A Year in Heavy Music
Life Lived and Faith Fought Through Breakdowns
Welcome to Sonus, your new home for music commentary that moves to the beat of its own drum. We’re launching our website this week, so if you like what you read here, make sure to check out our homepage for more.
A good breakdown is cathartic. Sounds crazy, right? When you hear a scuzzy, slow churning mix of guitars and drums, sometimes over a low growl from a pissed metal head with hand tats, the first thing you’re thinking is not usually “This is so relaxing.” But this is exactly how I feel. Heavy music, an umbrella term that I’ll use a lot for everything from emo to pop punk to metalcore to death metal, has always been a staple in my young adult life. It’s kept me from punching many a hole in a wall and it’s also connected me with people I’ll never forget.
In the past year, heavy music has also become a form of worship for me. As a Christian, I’ve struggled since I was 12 years old with doubt, depression, and anxiety and was seriously messed up by misguided religion. Contemporary Christian worship music seemed out of sync with the emotions I felt inside and I experienced a severe amount of guilt because I didn’t seem to enjoy praising the God I owed my entire life to. Then I had an epiphany: how could I progress in my faith, how could I come to terms with my own beliefs, if I wasn’t being authentic? I felt like a liar in a worship setting. I was sad. I was broken. I was spending church services happy hallelujahs and holding hands with other congregants, but my heart was decaying inside my chest. I wanted to be authentic. So I dove, headfirst and fists flying, into heavy music.
The bands I discovered from the Christian metal scene sang about the same things that I was trying to compartmentalize. Theirs was a messy, world-weary form of Christianity. At the center of their music was Christ, the hope for the dying, and a genuine outpouring of doubts, questions, and resolve to cut sin off by its ugly head.
I also love a lot of heavy bands that don’t sport their Christian-ness in their bios. Whether they put their beliefs in their twitter bios or not, I’m still pointed back to my need for Christ by the heartbreak that seems to bleed through every album. Worship music is not limited to your hometown Christian radio station that plays Top 40 knockoffs — worship music is music that makes you aware of your brokenness and awakens a reliance on Christ’s supremacy and glory. And if a good breakdown is thrown in there somewhere, even better.
I’ll share a few of my favorite albums that have had a (heavy) hand in my life this year.
Silent Planet, “Everything Was Sound” (2016)
Silent Planet, deriving their name from C.S. Lewis’ allegorical novel on the hearts of earth-dwellers, have been rocking out with their harsh form of metalcore since 2009. Their songs often touch on the depraved state of mankind and the question that often lingers on skeptics’ minds: How can a good God allow terrible things to happen in this world? (To hear their answer, spin their album The Night God Slept.) In 2016, they came blazing back to the metalcore world with Everything Was Sound, a solid through and through album that addresses mental health. The standout tracks for me are “Dying in Circles,” where frontman Garrett Russell screams “Make a heart of flesh from these hollow stones / I’m learning what it means to trade my certainty for awe;” and “Understanding Love as Loss,” which broaches self-harm by meditating on the suicides of some of the world’s most prolific authors.
Fit for a King, “Slave to Nothing” (2014)
I discovered this band after burning myself out on the former Christian metal band For Today. Let it never be said that this band cannot absolutely thrash. Their most recent effort, Deathgrip, is a great album that touches on frustrations felt over the current social climate, but Slave To Nothing is my absolute go-to. Every track centers around a determination to pull yourself up and break free from the grip of evil and the things in this world that will lead you to your death. It helps that For Today lead Mattie Montgomery makes an appearance on the title track. As someone who has struggled with a pornography addiction that I thought would never end, this album reminds me that, as a Christian, nothing has a hold on me more than Christ does. I’m reminded of this every time the breakdown in “Break Away” hits with Ryan Kirby’s high-pitched “TAKE YOUR LIFE BACK.” I view the album in relation to Galatians 5:1, where Paul writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery”. “Slave To Nothing” had such an impact on me coming to reliance on Christ that I now have the phrase tattooed on my forearm as a constant reminder.
Trophy Eyes, “Chemical Miracle” (2016)
Trophy Eyes may be the saddest band you’ll ever listen to, and if you’re someone that is struggling with suicidal thoughts, I would encourage you to put off checking them out until you have a handle over that area of your life.
Frontman Jon Floreani knows how to write a catchy hook without compromising the emotional weight of his songs. The album just feels so real. From opening track “Chlorine,” where Floreani recounts the suicide of the young man who once saved him from drowning, to “Miracle,” where he screams “Who’s gonna miss me,” desperation floods this record. Suicide is never the answer to life’s problems — I would highly discourage checking out music that makes light of it or encourages it. But Trophy Eyes approaches the subject, one that hits very close to home for me, with taste. Most of the songs end with the hope that life will get better or the reality that suicide leaves those around you worse off. This album allows me to hear some internal workings out loud and see how, in Christ, sadness is okay. Happiness is not constant but joy can be. It does get better if you stick around to see it through.
Movements, “Feel Something” (2017)
Movements caught my attention last year with the release of their six-song EP Outgrown Things. Patrick Miranda has a knack for delivering rhythmic spoken word in many of the band’s songs, but he’s not limited to it. Feel Something showcases Miranda’s somber voice, which conveys emotion often without screams or spoken word. I think there’s something to be said for that. Opening track “Full Circle” is, in my opinion, Movements’ best song to date. I would encourage going into it without knowing anything and experiencing the poem that finishes the song out for yourself. It a truly beautiful piece of music in every way, exploring hope and the hard climb to feeling like yourself after being in the dark for so long. For me, thanks to Christ, that hope came — and I’m thankful to savor it with heavy music.
