You see, Bloodline Severed are putting on a Saturday night show at a coffee shop, certainly not the usual venue of choice for snarling metalheads. The peculiarity doesn’t end there, however. The coffee shop is Confluence Coffee, a nonprofit business operated by the River Church, and Bloodline Severed is a hardcore metal band whose love for Jesus is just as pervasive as the intense volume blaring from their Marshall stacks.
The Power of Christ compels him to rock and Weaver wouldn’t have it any other way. Though he and others in the band enjoy plenty of secular metal on their own time, the music that they write and play is of a clear Christian nature. There’s no beating around the bush with merely positive themes that could be construed as ambiguously spiritual. It’s pointed and grounded deeply in the religious faith of each of the four band members.
“If we did anything else in this band, I wouldn’t be in it,” Weaver declared. “Positive music is fine, but it just doesn’t work for me. It’s either all the way or not at all.” Weaver wants to be clear that the band’s intention is not to shove their religion down anyone’s throat. They make it a point never to use their stage as a pulpit in secular environs, though they may say a few words about their mission during the occasional guitar change in churches or other places they deem appropriate.
They play just as many bars as they do churches all over the Southeast, but their message is consistent throughout. “We just tell the people in bars that we are a Christian band and that we love Jesus Christ with all our heart,” Weaver said. “If anyone would like to talk to us about that, they can do so back at the merch table.”
Without that kind of preface, the evangelical nature of their music would be completely lost on most. Like many other metal bands, the guttural howling makes interpreting the lyrics word for word nearly impossible.
But Weaver contends that their vehicle of choice facilitates the release of emotional frustrations and is simply an alternative worship experience, especially among teenagers. It strays far from traditional pew-and-pulpit worship service, of course, but similar styles are becoming more and more commonplace and accepted among progressive-minded ministries.
One of those is EagleRock Ministries in Archdale, which operates Greensboro’s Caf Jam. While the somewhat vanilla exterior of the venue on High Point Road can be deceptive, the interior houses one of the more sophisticated lighting and sound rigs in the greater Triad area. When they aren’t playing host to local and national Christian rock, hip-hop and jazz acts, Pastor TL Lineberry and his all-volunteer staff hold Sunday night
worship services. Why Sunday night? Like any other live music venue,
they work until the wee hours, and early-morning service isn’t
practical for many in the congregation.
That’s not to say that
Lineberry, affectionately known as “Pastor T,” is a gun-slinging rookie
minister who does things his own way, tradition be damned.
He
has shepherded his own flock and been a youth pastor for more than 30
years, but became disenchanted with the conventional church model that
he saw as stubborn, allowing young people to drift away. It seems
unnecessary to compare sustaining a church to a company growing its
customer base, but sometimes the only choice is to adapt the business
plan to meet the needs of a critical demographic.
“I saw that
the pews, the choirs and the organs just came to represent boredom for
the kids,” Lineberry said. “Meanwhile, I’m standing there in a
three-piece suit expecting them to relate to the message.”
Lineberry
opened Caf Jam in October 1998 as an unconventional approach to youth
outreach and hasn’t looked back. He’s provided a place for musicians
that often felt turned away and outright shunned because of their
methods of worshipping. He receives as many as 30 booking inquiries
every week from bands looking to play his state-of-the-art venue and
loyal crowds that keep the operation going.
Susan Borwick, a
professor of music at Wake Forest University, associated faculty at the
divinity school and an ordained minister, sympathizes with Lineberry’s
stance. She agrees that music has proved itself to be an effective tool
for fellowship and community building.
“The most common
question that young people ask today is, ‘How is the gospel relevant,’”
Borwick stated. “Christian popular music helps because people often
learn their beliefs through the music they sing and hear.” But
church-sponsored stages aren’t the only entities in the area becoming
more receptive to the growing popularity of spiritual music.
Full-service bars are opening their doors as well, such as the case
with the Soundvent in Thomasville. Susan Montgomery and Mike Loughlin
have owned the Soundvent since January with a primary focus on hard
rock. But the growing demand for concerts of an evangelical nature
could not be ignored and they have instituted a model to accommodate
it. “We wanted to diversify because we’ve always had the metal bands on
the weekends and we wanted to pick up the clientele,” Montgomery said.
“We especially wanted to open up to Christian bands because they don’t
really have a lot of places to play.” Montgomery’s goal is to reserve
Thursday night for Christian acts while maintaining regular booking on
weekends, but that isn’t expected to happen consistently until the
summer. As it stands, the majority of their customers are of high
school age, thus limited by curfews. Even many of the bands themselves
are underage, preventing them from playing late shows on weeknights due
to labor laws. While Montgomery is moderately happy with the handful of
Thursday events that the Soundvent has had, the new hours haven’t
completely caught on yet. “People think the place is still closed on
Thursdays, so we’re hoping these few nights help people adjust before
the summer,” she said. “But even the smaller crowds we’ve had have had
a very positive attitude.”
It is that same upbeat nature of
the fans that belie the stereotypes to which detractors of hard,
aggressive music often point. Weaver says musicians like him have been
subjected to what he laments as the reproachful nature of
traditionalists who use the premise of “in the world, but not of it” as
the primary argument against his methods. He understands why some might
disapprove of the style, but asserts that looking a certain way or
playing a certain type of music is not synonymous with being faithful.
