Song Spotlight: King Me by Lamb of God

This post was first published on January 2, 2019

King Me by Lamb of God

I saw the world through the lens of a pinhole camera/ I saw nothing. I was blind./ In between a black hole and a supernova is where you’ll find me/ Imploding and expanding simultaneously/ No longer blind.

I’d been running away for so long/ When I finally caught myself there wasn’t much left./ The script’s last page is blank/ And the medicine is gone.

A sick monster, a twister of dark matter/ On a heavier trip than you can comprehend/ A tornado trying to mend the life it shattered/ Waiting for nothing to begin./ A flat line, my insides are turning out.

King Me is killing me.

I keep walking past the places I was born in/ Now their faces are blank, shiny, and dead/ I don’t recognize a thing, I can’t recall them/ A closed book that I can never read again./ A flat line, my insides are turning out./ The lights fade, this final war starts now.

King Me is killing me.

All of that is ending now for I have arisen/ Survived myself somehow, dead and imprisoned/ I’m fighting to live if I am to see the day/ I swear I’ll never sleep again/ I am no man’s slave.

I wanted the fog to lift but I was living in a cloud/ Nostalgia is grinding the life from today/ The present always dies in future memories/ And King Me is killing me/ Cut wide open and bleeding to death for all to see.

King Me is killing me./ He’s killing me.

He won’t kill me./ I won’t let him kill me.

He won’t kill me.

Songwriters: Chris Adler / David Randall Blythe / John Campbell / Mark Morton / Will Adler

King Me lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

HERE WE GOOOOOOOOO

Let’s talk about this song. It’s so nihilistic I love it. Not that I love nihilism-- quite frankly the idea of it terrifies me-- but it makes me smile because the ideas it offers seems almost kindred-spirity to me. “I saw the world through the lens of a pinhole camera/ I saw nothing”. “A tornado trying to mend the life it shattered/ Waiting for nothing to begin” anyone??? HELL YES. It invigorates me because it understands me. Do I believe this is reality? Absolutely not. Do I feel this reality? You have no idea how much I do.

Which makes me think… in our emotion-driven culture of today, nihilism makes sense. If you feel like everything is going to shit and that there is no purpose to anything, then what you feel is what is. It’s logical in a very flawed sense.

I have a friend who is what I consider to be a default nihilist. He was raised with little stability and it appeared as if that instability and chaos followed him wherever he went. I’ve never encountered anyone who has had such poor luck in life. From a purely observational standpoint, it truly did seem that the universe was against him. He didn’t really see any grand purpose to life and vehemently objected any moral/faith system. According to my observations, his worldview was this way because, well, that’s what he deduced from the world based on the way it treated him.

Once we had a conversation about the purpose of life. I of course came from a faith worldview, and him without. At the end of our conversation, we came to an impasse. We agreed on several things: 1) that life is a spiral--you move upwards or downwards, but you seem to revisit the same issues over and over again; 2) it is good to try to become better persons; 3) the awful things that happen in life are meant to teach us something; and 4) love is the most important thing. But that’s where it ended, and it seemed as if it was impossible to continue, there was no more to talk about. Because, for him, that was the end of the line. Take for example, point #2 on becoming better persons. I deduced that he believed that we are supposed to become better because the better you are, the better the things that happen to you will be. But for me, I believe that I am supposed to become a better person because I reach my full potential when I become who God created me to be.That person will not be me anymore, but Christ who is in me. It’s therefore not about me, it’s about Christ. Also, love. In his understanding, love is the most powerful emotion with the highest vibrations and therefore can overcome all negative and evil emotions, which we don’t want because they don’t make life pleasant. Love therefore improved quality of life. To me, love is a person, and love personified is ultimately self-sacrificial. Love doesn’t really improve the quality of my life, because it means that I have to put others first, which is hard. However, choosing to love unconditionally is the only way that I will be at peace with myself, and also the way that I move aside so that Christ can live in me. Faith in something makes a huge directional difference.

This all being said, I found this friend to be absolutely FASCINATING because I had never before spent time with someone like him. I found myself drawn to friendship with him because of something I detected in his way of looking at life (which is kind of what I consider to be the holy grail): AUTHENTICITY. How is it authentic? His beliefs were true to his feelings.

