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Skillet issues a wake-up call to the Church.

Poised to take over rock radio with their second mainstream release, Comatose, Skillet still faces a bit of scrutiny for "selling out" or not being "Christian" enough. TheTRu sat down with John Cooper, lead singer and primary writer for the group to talk about the new album as well as a new attitude and focus for the group. The album promises something of an awakening and hopefully this interview will begin the process...

Excited about the new album?

Oh yeah, I'm excited and [I've got] that whole nervous recording thing - all that at the same time. My manager is liable to kill me because I'll call him [one day] to say that this record is going to be awesome and then I'll call him the next day saying, "Oh, I don't know if it is any good. Maybe I should quit writing songs." It's tough dealing with artists like that. If it was finished, I'd be excited, but recording is fun. It's going really good. It's probably the most fun I've ever had doing a record.

That's cool. How does the sound compare? You mentioned that the keys are coming back into play.

Yeah. It's a little different, as with any record. It's not just regurgitating the record Collide anyway. It is just kind of moving on to where life is taking us. With Collide, we kind of dove into the world of string orchestration and piano. We had done some of that in past records, but much, much more on Collide. And Comatose takes it another step further. It's less metal than Collide, by the guitars, but it's still real heavy. We've added a lot of the electronics back in, but again without regurgitating the Alien Youth project - it's not industrial. The new songs are more soundtrack-ish and back beat oriented. Maybe like a Linkin Park or something like that. They kind of have the dance beat thing going on. But at the same time it is much more dynamic, kind of a more classical sound. We actually have some shreading riffs with it, making the whole thing a bit theatrical.

No rap vocals?

(laughs) No, no. I can't do that, you know what I mean? If I could have, I would have done it a couple of years ago. I cannot rap to save my life.

Well the guy from Linkin Park isn't exactly the best rapper in the world.

Yeah but I'm one of the worst man.

You are a step down from that?

Yep

That is bad then...

(laughs)

So how do you guys decide what an album is going to sound like? If you travel back all the way to the beginning, Saturn and all of the albums have been quite different from each other. Are you just going through different phases in your lives?

I think we are. . . You think, "Wow! This is cool. I'm into this now. I love it." Then later you kind of change your mind. It's kind of like how as musicians grow up, they end up being in five different bands. They could be doing rock then suddenly switch to do a jazz trio. Musicians tend to do that because they have different interests. So I took a look at Skillet to define what is unique about us and the only things I could really pinpoint would be my voice and maybe some of my lyrics. Sometimes I'm a little more metaphorical than a lot of people are in their songs. I try to say some things in interesting ways that other people don't. So I was basically looking at the band and I decided that we can do anything as long as we keep those elements that make people identify it as Skillet. When Collide came out and people hadn't heard anything, they were like, "This sounds really familiar, what is it?" When they found out it was Skillet, they were surprised that it was so different, but they recognized my voice. That is kind of why we do that. You have to keep current with what is happening in music and radio. We don't in any way try to say, "Well, hip-hop is big. Let's do a hip-hop album." It's nothing like that. We kind of combine the things we know and try to keep things fresh. The cool thing about this record [and Collide] is that I'm old enough now that I've taken things from the older music that influenced me as I grew up. Music that a lot of young people have never heard, you know? There are young people who don't know who Journey is . . .

They are actually coming back on tour. . .

Oh yeah? They are awesome. . .

Yeah, they're touring with Def Lepard, if you can believe that. . .

(laughs) A lot of people don't know any of that stuff. What's funny is that something will come out, reminiscent of some of that older music. . . Take a band like Jet, for example. It's straight up 50s and 60s rock music that nobody has heard in a long time. That album is cool. We get to bring back some of these early influences, too. I can remember having a real progressive rock background as well as metal and arena rock. We take all of that stuff and add little flavors in from all backgrounds to make Comatose very theatrical. Very over the top, an epic. And I don't mean Epic Records.

(laughs)

So how is the new album coming, thematically?

