“Underoath” by Derrick Austinson Photog is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Underoath’s Define the Great Line turned 20 last month, and it got me thinking about something I always wondered about in high school but never researched: why are there so many Christian bands in the hard music scene, and especially metalcore?
Underoath, August Burns Red, The Devil Wears Prada, blessthefall, As I Lay Dying, Norma Jean… back in the day, the list went on for days. Look closely, and you realize that Christian bands helped create and shape the metalcore scene as we know it. Where did these groups all come from, and what were they doing mucking around in transgressive subcultures that have, at times, even been considered Satanic?
The shortest answer begins in 1993, when Brandon Ebel founded Tooth & Nail Records — a label that brought Christian rock bands to the mass market at just the right time. The most thorough answer dates back to the 1960s, when thousands of disillusioned hippies found salvation through the Jesus Movement and Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). But to me, the most interesting answer has nothing to do with chronology. After weeks of excessive, borderline obsessive research, I‘ve decided that the story of Christian metalcore is, in its own way, the story of American religion and politics.1
Want to find out how I arrived at this galaxy-brained take? Bear with me, because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