I’m a feeling person. Feelings are kind of everything to me. I often base my identity on how I feel. For example, if I feel melancholy, I AM melancholy. And I take some kind of pride in it, because accepting my melancholy and incorporating it into who I am makes me different, it makes me authentic. If I’m in a state of melancholy and something good happens, I reject feeling happy because, MELANCHOLY. Is this good? Is this healthy? NO. But. This is me. Coming to the realization that I base who I am on how I feel has been HUGE for me. I’ve come into a habit of telling myself everyday that “I am not my feelings” and it has been so freeing and a rather mammoth step towards mental health. Even so, it doesn’t change the fact that my basic desire in life is authenticity and that my predisposition is to focus inward on feelings.

Now do we understand why I say nihilistic sentiments are kindred-spirity to me? And why, consequently, it is not mentally healthy for me to be a nihilist?

So, about this song…. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you that this venture was mostly autobiographical.

This song is tremendous. The dynamics are extreme. The vocals are severe. The operatic elements add to the drama. The lyrics and the sounds amplify the other’s intention to create one staggering, terrifying, glorious exaltation. This is LoG’s best song in my personal evaluation.

It’s core proclamation is one that we frequently see littered throughout LoG’s songs: “I am no man’s slave.” This is fascinating. This is his greatest fear--to be controlled by someone else. Particularly in the Western world (it might be helpful to note that LoG is an American band), personal freedom is our highest attainment. But, here’s the interesting thing-- he doesn’t need to worry about being another’s slave, because he already is a slave--to himself.

“King me is killing me.”

In our attempts to put ourselves first, we find that we have in fact become our own slaves. I have a quote from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on a massive canvas on my wall that says “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort; you were made for greatness.” When I read it, I feel an ancient battle-cry swell up within me that yells “FOR GREATNESS!” whilst charging on my horse, sword in hand, Aragorn style. But how much of my everyday life is centered on the goal to be in comfort? 95%? 100%? Really, there aren’t many heroics in my daily life. But what does that MEAN. It means that while I’m binging on Hunter x Hunter (for example…), and hearing my 14 year old sister crying that she needs help with homework in some other corner of the house, I STAY IN MY ROOM because it’s waaaaay more comfortable to support my binging habit than to get up and painfully attempt to explain how to write a thesis statement. What happens in this situation? Sure, maybe she needs to just figure it out on her own, and yes self care is a thing, but I’m passing on an opportunity for greatness. I can’t  get up to help her because I’m a slave to my own comfort. I’m addicted to living a pain-free, comfort-full existence.

“I’d been running away for so long/ When I finally caught myself there wasn’t much left/ The  script’s last page is blank/ And the medicine is gone.”

I’m going to end by sharing something a little more personal, just because I want to show you how deeply I relate to these lyrics. You know, when artists put their songs out there, they’re putting a lot on the line. They’re sharing their deepest, most intimate thoughts and feelings. Vulnerability spurs vulnerability, and man do we ever need to be vulnerable with each other if we’re going to have mercy for one another.

My first year of teaching was the worst year of my life. It was overwhelming and the pressure and expectations crushed my spirit. I loved my kids, but that’s all the good I have to say about it. I never used to be a drinker. I enjoyed an occasional beer, but it wasn’t anything even resembling habitual. That changed that year. I was definitely drunk every weekend, if not most weeknights. I’m a church person, but for the first time in my life I was consistently showing up to church 20 min late because I was hungover. I couldn’t believe how easily I fell into a lifestyle I previously had never planned for myself. It was mostly fun at the time, and I still stand by the fact that I didn’t know how to properly cope with failure and that I managed in the best way that I possibly could.

But something happened at the end of that year. Days after the last day of the school year, I went to a conference that I go to every year with my family. This conference is a cornerstone in my life and I can’t imagine going a year without it. This year though, I wandered around in a daze. I felt as though I had woken up from a terribly realistic bad dream. My memories were mixed and vague. I thought about the past year, and who I was didn’t fit the person who had been at this place in previous years. Then an ugly thought dawned upon me-- I had forgotten who I was. I couldn’t remember what was important to me, what I stood for, what things brought joy, because all the life had been sucked out of me.

