… C.S. Lewis. I mean, come on. I know that Lewis’ work has heavy religious undertones overtones, but how do we think Jesus and The Holy Spirit would feel about having to share space with a fantasty writer?)
ANYWAY, right now the prayer team has a meager 392 friends, but apparently a new prayer list is sent out every Monday, so those 392 people are certainly getting their share of Faith. If you’d like to learn more, check out the prayer team here. And seriously, Dichotomy is a good album; don’t let any of your preconception about Christian bands turn you off too much.
-AR
