Kenbo Slice said:
The difference between being christian and being in a band and being in a christian band. I posted an UnderOath song on Facebook and she's all christian bands are amazing and I told her they're just a regular band with christian members, not a christian band.
I work in the music industry, and although I'm not Christian I deal with Christian artists quite a bit, and by our standards, they
are a Christian band. Google them and the entry for
their own website says that they're a Christian band, that's good enough for me. They wouldn't put that there if they didn't want to identify as such.
When you read the lyrics of Underoath songs it's clear that the band are doing what a lot of metalcore bands do these days - writing in such a way as to allow multiple interpretations. The heavily god-bothering lyrical style of early self-identifed Christian metal bands like Stryper is seriously out of vogue in metalcore, which has always favoured more ambiguous lyrics ever since the dawn of the style. However a Christian interpretation is always possible and the band make sure that it is there, but this doesn't stop people from interpreting it some other way instead. Such is the power of music, that it means different things to different people.
Kenbo Slice said:
And she's like well on the internet it says they are and I told her that the band themselves said they don't like being called a christian band because all the members are christian. And she still won't fucking listen! How do I explain the difference without being mean?
Okay, so why would the band say that? Because Christian bands tend to get "ghettoised" - it's okay to be known as Christians by someone doing their research, but as soon as Christian bands go around saying "look we're a Christian band" in interviews and so forth, two things tend to happen:
* More Christians start to listen to you, purely because of your ideology
* More non-Christians stop listening to you for the same reason
This then has the following flow-on effects:
* The fan base becomes more Christian
* The band start to fee like they're preaching to the converted (pardon the pun)
* The band also start to feel like nobody is listening to the
music anymore
* The band loses the opportunity to sell to the secular market as well as the Christian one
The Christian music market is actually pretty damn big on its own, but most of the people who buy Christian music don't think much of metalcore. Therefore, for a metalcore band to be commercially viable in the long term, "crossing over" is something they have to inevitably consider. This means not beating the fans around the head with the Christian thing. The spiritual references are there for the fans if they wish to look for it, in the lyrics, the band's promotional material and even arguably the band name itself, but it's not a forced interpretation - all those things can also be interpreted in a non-theistic way if the listener chooses, thus making it a much more comfortable listen for people who are non-Christians, or even those who
are Christians but just don't feel like hearing "god is great" every four lines. It's a world away from Stryper singing "to hell with the devil" and it's basically a sign that Christian music has matured. This doesn't in my eyes make it non-Christian music, to me it actually makes it more confident and accurate Christian music. The preacher who constantly tells you to follow the path of righteousness or you'll be cast into the lake of brimstone is underneath the surface often not as morally upstanding as the average Christian who just follows that path and doesn't make a big fuss about it.
That was a way longer response than what you wanted, wasn't it. I'm sorry.