“When I finally caught myself there wasn’t much left/ The script’s last page is blank/ and the medicine is gone.” The first time I heard these lyrics, years after this realization occurred, my mind immediately went to that time. That was EXACTLY what I felt like. That’s what’s so special about music. We can hear a thousand lyrics and it means nothing to us, and then all of the sudden one will come out of nowhere and knock you off your feet. And now it makes me think— never again. I never want to lose myself ever again. I don’t want to use unhealthy coping mechanisms as medicine ever again (like I still do, spoiler, but you get the sentiment).

Lol I just googled “meaning of King Me” and everyone is saying that it’s about alcohol addiction and superiority complexes… well, guess I missed the point, oh well :)

Album Review: Resolution by Lamb of God

This post was first published on January 3, 2019

FIRST ALBUM REVIEW ON THE BLOG!!!

This album is very near and dear to me because it’s the first real Metal album I came to love. The post is long, and I unreservedly declare my love to Metal, deal with it. BUT I LOVE U 4 READING THANK U

Besuretocheckoutmy Rationale + Purpose to figure out what this is all abooooout!!

Album Name/ Artist: Resolution by Lamb of God

Record Label/ Release Date/ Genre: January 24, 2012; Epic/Roadrunner Records; Groove/Thrash Metal

How I was introduced: I was introduced to Lamb of God by my friend George who recommended me to listen to LoG’s Resolution and Wrath. Lamb of God put the final nail in the coffin in my metal conversion. I had sporadically been listening to metal for about 4 months before I met LoG, and although there was quite a bit of metal that I liked, I hadn’t yet met a band that I wholeheartedly loved. I am such a “band” person. I’m not content just listening to random songs from various artists--I like to have bands or artists that I am undyingly loyal to. I want to know every song they’ve ever made! I want to really mean it when I say “I love this band” read: I can identify any song one of their songs within the first 5 seconds. Intense, I know. As soon as I heard that first deep breath before the opening track’s initial scream, I knew that I had found “my band.” To be honest, I hesitated listening to LoG previously because of their sacrilegious name. How could I in good conscience listen to a band that so blatantly abused religious imagery that is particularly meaningful to me? Because you can’t take all shit seriously. That’s why.

This all said… I don’t love every LoG album. THAT’S the sacrilege, I know!!! Quite honestly I only really like Resolution and Wrath. There are fantastic songs on their other albums, but the albums on a whole are kinda meh. Controversial opinion, I know!!! I still love u LoG.

Place in life when I first listened: This was an interesting time of lots of ups and downs. I was sporadically working and unsure about my future. I knew deep down that it was time for a change, but I just didn’t have any idea of what that would be. One day during this time, I went for a walk and it was gorgeous and I felt totally fine and then the next minute I was on the phone with my mom bawling because I had no purpose in life. REAL LIFE PEOPLE. My life had been such a mixed bag of random sporadic directionless jobs and everyone was getting married or had careers and I felt like I had nothing EXCEPT a new-found love for metal. When there’s nothing in life to look forward to, the little things mean everything. Metal was a God-send to me because it was an outlet for my emotions. Feeling like I have no control over my life? Feeling like no one can understand the way you feel? Listen to someone else scream for you. Someone else took all those emotions that you are feeling and slaved away mastering an instrument and put hours and hours into writing and perfecting a song JUST so they could create something that you could relate to. And man… does metal ever know how to depict emotions. I can sit in a peacefulness when I listen to it because it gives me permission to feel and let those feelings go.

Immediately after I listened to Resolution 20 times in a row, I googled “best LoG songs.” I was in the airport on my way home when I did this and I devoured every song on the list. It was during this time that I listened to “Blacken the Cursed Sun,” from the Sacrament album, for the first time. The lyrics stopped me dead in my tracks and I did that cold-sweat heart-racing thing that happens when you get consumed by an idea that you MUST pursue and I opened up my laptop right then and there in the Edmonton airport and I pumped out an entire Song Spotlight. My first real piece of writing for this blog. Yet to be published, but still. So thank u Lamb of God for inspiring me to get my ass into gear and start this thing.

Synopsis/ Themes: Okkkkaaaaaaaay. So the word I would use to describe this album is “disenchantment.” Nothing in this life has gone the way we have hoped (You can’t tell me you’ve never felt this way before). In one of my favourite lines of the album (my fav because it’s soooo cheesy), Randy eloquently describes his despair by referring to earth as “paradise lost, a beautiful wreck.” Super great right. Alongside those feelings of jadedness is the refusal to be treated like garbage. The whole album is an anthem proclaiming autonomy. This is very very classic LoG. Amidst the existential despair, their “resolution” to stand up for themselves is extremely clear.

