Frail
The Blamed (Tooth & Nail Records)
I began college in search of an identity. During the summer following high school graduation I shaved my head as a small attempt to leave behind the preppy peer group I had been a part of for so long. Internally I felt different than the people I had hung out with in high school, but didn’t know how to externally express those differences. As an introvert, I didn’t have much use for spoken words, so I relied on music and art as means of expression.
I wanted tattoos, but it wouldn’t be for another dozen years that I took that step. Rather than decorate myself with anything but band t-shirts and a lack of hair, I decorated my dorm room. I taped up band posters and concert flyers from floor to ceiling.
The largest band poster I owned was a monstrous black-and-white shot of The Blamed: four bad-ass, tattooed Christian punk rockers standing in a dark alley. I then hand-wrote the lyrics of The Blamed song “Prove Your Excuse” on a large poster board and stuck it on my wall next to the poster so it was the first thing visitors saw upon entering. Here is the chorus:
Take for granted your breath, your life which was given you
Reject the love of God, who died for the sake of you
An empty tomb was found, to prove Christ is Lord of all
What will it take for you to believe in the word of God?
Circular reasoning, collusion are excuses
The world’s a creation, then who’s the Creator?
You question my God, whose power is limitless
Your fist in his face and in his hand he holds your breath!
Being shy and quiet, expressing my feelings about anything was a challenge. Music helped me with that, and in the case of The Blamed, assisted me in expressing my faith. As The Blamed band-leader Bryan Gray recently said when I interviewed him: “Back in ’95 Christ was still in Christian music big time… meaning it was a priority.”
I was frequently condemned by fellow Christians for the music I listened to because it was weird or not Christian enough — at least for their conservative tastes. Once, while I was blasting hardcore music in my dorm room, a girl told me to “turn off that Satanic music.” She made her statement based on the style of the music, not the content of the lyrics.
The Blamed was the perfect band to confront the closed-mindedness of those who questioned me and the styles of music they didn’t understand. The Blamed was loud: they yelled, they screamed, they were angry at times but they loved Jesus, and faith was the only subject of their songs.
Many artists in the Christian scene struggled with the “Christian band” label, but not The Blamed; they embraced it. They were a Christian band and they wanted everyone to know it. Just as Black Flag pushed a non-conformist message and Minor Threat was straight-edge, The Blamed were followers of Jesus and you couldn’t listen to their music or watch them perform without that being evident.
Frail was The Blamed’s second album. Their debut, 21, was sloppy and undeveloped, which was explained simply by the album’s title: 21 was recorded in a single 21-hour studio session.
Bryan Gray was The Blamed’s principal songwriter and guitarist, and the only member who appeared on all of the seven releases in the decade they were active. Jim Chaffin was the drummer, the same role he filled in The Crucified, arguably the most influential Christian punk band of all time. Joining the band for Frail was vocalist Jeremy Moffett, who had the throat and the charisma to take the band to the next level. (Unfortunately Moffett was only a member of The Blamed for this lone album.)
As Gray explains, “[Moffett] was ten times the singer that I was… We wanted to make a more intense record. We did a 4-song demo at Randy Rose’s studio and that was Jeremy’s intro to the band.” The Blamed recorded Frail in five days with Mark Rodriguez producing. Gray continues, “He’s (Rodriguez) the secret weapon to how amazing that record sounds. He was the touring sound guy during my tenure in Mortal. I’m a pretty sloppy guitarist, Jeff Bellew was hanging out during that session and I still believe he re-recorded my tracks after I left the studio each night because he’s the cleanest and tightest guitar player I know.” Bellew, of course, was the bass player in The Crucified and went on to be the guitarist in Stavesacre.
One didn’t listen to The Blamed for anything musically groundbreaking or to be impressed with their flawless musicianship. What the band did was relatively simple, but they arguably did it better than anyone in the genre. They wrote concise, focused, and intense songs that left a lasting impact on their listener. For me that impact has lasted two decades as The Blamed taught me to be bold in expressing my feelings and beliefs.
