Oh, Sleeper (Album Review)

Oh, Sleeper

(The following is a CD review of Oh Sleeper, if you don’t like metalcore, feel free not to read.)

So I was talking to a friend at work and I realized that when I said, ‘I like metal’ and so did he, we were really talking about two different types of music. When he meant Pantera, I was talking about As I Lay Dying. This intense realization required me to sharpen the sword that I call my music expertise (right….) into the genre of what we call metalcore.

Embrace…Oh Sleeper. The first few seconds start slow and have you thinking, ‘What is this, I thought it was a metalcore album?” Then within the blinking of an eyelid harp like accurate and just as delicately sounding slice through what you thought was your brain and now realized was an overpowered emotional outburst like that of a car whose red line was hit 5 minutes ago, and your still driving. Fortunately for the car of “When I Am God” for Oh, Sleeper, it never overheats, but only grows in speed and thuds. You will be singing along within the first of the anthems that rip through your brain. They precisely put in the right place all of the breakdowns helping you to want for more. The vocals are very well placed and as far as hardcore goes, understandable which is nice. Break out the liner notes (do you young ones even know what that is?) and start following along for it is definitely worth it. The arrows of this armored march definitely blot out the sun.

The one thing that makes this album, and most other Christian hardcore (and by most I mean all, not unlike when Calvinist talk about their definition of the word ‘world’) is that they are constantly on the search to create something interesting, something unique. And on the line of the anti-historical cocaine that they inherited from the postmodern world, they sniff up only shadows of a false interpretation of biblical reality. They create a world very cleverly masked by amazing music that makes no accurate reference to the bible. They are fighting a bible that has more to do with Frank Perreti’s books about ‘so called spiritual reality’ that does not exist in the bible. They make great allusions, but to what? Have they no understanding of the historical context of the word bishop? Well, like most other Christian Hardcore/Metalcore bands their music is radically progressive and thoroughly entertaining, but about as empty of actual Christian witness as a shadow is the substance of a real person. Great music, but try again on your theology. Perhaps this is a little harsh of a criticism, but I say like Carl Trueman that the world needs a cold hearted cynical historian to look down the annals of history and critique things in the light of the continual vomit of history repeating itself.

However I would say this: that they gave the album a great shot. It does lift up the soul in a kind of honestly that has not been engrained in since the old days. Not a total loss, but what isn’t nowadays. If you buy it for metalcore, your stoked, but don’t try to get any good reasoning out of it.

Did I buy the album? Yes. Did I like it? Yes, will I recommend it? Yes. Will I pray for their theology to be biblical? Yes.