They say super hopeless things like “The world keeps spinning around your cage” and “Life is born of agony’s strain/ Manifested in suffering,” but damn do they ever make you want to drop everything you’re doing and climb to the highest turret to scream along with them. This album from beginning to end has a powerful momentum and pumps adrenaline through your veins for its entire 66 minutes. And I seriously don’t think there’s a better album intro than Straight for the Sun. If you’re not a Metal person, and you don’t “get” Straight for the Sun, like, if you don’t get even an inkling of understanding as to why anyone could ever listen to it, then there is no hope that you will ever like Metal. It’s just… that symbolic of Metal to me. Fight me on that. And that transition between Straight for the Sun and Desolation!!!! I die and go to heaven it’s so damn good. Once I had my music on shuffle while I was driving and it played Straight for the Sun and Desolation back to back and it was literally the greatest moment of my life. Nothing will surpass that moment. Nothing.

My favourite tracks are Straight for the Sun (duh) (when he screams GONE *chills*) (like go listen to this song right now it might shock you but you’ll thank me later), Desolation (it took a while for this one to grow on me, it’s very thrash-y), Ghostwalking, Insurrection, Terminally Unique, and King Me. King Me is the greatest track on the album and ever done by LoG, in my personal opinion. It’s an epic. But the whole album is SOOOOO fun in a very there-isn’t-a-single-moment-that-I-don’t-want-to-headbang sort of way, which IS super fun in it’s own special way :)

Glimmers of Gold: So this album may ooze hopelessness, but it’s got some gems in there!! Also here’s the thing about Metal lyrics: they aren’t all meant to be taken seriously. *Cue the first of many Metal rants to come* A lot of the time they’re going for the shock factor-- that’s the cornerstone of Metal as a genre. There’s also a lot of storytelling that happens (similar to Country in a sense--more of that to come, don’t you worry), but these stories are meant to shock and often are related to the supernatural. You can see an example of this in Visitation on this album. More than any other genre of music, except perhaps orchestral, Metal is about depicting emotions through sounds. This is most obvious in the vocals, which is almost always entirely composed of screams and growls, but also in the instrumental. The beauty about screaming is that it depicts a huge range of emotions-- anger, yes, but also fear, pain, sadness, rage against injustice, despair, strength of resolve, commitment, jubilation. So not usually happy feelings, but here’s the thing-- life isn’t always happy. It isn’t even mostly happy. The versatility of screaming as a means to communicate is staggering. There’s great beauty in it, if you’re open to recognizing it.

As key as the actual musicianship aspect of songs are (and in Metal, I’d argue that part is the most important), lyrics are also important, obvs. It’s not fair to generalize, buuuut I’m going to do it anyway and say that more often than not, Metal bands seem to “focus” their lyrics of all of their songs into one specific theme. This allows them to “fit” within their genre of Metal. THERE. ARE. SO. MANY. DIFFERENT. TYPES. OF. METAL. I won’t get into it but it’s absolutely insane. Lamb of God is notorious for vehemently opposing being classified within a particular genre (and some people don’t even consider LoG Metal AT ALL, I just can’t understand that logic), but they do have lyrical theme. I think it’s opposition to injustice. They’ve all lived hard lives and been shitted on, and people relate to that, so they side with the underdog. They’re one of “the people,” they “get” “the people.” This mentality in general is what makes Metal so insanely popular. People just wanna have someone who relates.

Soooo, these are what the following lyrics are about. Identifying with the underdog, saying “yes life is frickin hard and you’re not alone,” raging against injustice. Agree with me or not, that’s fine, and interpret them for yourself. These are just the lyrics from the album that I feel embody some elements of truth-- imperfectly, but humanly.

