September 2012

I have been known to wait until the last minute to write my blogs. This means they usually get written on Thursday night or Friday morning, but today, I'm really cutting it close here. At this moment in time, it is 11:19am, and I have just started my blog. I think I need to get on a schedule.

My last minute topic is...SKILLET! What else can I write an entire page of information on in less than thirty minutes anyway? More specifically, I want to address Skillet's new album, not Awake, but the new album set to release late summer of 2012. Such a painfully long time to wait for new Skillet music, especially with Awake being such a disappointment to me and many other Panheads.

Now, Awake wasn't a bad album. It just wasn't the album we were all waiting for and expecting. If you know your Skillet history, Skillet officially became a rock band after they released Collide in 2003. All the albums before then were either more electronic or softer rock. After Collide came Comatose in 2006, and in my opinion, this is the album that made Skillet so popular, both in the secular and Christian genres. It's definitely my favorite album, with songs like Rebirthing and Whispers In The Dark rocking my face off. This was the album Skillet was promoting when I became a really obsessive Panhead. I listened to Skillet for a long time, but Comatose was the album for me. It was the first Skillet record I ever bought, and I loved it to death. I love Collide as well, but Comatose was different and awesome in it's own unique way. I don't think there will ever be another album as awesome as Comatose.

When they announced the new album in 2008, I freaked out. By this time, I owned almost all of the Skillet CDs you could buy, blasted them in my room on a daily basis, and had my own handmade poster of them in my room. Some people in my church even called me Skillet instead of Selena. I followed the production of this album like bankers watch their stocks. I ate up the little bits and pieces of the new album that they allowed to be released on the podcast. It was so exciting for me.

You can imagine that when August 2009 finally came around, and Awake finally hit the stores, I was very excited. I had actually already listened to all but two of the songs on the new album, but they were low quality anyways, and I needed a CD copy of this record to add to my collection. I bought it the day after it came out (only because my dad refused to take me on the day it came out), and immediately put it to my harsh tests.

It was a major disappointment. Were the songs bad? Only a couple. Was it what I had expected? Not at all. I knew Skillet by now, and I was expecting something harder, something fresher, not this pop stuff. But still, I listened to it until I had every lyric, guitar solo, and drum beat memorized. It was going to be a long time until I had anything new anyways.

So Awake let me down. I went into a period in my life I like to call my most un-Panhead days since I was 12. Skillet was even not my favorite band for a short while there. But talk of the next album drew me back. I was riding on the hope that maybe John Cooper would come to his senses and realize that the Panheads wanted something different. In the interviews talking about the next album, he does mention that he wants to go back to the Collide era, which is Skillet talk for harder rock. This has given me great joy in my heart. This is what I was hoping for with Awake.

Another thing that has inspired me to hold on to my favorite band a little longer is Seth Morrison. I will miss Ben Kasica very much on this next album, but Seth's guitar playing is a little different than Ben's, more crunchy and less classical. I'm sure his influence on the new record will bring a welcome change.

That's about it. I'm going to buckle down for the next nine months or so, not let myself get too excited, and hope for a Collide like album. Skillet, please don't let me down again. I'm trusting you.

It is now 11:42am. I'm pretty good. B)