“Time” by Day of Fire (repost), Tuesday, January 2, 2024

 

My Christian school took an annual mission trip in the spring to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The school had partnered with a church in the inner city that had a Habitat-for-Humanity sort of outreach. It was one of those "I feel more ministered to" type mission trips. We ended up doing a lot of grunt work for ongoing projects, but we were made to believe that we were of some use. Of course, this was before I learned that most of the churches built on mission trips overseas have to be torn down the minute the missionaries step on the plane because of course unskilled builders don't know how to build--but I digress.

DO YOU HAVE THE TIME TO WASTE AWAY THE DAY? One of the rules of the mission trip was that we were only allowed to listen to Christian music. It could be any genre, but it became a time for some of us to show off our CDs of the hard rock, metal, punk, and Emo-Christian records that made their way to the Family Christian bookstores. Sometimes we'd listen to Grits because a van full of white kids from a school in the foothills of North Carolina that taught racist history felt that we all should become more culturally sensitive for a week. But after a few songs from Grits' The Art of Translation-- "Here We Go" and "Ooh Ahh"--, it was back to rock and metal in the form of old-school Disciple, Skillet, and P.O.D. In 2005, my junior year, the self-titled album by Day of Fire was one of the biggest hits in the vans traveling to Chattanooga. The band didn't have a video on TVU for their debut, but they had hits on RadioU so I was aware of them before the trip, but had never bought the record. After the trip, I bought the record and listened to it throughout the summer. Then in the fall, I took a Sociology course at the local community college with my sister on Tuesday nights, and we listened to the record every Tuesday night. It was eventually replaced in late October when Falling Up released their sophomore record, Dawn Escapes. 

SOUND THE ALARM FOR JUDGEMENT DAY. September nostalgia hits me differently every year. This year it's taking me back to my Christian rock youth. I listened to Day of Fire last October when I talked about the final track on their eponymous record, "To Fly." The band's selling point was lead singer Josh Brown's conversion story, from drug-addict lead singer of the band Full Devil Jacket to acclaimed Christian rocker. It was similar, though lower profile than when Korn's guitarist Brian "Head" Welch became a Christian and started making Christian nu-metal. Day of Fire had a run from 2005-2010. In 2007 or 2008, there was a band member from a little-known Australian band, JaeL, who visited our campsite for some reason and was talking about who knew in the Christian industry. There are two details I remember from the conversation. The first was how he worried about Showbread showing their Nine Inch Nails/Marylin Manson influences on their twin records Anorexia and Nervosa. The second was about his hanging out with Josh Brown. "Sometimes he accidentally  swears when he gets really excited about something." I can't find JaeL on Spotify and something makes me think that they aren't still around, at least under that name. I suspect this guy didn't actually rub shoulders with many Christian rock stars because I have a hunch that more of them were swearing than just the former-hardened converts. We now have more access to band members thanks to social media and podcasting, and during the explosion of Christian and post-Christian podcasts, we started to realize that "Christian Rock stars" were just like us, cursing and all. Of course, Christian Rock is all but turned into worship music these days. Isn't time interesting?

Read “Time” by Day of Fire on Genius.