‘If we did anything else in this band, I wouldn’t be in it. Positive music is fine, but it just doesn’t work for me. It’s either all the way or not at all.’
“Psalm 150:5 says to ‘praise Him with loud, crashing symbols’ and
that’s what we do,” Weaver said. “All we are is a little fishing lure
trying to reel people in with good, positive music that uplifts
Christ.”
Criticism doesn’t come primarily from religious
conservative religious institutions, however. A considerable element of
secular media have long taken a derisive stance toward Christian rock
music, often deriding it as a trite, hackneyed art form and even
falling prey to crass commercialism in some of its most popular
instances.
Like most worthwhile satirical commentary,
criticism of popular Christian rock music in contemporary media
certainly has its roots in some modicum of reality.
One of the
most notorious instances came in a 2003 episode of “South Park”
entitled “Christian Rock Hard,” where characters formed a
religious-themed rock group solely for financial gain. While the
characters’ modus operandi was to use lyrics from popular songs
and merely replace words such as “baby” with references to Jesus
Christ, such a notion isn’t as completely
farfetched
as it may sound. It was simply a reverberation of a commonly held
belief among both secular and Christian musicians alike that the genre,
even at its best, was not a knock-off of ideas well in place. The idea
that Christian rock, particularly during the ’80s and ’90s, is bereft
of originality was even expressed by one of the first to take up its
reins.
Drummer Kris Klingensmith of the now-defunct act
Barnabas, possibly the first Christian metal act on record, had as much
to say in a 1999 interview with Christian Metal Resource.
“The
Body of Christ has never been very good when it comes to original
thinking, but she is a master at taking what the world is doing and
making it her own,” Klingensmith stated. “If you want to know what
Christian music will be doing tomorrow, all you need to do is see what
the secular guys are doing today.”
Klingensmith also added
that since Christian musicians have always imitated the styles set off
by the secular world, the advent of Christian metal was highly
predictable. Along with that came the inevitable prospect of doctrinal
conflict, however, as Barnabas and similar bands came under fire from
various church organizations and the religious media.
Jerry
Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart and others objected to heavy metal, primarily
due to its more insidious associations, being framed in a Christian
perspective, with most followers of the King James-only doctrine and
Seventh Day Adventists opposing all Christian music in a secular
context.
Though Barnabas eventually disbanded in 1986, another
act became the first Christian metal band to record a platinum album
and also the first of the Contemporary Christian category.
Stryper’s To Hell with the Devil won
them a Grammy nomination and extensive airplay on MTV, but they would
eventually abandon their religious themes for an entirely secular style
in 1990. Unable to withstand criticism from their fans for the switch,
the band splintered and eventually faltered permanently in 1992. It may
have been a high-water mark for Christian headbangers, but the genre
would by no means disappear.
In fact, as time progressed, some
churches did become more accepting of the style as its relationship
with the darker metal subculture dissipated. This change of heart was
tacitly encouraged by a disturbing trend among many of its younger
followers that, though acknowledged for years, wasn’t made public until
2002. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Council on Family Life reported
that an estimated 88 percent of evangelically-raised children left the
church shortly after graduating from high school, leaving the church
desperate to find a way to connect with their waning youth population.
“Music
has always been really powerful in transforming people and it has
always had sort of a generational identity with it,” Borwick stated.
“We’re seeing it less and less as a popular style and more as an
effective way for people to hear the church’s message.”
Though
its popularity with a crucial audience would eventually force the hand
of some in the church in favor of Christian rock, it didn’t necessarily
happen overnight. The seeds of progress were planted within the last 50
years as rock grew and young people continued to associate with it. The
introduction of popular styles in the church can be traced back to the
years immediately following the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s,
where the Catholic Church began permitting the use of folk music in
mass. But even then, many Catholics became appalled at what they viewed
as the iconoclasm of sacred music and democratization of the liturgy.
Scottish
composer James MacMillan argued that the acceptance of such styles made
congregational singing impractical, contradicting centuries-old tenets
of fellowship. Since the primary instrumental accompaniment comes from
the guitar rather than the organ, there wasn’t a powerful enough
catalyst to keep an entire congregation singing in unison and provide
the instrumental support they had grown to expect from the organ.
But
as worship services began to evolve to meet the needs of their
parishioners, it was inevitable for the old ways to blend with the new.
With secular habits infiltrating worship practices over generations,
the roots of contemporary music are firmly planted within.
According
to Borwick, much of this was due to the natural by-product of bridging
of generational gaps. “Those who are leaders in the church today are
the same who experienced the birth of popular song in the church,”
Borwick said. “It was effective in their lives and they associate their
religious purposes with pop music because people tend to respond to
their own tastes and needs.”
Given the discursive nature of
religious practices in general, it remains difficult to presume that
the vehicles of bands like Bloodline Severed will ever gain unilateral
acceptance. With a lifespan that pales in comparison to that of the
hundreds of years of tradition, it exists as nothing more than a trend
that’s inexplicably tied to its worldly counterpart at this point.
But
for Weaver, his bandmates and other righteous rockers, their mission
isn’t about winning an argument over the validity of the music they
play; it’s the spiritual quest to share their faith with as many as
possible.
“It’s about being there to help others relate to the
message in places where it might not ever go otherwise,” Weaver said.
“Sometimes it just takes a nudge.”
