“Savior” by Skillet, Saturday, April 13, 2024

 

In recent years, Skillet has become an apologetics band under the leadership of lead singer John Cooper. But before you could catch him on Fox News, Skillet was the band whose CD you had to hide from your conservative parents, whether it was the fetish-wear-inspired pastiche of Invincible or the snake on the angel mannequin on the cover of Collide. Skillet’s early music was influenced by Industrial bands like Nine Inch Nails and Korn, bands known for their anti-Christian messages.  But Skillet’s early music varied greatly, each album seeming to take a completely different set of inspirations. Their 1996 debut self-titled album and its follow-up Hey You, I Love Your Soul pulled from grunge, while the band’s next two albums delved into a dark Marylin Manson sound.

I’M EVERYTHING YOU WANTED. When speaking with Shane Told of the Lead Singer Syndrome podcast, John Cooper talked about how he was disappointed that youth groups were choosing secular songs for church skits rather than Christian bands’ songs. He went on to say that he took it as a challenge to write better songs that would impact Christian rock. Following what Cooper ranked as the band’s worst album Alien Youth, Skillet released Collide in 2003. The album is the beginning of the franchise that Skillet is today, a band that is arguably one of the most ironclad brands in Christian Rock along with Demon Hunter and Red. Rather than synth-based Industrial sounds that dominated the band’s third and fourth records (excluding their worship record between the two), the band creates a hard rock sound that is embellished with strings. Their follow-up Comatose would explore this sound, going full symphonic at times and subsequent releases seemed to copy and paste the formula from Comatose. 

But before the formula was laid, Collide was a great record, and there is still a lot of discourse online defending this album.

WHAT YOU GOT, WHAT YOU WANT, WHAT YOU NEED. With Collide, Skillet maintained the intensity of their synth-based albums, in part due to excellent musicianship with drummer Lori Peters and the crunchy guitars of Ben Kasica. Through years of trial and error, John Cooper’s gravelly voice in singing and screaming blends well on Collide. The album’s first single, “Savior,” was a crossover hit for the band and introduced them to the active rock radio circuit. When the band wasn’t playing Christian festivals, they began touring with groups like Breaking Benjamin and Shinedown. The band’s promotional team tried to get “Savior” in Spider-Man 2 but failed to procure the placement. The song did,  however, reach number 26 on Billboard’s Rock chart. The music video depicts children living with an abusive father. Cooper said that the video was inspired by his relationship with his father when he was growing up, a topic he would explore in the next album’s “The Older I Get.” “Savior” isn’t an epic song that says “Jesus is the savior,” but rather offers the promise that “everything’s going to crash and break.” What’s left is the speaker of the song, who could be interpreted as Christ. But the song also could support the solution coming from within. This seems absurd knowing the cultural icon Skillet has become, but in 2003 the band was just emerging on the scene and could have gone in a different direction.

Read “Savior” by Skillet on Genius