Review by Andy Hawes for MPM
I’m a big fan of modern Christian metal band, Skillet. They have the knack of creating colossal slabs of extremely melodic modern Hard Rock and Metal, combining crushing riffage with clever electronica, singalong choruses, well-written counterpoint and harmony vocals and a use of dynamics that is second to none.
They are also one of the most genuine and hard-core in their faith, uncompromising in preaching the Gospel messages from the stage and indeed through some of their lyricism. This may well put some people off, but I personally love it when people stand by their principles and live their lives by them, and Skillet certainly seem to do that.
So, given the strength of their faith and its place in everything they do, my ears pricked up when I heard that they were to release their version of a very old and classic Advent hymn ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’, dating back to the 8th/9th century. It is a hauntingly beautiful hymn with a delicate and evocative melody that one can well imagine being sung in Latin by medieval monks.
Here, Skillet use ethereal piano and keyboard textures to provide the sparkling backdrop to John Cooper’s vocal delivery, which somehow seems to have both power and vulnerability all wrapped up together. When drummer/co-lead and backing vocalist Jen Ledger comes in from verse two, her achingly pure, almost choral vocal contrasts delightfully with Cooper’s, adding her trademark counterpoints to his main lead vocal before joining him on the hookline and then taking her lead on the next verse, her vocal becoming more strident and assured as guitars delicately float across the keyboard pads in the background. It is absolutely beautifully done. The choices of harmony melodies on the hookline are particularly beautiful and quite different – superb production and arrangement.
And then, if you’ll forgive the irony in this statement, all Hell literally breaks loose!! Cooper unleashes a colossal and blood-curdling death-scream as massively down-tuned hyper-modern metal guitar riffs and pounding drums lead us into a stupendously metal breakdown and chorus hook, before the band return to the delicate keyboards for the final lines. Utterly unexpected, but supremely awesome!
This is absolutely brilliant from start to finish! It shows a band still at the peak of their creativity and very happy to rattle cages and push boundaries (e.g. some Christian commentators have already denounced it as ‘demonic’, which is extremely funny and just shows how out of touch they are with what is going on here.) I am not a fan of Christmas music’ at all and never have it on in the house at this time of year, but if it was all done as well as this, I’d be an instant convert. Utterly brilliant!
Skillet would like to highlight two charities near and dear to their hearts this holiday season: St. Jude- https://www.stjude.org/ Vet Tix- https://www.vettix.org/
