I was recently contacted by Max from Australian death metal band Jehovah in Pain to check out his band. It has been a little while since he contacted me and I do want to apologize that it took so long to get this out.Jehovah in Pain is a band that prides itself on performing pure death metal with no alternate influences and nothing really accessible about it. While definitely influenced by death metal, it is not as if their music is completely inaccessible. This is music influenced heavily by the classics of the death metal genre but also having some modern sound as well. The songs are surprisingly catchy for a band claiming that their music is not accessible. This is heavy, groove-laden death metal with a fuzzy, heavily-distorted guitar tone and snarling vocal style.
The band clearly hates Christianity, as the song titles make obvious. We have "Downward, Christian Soldier" and "Re-Animate the Christian Corpses (So We Can Slay Them All Again)" as well as the simple and direct "I Hate Christians". It gets a little silly. I am not offended by this. Anti-Christian lyrics are not something I feel particularly strongly about. It just gets a little redundant after awhile.
Despite that one complaint, the music is not bad. This is a relatively new band just trying to find their way. They have an interesting sound. They have some room to improve. That's not rare.
Link.
Even though I'm a Christian, I still find anti-Christian lyrics more trite/cliche/tiresome than offensive. It was worn out long ago, and you're simply not going to be able to reach an audience that hasn't heard it before with this kind of music. If you made a pop album with those lyrics, then you might have a chance. So I think the only logical choices are to make a different kind of music or drop the topic for something more interesting. Or, at the very least, try to be clever about it.
ReplyDelete