You lived through hell, now you're trying to die/ The skin is healed but your bleeding inside/ Shots fired just to numb the pain/ There's no one left to save

Bound by the chain of lies you've wrapped around you/ You're trapped in regression/ Dying in the face of the truth/ Stoic in silence we're blind inside the void/ Ruins remind us of all we've destroyed/ Dead rail / No way back from here/ The mainline to nowhere

Deal the last hand, let the cards fall where they may/ From your castle made of sand you're looking down at me/ You brand it a crisis/ I name it an honour/ To face what arises/ To remain unconquered./ All the worst that I feared has come to pass/ And despair is in an endless supply/ I dug my way to bottom of the bloody truth/ Buried beneath a spotless lie/ I'm sworn to stay the course that I alone have chosen/ Because we're all gonna die.

A broken voice without a word to live by/ Eyes slammed shut watch the world go by/ It should have been way better than this/ You can't anticipate the things that you miss/ And how long til you let it go

Seal all the exits, tie your own hands/ Burn all the bridges, head in the sand./ How far did you think that you could run?/ You crossed the last meridian/ And it's all coming down now as the clock ticks on/ Your life is passing by./ Awaken.

All of that is ending now for I have arisen/ Survived myself somehow, dead and imprisoned/ I’m fighting to live if I am to see the day/ I swear I’ll never sleep again/ I am no man’s slave.

Conceit & pride are going viral/ A globe that's reached its critical mass/ A pixilated downward spiral/ Fixated on the looking glass.

Personal Thoughts/ Meaning: As I mentioned, this album means a lot to me because it tipped the scales in my internal “do I really like Metal or not” debate. This album to me is a triumph-- life seems hopeless at times, but we’re going to fight anyway. We’re all going to die, but we’ll fight until our dying breath. I love that. As someone who is very prone to despair, I need that push to keep fighting. Remember where I was at when I first listened to this album? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this album came into my life at that time.

On a music level, I think the flow of this album is near perfect. Being Lamb of God’s 7th album, it is very true to its roots, but also pushes the limits into prog metal (which I have super duper heart eyes for) and OWNS it. LoG is a great gateway into Metal--they embody the spirit of it, but they make it accessible and fun. I like to consider them the “pop” of Metal--super catchy tunes, super popular, very loveable. Give them a try, Metalhead or not! Once you hook on to the melody, you can look past the screaming and the heaviness and enjoy it. Who knows, you might actually come to love the vocals. Besides, Randy is one of the best in the business, he surely doesn’t disappoint.

A Very Long But Fairly Interesting Account of How This Blog Came to Be

This post was first published on January 2, 2019

Every single person loves music. That’s an irrefutable fact. Not everyone likes every *kind* of music, but they love *their* music. I find it so interesting that we claim music to be our own, especially since it never is us who has created “our” music. Once I was at the Symphony Orchestra and the manager said to the audience in his preamble, “if music doesn’t move us, then what does it do?” That really resonated with me then as it still does now, and I think is also the reason why we are possessive of music. It touches us in an inexplainable level. It gets us, it’s there for us when no one else is, is expresses what we are unable to express or perhaps even able to get in touch with. It is ours because it knows us on an intimate level.

At least, that’s how I see music.

I like literally every single genre of music. When I say that, I’m not exaggerating. Name a genre, I have a song that I love. That being said, as with all people, I know what songs I *don’t* like. There are songs that I despise in literally every single genre of music, and I have a list of songs I don’t like that is just as long as the songs I do like. I will never say that I hate any particular genre of music though, because good music is good music anywhere you go. I know that I can like absolutely anything if I encounter a moment within the music that captivates me. I’m always seeking that captivating moment. I live for it.

Okay, I think we all get that I love music at this point. Nah, I think I’m going to drive the point home a little deeper. I constantly listen to music, and would only ever listen to music, if I wasn’t committed to consciously forcing myself to listen to something more brain formative and substantial every so often. It’s my drug. When I put in my headphones and press play for the first time in a day, I release a deep breath as if I had been subconsciously holding my breath up until that moment. The feeling is akin to taking the first sip of coffee in the morning-- euphoric, relief, releasing unknown pent up tension, cleansing.

We get it now. And my passion hath spilt itself over into this blog.