This album is the most different lyrically that we've done. Collide was a bit of a departure lyrically, but we usually always sang directly to Christian kids and the church. Invincible and Alien Youth were both kind of written as a call to the church about revival and living your lives and testimonies, showing who Christ is basically. Collide was a big departure. I felt that I was singing a lot more to lost people, but it was really a record just to people - Christians and non-Christians. It talks about issues and the things that are going on in the world. We are taking that to another level on this one. The negative side of that may be that some people will say it's not as "Christian" of an album. You know what I mean. It's not as overtly spiritual. There aren't any worship songs and things like that, but it's an album about issues. We talk about things like suicide and growing up in a hard family situation. Like where you hate going home 'cause your family life is so bad that you're reaching out for someone to help you. There is another song we have that deals with where the world is at, with the wars, 9-11, cutting, this whole teen cutting fad, teen suicide, homelessness - all kinds of issues. Talking about all these things that are going on in the world, kind of like we did with Collide which brought up our fears through all of this, but then just asking what we are going to do about it all. I feel like the theme of the whole record is encouraging all of us to wake up to the needs of the world. It's also something that I think a lot of young people will relate to, problems that they are going through might draw them in and they'll hear some of the more spiritual songs. There are some blatently Christian songs on there.

So has the dynamic changed at all since you've been on Lava Records?

Yeah, well, you wrote Collide before you were signed to Lava Records. The lyrics had already shifted at that point.

That's right. But people who want to be mad at you won't remember that. . .

or they'll say that you shifted just so that you could go mainstream. . .

Exactly. I get a lot of flack about that. I was very surprised.

I was kind of surprised, when it happened.

I thought people were a lot more loyal. We have a lot of loyal fans but man, people got really mad at me. I couldn't believe that.

Even with the first single, "Savior." I thought our fans were going to be floored with the single, but then people were like, "Well, it never really says it's about Jesus."

(laughs)

Then I got somebody who called me and just went off on me. My manager had set up an interview with a Christian website and they just went off on me for like twenty minutes, telling me how I had compromised my values. I tried to talk about why we were doing what we were doing and everything I said just went really badly. They read somewhere in an interview about our video for "Savior."

It's basically a video about a family with an abusive father and the mom kind of protected the kids. I was asked in an interview why we had done the video that way and I just said that we wanted something that people might be able to relate to a bit more. You've got to see the parallel between Christ, the Savior and how you can just help somebody in this world. To me, that seems good. All I was trying to say was that I didn't want to do a token Christian video with Jesus on the cross and all the familiar images. It's been done so much that there's just no thought put into that. And the truth is that non-Christians don't feel compelled to think about anything when they see that. It just makes them feel like, "Here we go again. Same old, same old," you know what I mean?

Yeah, they just tune out.

Well, they just ripped me apart on that interview, basically saying that I thought that Jesus on the cross didn't matter. How can you take that statement like that? I got a lot of flack about that and I'm assuming that I'll get even more flack for this record even though I think that the fans will like the music and the lyrics. There are always going to be some people who want us to release another Alien Youth and we may do that at some point if God points me in that direction. That's just not where Skillet is right now. We did Alien Youth and I felt sure that God had spoken to me about the lyrics and I knew specifically that God told me to write this album for the church, for Christian kids and I said that during interviews. Apparently that made HM Magazine really mad and they gave the album a really bad review. They said that the album is just concerned about "Jesus Per Minutes" and that it could never be played on secular radio. But I didn't write it for secular radio, I wrote it for Christian kids. Now I've got Christian kids talking to me after shows, telling me about the cutting thing, about being abused physically or emotionally by Christian parents, or about their Christian parents getting divorced. The issues they face aren't that much different than what people in the world deal with. I just started thinking about how these kids are hurting so badly and that maybe I could sing a song that they can relate to, about what's going on right now instead of singing a song about living out your faith at school. That is so far beyond where they are. At the moment, the only hope for these kids is that they are going to make it through another night at home, that they'll run to Jesus instead of running to cutting, suicide, sex, or internet pornography. The only hope is that they are going to run to God. I'm not even hoping for school evangelism at this point. You know what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, definitely

It's almost like you are overshooting them. It's like we are talking to some kid about not having premarital sex when they've already had sex with forty people. . .

