Metal praise, anyone?

I was browsing through iTunes today, coming perilously close to buying a praise and worship album. To counter-act this uncharacteristic impulse I went to the Christian metal section, subconsciously trying to stir up the ironic nostalgia I feel for the music of my youth, putting some distance between myself and these unfamiliar feelings of Keith and Kristyn Getty-inspired piety while still remaining in the Christian musical territory. I looked through some Mortification, some Bloodgood, some Extol (a band I still count in my top 10), some Believer.

I then came across a rather literally named Scandinavian Metal Praise. Apparently this is a Finnish band, quite obscure (in that the band members are anonymous) but relatively popular. It's hard to find much info on them since the Christian metal scene in Finland is annoyingly self-contained, with large parts of their online presence in their native tongue and thus indecipherable for us foreigners. Finland has a tradition, headed by Nightwish, of female fronted metal, but to find the best comparison for SMP you should look to Holland to Within Temptation. That is to say, while the band is fronted by a girl, she's not doing the opera thing. She's no metal singer, that's for sure, but she knows how to use her chords and while her voice fits a regular worship band more naturally, she pulls this metal stuff off quite well. The music is heavier as well. It's melodic, mid-paced and chuggily groovy. As far as I can tell, the mix both cover songs and original material. With some of the covers I wish they would have taken more liberty and moved away from the sometimes much too nice, churchy melodies and made things more metal. I'll survive though. As a guitarist, I especially enjoy the over-distorted, down-tuned guitar work. He's got some serious attitude in that picking hand and the occasional solos while not exactly flashy do rip. I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet that the keyboardist is a girl though. Anyways. While initially sceptical, Scandinavian Metal Praise kind of won me over. I haven't bought the album yet, but I just might. Here's "Praise Adonai", from what I can tell a pretty representative track.

While listening through the songs I came across their version of "Take Me In", as it turns out a classic in rock n roll praise and worship. More on that later. First, here's their version.

This is a perfect segue to the wider topic at hand. Because what them covering "Take Me In" suggested to me is that they were inspired by good old Petra. Back in 1989 Petra released their classic Petra Praise: The Rock Cries Out! The album sold gold and was the first tape yours truly ever owned. With this album they not only pre-empted by a decade or so the worship album craze that hit virtually all slightly popular Christian bands (bands with enough of a fan base to make a quick buck of a worship album or two) a couple of years ago, but they also started something of a tradition for themselves, following the album up with other praise projects, all with inspiring names such as Power Praise, The Petra Praise Experience, Petra Praise 2, The Power Of Praise and Revival. In addition to these subsequent albums, Petra had flirted with praise and worship on albums released before the first Petra Praise, most notably with "Somebody's Gonna Praise His Name" on On Fire! and the rather great and "Hallelujah"-chorus quoting "Praise Ye The Lord" from Never Say Die. Here's the original Petra version of "Take Me In".

Before we leave Scandinavian Metal Praise behind, here's some interesting trivia: SMP are on Finnish label Bullroser, which, as far as I know, is headed by Manu Lehtinen, bassist in death metal band Deuteronomium. On their first EP, way back in 1997 called "Tribal Eagle", Deuteronomium had this little worshippy ditty, "Northern Praise".

One more metal praise song from Scandinavia. I mentioned Extol earlier, a band I've been into since their first demo tape and which I still regard as one of the best ever in Christian music period. Their first album, Burial, ended with a rather amazing version of "Jesus kom til jorden for å dø" (Norwegian for "Jesus Came To The Earth To Die"), a hymn written by then guitarist-vocalist Ole Børud's father Arnold Børud. If you are an Evangelical Christian in one of the Nordic countries you know Arnold. He's like our Bill Gaither. He has a huge legacy of eclectic gospel music spanning decades. "Jesus kom til jorden for å dø" is part of that legacy. The song is a bit different from what you'd usually expect from him, since it channels a Nordic minor-key melancholy which usually isn't the case for more upbeat Børud. It works well as a hymn though (it's even translated into Faroese!) - but even better as metal praise!

Going back to America, here's another case of metal praise overlap: The song "Jehovah Jireh". It's one of those rather atrocious worship songs that channels Hebrew folk music. Not nice. But as praise metal? Very nice. The first version I know about comes from the 1989 self-titled debut album of one of my favourite bands back in the day, Deliverance. Very epic and dramatic, though hampered a bit by less than stellar production.

A much better and even more dramatic version of "Jehovah Jireh" came three years later in 1992 on the super group album Metal Praise. On the vocals for this track is former Bloodgood front man Les Carlsen. You gotta love the screaming guitar in the intro! And the solo! As you listen to this song, remember that this album was released in the year when Nevermind by Nirvana went to number one. Greasy hair and baggy shirts were topping the charts and Christian metal releases a praise album with a leather jacket on the cover.

Let's go back to Deliverance briefly. Not all metal praise songs are covers of conventional praise songs. Although this way of doing things is the easiest one and there the most attractive, lots of bands have written their own praise songs. On the half-amazing, half-ridiculous third Deliverance record What A Joke we find "J.I.G." (short for "Jesus is God"), which perfectly embodies the schizophrenic awesome/awful quality of the album: The song rocks and it rocks hard. It's really amazing that anyone can play - and sing! - that fast. But the idea of the song... It's ridiculous. Here are the lyrics of the fast part, by the way, if you're having trouble keeping up: "King of kings, Lord of lords, Emmanuel, God is with us/First and last, He erases past/He's Lord and King, He's everything/High Priest touched with the feelings of our infirmities/Advocate, one with God/The true and only Son of God/Jesus is God". As I said, ridiculous.

Another one of these sort of novelty praise tracks is an enduring classic from Australian death metallers Mortification. On their self-titled debut from 1991 we find "The Majestic Infiltration of Order", whose only lyrics are "God rules". The video for this song gives in to the ridiculousness with a Python-esque compounding of violent video footage. The video is made even more absurd by the serious introduction long time band leader and bassist/singer Steve Rowe gives it (as originally featured on their classic video tape, Grind Planets). Check it out.

Ok, I'll admit that Mortification's "Majestic Infiltration of Power" straddles the border of praise and, what, regular metal. So to reel it in, here's P.K. Mitchell's classic glammed up version of "Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus" from his classic 1994 album All Hail The Power. Mitchell originally played in the outrageously named Californian metal band Neon Cross, but put together this album after he left them in the early 90's. The talk box on this one almost rivals "Living on a Prayer". Almost.

That's enough for today, eh? As you perceptively might have noticed, most of these tracks are pretty old, which only says something about me and when I stopped listening to Christian metal. I know there's a lot of more modern praise metal out there, especially from American bands on Solid State and the like. There was even a genre once called "Spirit-filled hardcore". Something tells me those bands did a couple of praise songs - per album. So if you know any good metal praise songs, point them out to me and we can do a part two in the future.