The idea for this blog has been building in my mind for a long time. It is an accumulation of lots of things, and I have every single reason written down in a book somewhere, but I’ll spare you most of the gory details. Several years ago I listened to Christopher West (a theologian of sorts) speak and he told me that our desires were good because they point to our infinite longing for God and I’ve never seen the world in the same way since. I’m a cradle Catholic and misunderstandings of our desires (read: everything is a sin and if you sin you go to hell) comes as part of the territory.  Misunderstandings though are simply misunderstandings, and the truth reveals itself in due time if you’re patient enough and stubborn enough to await its appearance. At the right place and at the right time, I *really* discovered that my longings for love and to be known and for meaning were all mere inclinations of my deep desire for Christ, and that all of my desires could be re-directed towards Him. Of course what goes for me goes for everyone else, and I stopped looking judgmentally at others as doing “bad things” because they “didn’t know any better,” and began to look at them as wretches just like me, directing our limitless desires at the first thing that would satisfy. I am no different from anyone else. We are all on the same quest for meaning.

If you’ve ever sparked me into conversation, you’ll know that I’m very long winded and seem to frequently go off in apparent tangents but TRUST ME, it all connects I promise!! (I’m about to go into a very long “tangent,” sorry / not sorry).

I want to go back to my “cradle Catholic” comment. I want no one to misunderstand me. And this is essential to understanding my take on music.

In my experience, I have found that it is easy for Catholics to demonize everything that isn’t explicitly Catholic, particularly when it comes to entertainment and the arts. Over time, I’ve come to realize that if everything is evil, nothing can be sacred. Being afraid of everything means that you have to remain in your own self-sustained bubble forever. I lived like this for a very long time, but it no longer sits well for me.

When I was younger, I was afraid of music that wasn’t explicitly Christian. It was a mixture of fear for the artist’s soul and for my own. My heart has always deeply feared death and the consequences of it for myself, but even more than that, it has feared for the souls of others once they met their own end. I’m not entirely sure why the fear of death and hell was so etched on my heart (#CradleCatholic). Regardless, the way I dealt with my fear was to avoid anything that might put my soul in danger. That meant no: swearing, non-Christian music, PG-13 movies, immodest clothing, makeup, boys, alcohol, the list goes on in the same ridiculous manner.

I grew up listening to Steven Curtis Chapman, Amy Grant, the Rankin Family, John Michael Talbot-- all extremely wholesome. (Also a lot of Olivia Newton-John, not *as* wholesome). I still love all of these people and their music has made a large impression on me and is part of my DNA. Being the oldest in a rather sheltered family (I’m not complaining about the sheltered-ness, I’m rather grateful for it), it took me an inordinate amount of time to discover music on my own. I knew that the Spice Girls and Britney Spears and *NSYNC existed, but they were not a part of my world. When I was in grade 8, we had to share our favourite song with our class for some bs language arts project, and the song I made my class listen to was Sonicflood’s version of Open the Eyes of My Heart. OPEN THE EYES OF MY HEART people!!!! I was 13 years old!! Oh my good gracious everyone I just looked it up on itunes and gave it a listen and it’s terrible. But how adorable was I, so pure! There you have the state of affairs of my music tastes. Very unspecific, very Christian. Ahhh.

THEN IT ALL CHANGED. Because of a boy. Of course. Fast-forward to the end of grade 8-- I was in mad love with this boy and he was baaaadass. Like, he was sneak-out-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-go-drinking badass. My pure little heart was drawn to someone who I could redeem (it still kinda is). It was one of the last days of the school year, and the teachers didn’t care anymore, and it was an exceptionally beautiful day. We were cleaning the classroom and were allowed to listen to *any* music we wanted to (ONLY RICH PEOPLE HAD PHONES BACK THEN THE REST OF US PEASANTS LISTENED TO CDS). Boy lit up when this opportunity arose and pulled out his treasured Hybrid Theory CD, which he conveniently had stored in his backpack for such an occasion. “I guess it’s ok, put it on” the teacher said, obvious apathy and resignation written on her face. As if this would ever happen in today’s classroom haha… and then Linkin Park’s aggressive angst hit my ears for the very first time. It was the heaviest music I had ever been exposed to and it initially felt like an assault. As the songs drifted on though, I noticed that Boy was the happiest that I had ever seen him. I suspect that it was his softened features that softened my heart to the hard hitting music, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I was just always predisposed to heaviness and just hadn’t known because of lack of exposure. It’s the big “chicken or the egg” conundrum of my life. It doesn’t matter though, my life was irrevocably changed. I officially liked my own music, and it just happened that “my” music now was Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory.