And they're just thinking, "I'm so beyond that."

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. We have to start over.

Christians are going through the same problems, we just tend to hide it a lot more.

We don't talk about it and kids are being bombarded, man.

So how do you prepare yourself for the flack that you get about this approach to music?

I call my manager and whine that nobody likes me.

(laughs)

I was not prepared for that. That just shocked me and I got a little bit mad. I didn't deal with it as badly as I wanted to but I didn't deal with it as well as I should have. I sent a couple of mean emails to fans. I sent this one kid an email because he was going off on Switchfoot. At the time, Switchfoot was getting really big and we weren't. He was like, I can't believe you guys are doing this, just like Switchfoot. I can't believe Switchfoot would get played on MTV, they are selling out. And I just couldn't take it anymore. I'm good friends with Switchfoot, too. They are my buddies you know. So when this kid emailed, I replied and told him that he was probably the kind of person who would have hated Jesus. I just couldn't take it anymore.

(laughs)

It's probably true though.

It's true. It's pretty arrogant, but it's true. You would have hated him when he wouldn't come over to your house because he went to Matthew's house instead or called out to Zacchaeus, "Hey, I'm gonna hang out with you today." You would have wondered what was wrong with this guy. It just ticked me off royally. The only preparation I have this time is that I've decided not to care if that is what is going to happen. Sometimes I do care, because we aren't going to sell records or whatever, but I'm so sure of what God has called me to do. I just know that it's going to happen.

Well, that's important.

Yeah, that's good. It's good to know that, but I have had my times when I've called my manager unsure if this record is going to be Christian enough for our fans. Are they going to be mad about this? There aren't any worship songs on it and in the past, that is what we've done. It's funny because he says, "You are always going to have people who tell you that you are not Christian enough and you are always going to have people who think that you're too Christian. You just got to do what you got to do." And he's really right about that. Do what God has called you to do.

Something that stood out to me recently was that it says in the Bible that if you become a Christian and follow Christ you'll be persecuted because Christ was persecuted. Everybody kind of assumes that it's the world who is going to persecute us, but when you look at who persecuted Jesus and his disciples, it was the church. It was people like a lot of us.

Exactly. You are right. The persecution that you are going to get in our society - no one is being killed for being a Christian in the US - is going to be from other Christians. I spent a long time being one of those Christians. I spent years being that way. We all just need to learn how to be less judgmental and just trust in the Holy Spirit's ability to speak to Christians. The Holy Spirit is going to speak to you about what you need to do and that is fine with me. It's like people are really mad that there are so many churches around the nation messed up about what they believe. I've spent a long time being one of those people, too. In the end, they're doing what they believe they are supposed to be doing. At least we can work together for the common goal. There are a lot of people saying what we are saying and it's because we've seen that the other way doesn't work, we've seen churches fighting and all of that.

It's kind of an awakening . . .

Yeah, I was talking about waking up to the needs of the world, right?

Yeah

Here's an example. I'm a big Martin Luther King Jr. fan. And I wonder why there weren't any white pastors marching with Martin Luther King? I don't know why that would be.

He wasn't even allowed in "white" churches at the time.

Yeah, because white church people would get mad. We need to keep them happy. We need this church. We need their tithes. It's bull crap man. We are here. We're the people who need to stand up and say what is right and what we think. I have these little revelations about what the power of God can do through our generation. I think it is going to be about seeing things like racism change in society through Christians. So far, the world has been responsible for helping to stop racism. The church never talks about it, it's ridiculous.

Definitely. Anything else that you want to tell the fans before we wrap up?

Well you can check out the website. You can see some videos about what was going on in the studios. And be ready for the new album, October 3rd.

For more information: Skillet.com - MySpace - - Comatose

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