Christian Rock Doesn't Suck...

...anymore. Heaven knows it did, at least to someone with tastes like mine. I spent quite a bit of time in the "gaming" community (Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, and now XBox games) and for some strange reason this interesting form of "melodic heavy metal" is immensely popular there. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the best example I can give you is Evanescense.

When Evanescence came out, they were quite popular, and most people thought they were a novel new sound. Those in the Internet communities I hung around knew about tons of bands who had been doing this female-led heavy metal for quite a while. It is these secular bands that I have had a hard time getting away from. Bands like:
After Forever, Nightwish, Edenbridge, Lacuna Coil, Darkwell and Within Temptation. Other bands with similar (albeit male lead) sounds include Gammaray, Stratovarius, Therion, Luca Turilli/Rhapsody, and others.

If you want a fun tool to see what bands you may like based on one you enter, try this web site. I'm trying to populate some of the good Christian bands on this site.

Which brings me back to my post. I have found (until recently) very few (read: zero) good Christian bands that I would go out of my way to listen to. The "oldies" in the rock category like Stryper and Petra never did it for me, and others that came and went were one-hit wonders like D.C. Talk.

While discussing music with a friend who is active in his church, he noted the bands I liked and said I may like this band called Saviour Machine.

Wow. This band quickly became my favorite. In the process of tracking down their hard-to-find CDs, I came across another band called Plumb. This band had a better-than-Evanescence sound, and I heard them of all places on Revolution satellite radio. When I came home, I was trying to track down THAT music, and I started finding other wonderful stuff. First came Barlow Girl, then SuperChick, then Gretchen (a Christian band who plays secular music), and lately FireFlight, who is the closest to After Forever I've heard on the Christian scene, and every bit as good.

It's amazing how the memory plays tricks on you, though. Well before any of these groups crossed my path (even the secular ones!) I discovered a Christian artist who sings secular music named Rachel Farris. A wonderful person (heck, she even answered a few of my emails!) and a killer voice (think Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles (the childlike voice) meets high-energy rock). I guess in retrospect it was she who made me realize that there were talented Christian artists out there who weren't satisfied doing more of the same generic Christian music.

Coming soon, I'll tell you about some of the awesome Christian authors I've run across!

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