I suppose this is as good a time as ever to tell you about my blog name. “Transcendent” is after the 3 transcendentals of God, or the 3 ways that God reveals Himself on this earth: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. (I was told by someone whose intellect I admire that everyone is drawn to one transcendental in particular-- mine is Beauty, in case you were dying to know). “Theory” is after the first album that I truly loved, Hybrid Theory. There you have it.

I subsequently secretly bought Hybrid Theory  and secretly listened to it on the living room stereo when no one was home, but alas it was soon discovered and confiscated (it wasn’t Christian). So I went on an alternate route-- find heavy music that was “Christian.” Enter Thousand Foot Krutch, one of the greatest loves of my life. Later came Skillet, and Emery, and The Classic Crime, and Pillar, and Disciple, and Family Force 5, and Red. “Borderline Screamo” is how I described them back then, but I’d classify them all as “Hard Rock” today.

Even though I only listened to anything that classified itself as “Christian,” I found myself distressing over the lyrics of my songs frequently (of course I had them all memorized). If they were Christian, shouldn’t they be praising God? Shouldn’t they only sing about turning to God? Proclaiming truth?! Oftentimes I found lyrics to be about sin and about despair and it was so confusing to me. I struggled to reconcile my immature ideas of what it meant to be a Christian with my Christian music. This lead me to an eventual rejection of all of it, which resulted in a phase of ONLY Praise & Worship (plus Matt Maher, duh). And then I heard Christopher West (I swear he’s not the only influence in my life), realized I demonized everything, realized that our desires for God could be found in everything, started listening to Country (very unexpectedly and traditionally uncharacteristic of me), which lead to Pop, which I eventually got bored off, which lead me to listen to my “high school” music again, which lead me to Metal, which leads me to today.

Now that you are enlightened by my own personal little music history, let’s talk about what I’m trying to accomplish with all of this.

I want to be a beacon of light in the dark places.

I am deeply struck by the words of Catherine Doherty, Servant of God: “Go without fear into the depths of men’s hearts.” I think that she is telling us that we have to enter into the darkness and despair and gore of the world and stretch out our hand to others, as Jesus did when He reached for Adam’s hand in His descent to hell. Men's hearts today are entrenched in darkness and are depressed and anxious and indifferent and lonely and are used to being used and are discouraged and cower in fear and accept a mediocre fate. I say this because this is MY OWN heart. Sometimes I feel like because I’m Catholic, I shouldn’t ever feel despair because “I know better.” But here’s the thing-- I’m a human being living and breathing in this day and age and guess what? I despair. That’s just a fact. To pretend that I don’t does you and it does me a great disservice. If anything, we need to feel like there’s someone out there who can empathize with us. Even though I know that Christ has conquered all, my heart is still learning that truth. Until it does, which it fully won’t until I’ve left this earth, I have to rage war with my demons every day. And strive to find God in the things that delight me. So do you.

Catherine also says that “the joys and the hopes, the grief and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ” (The Gospel Without Compromise).  I’m convinced that in order to be Christ in this world, we need to identify with the people around us. In the words of Pope Francis, “the Shepherd should smell like the sheep.” I hope these quotes adequately communicate the depths of my heart which I have such a difficult time articulating-- I’ve just got to be where the people are. I’ve got to know. I’ve got to understand the thoughts and logic and hearts of the people. I’ve got to be connected with them. I’ve got to empathize. I’ve got to speak the same language. How else could I ever strive to love? I guess what I’m trying to say is this is why I dive into all music wholeheartedly, prudent or not. This is where the people are. Why would I stay in a safe bubble.

So. That all being said. All I want to do is “review” the important albums of my life, as well as those that I find have some semblance of substance. Most of all I want to identify the “glimmers of God” that I inevitably find in music. Let’s be real though, this blog is a very self-indulgent affair. It delights me to air my thoughts out in the open. Remember when I said that I like to redeem things? This is the manifestation of that. Maybe it’s a quest for salvation, working it out in “fear and trembling,” trying to justify and redeem the music close to me. It’s also a recognition of the yearning for God in the human heart. In music-- good music-- part of the artist’s soul is revealed and you are made privy to some of their deepest hauntings. I want to unearth those gems and illuminate them. When the light shines through, the thing just might refract rainbows. We’ll see.

So, truth, goodness, and beauty. Let’s unveil it.