Review Summary: Fallenmania, Part 32
For Christmas Eve, here’s one of the biggest Christian fallenmaniac albums of the 2000s, and the series’ first album with mostly male vocals. It’s an album that, oddly enough, I was aware of, I really enjoyed some of its songs while I was starting to explore my musical taste, but I had never listened to in full until now. It turned out to be more fallenmaniac than I expected, and more interesting. Yes, it’s time to talk about Skillet’s “Comatose”.
Before this album, Skillet had been active in the Christian rock circles, where they were known for being like a religious Three Days Grace (but from names alone, which one would you guess is the serious, religious one and which is the secular one?). “Comatose” was the album that brought them to the mainstream, and where they added symphonic and industrial elements to their sound, with some pretty good results. “Rebirthing” is one hell of an opener, if I may, with its dark violins and heavy Going Under riffs building up to that kind of soaring chorus that all great Christian rock songs tend to have, a chorus that combines John Cooper’s raspy voice and his wife and guitarist Korey’s clearer, powerful voice. The soaring guitar solo, and the lyrics, which could either be about how God gave you the will to live, or about being resurrected to start a new, better life, are also a great touch. I still think it’s one of Skillet’s best songs.
What about the rest? “Looking for Angels” begins with a catchy, angsty chorus, and alternates between spoken words and singing. “The Last Night” has some nice piano and heavy guitars, and a sort of dialogue between Korey playing a depressed, mistreated girl and John comforting her, promising “that’s the last night you’ll ever be alone”. This song makes great use of the band’s two singers, and is one of the few tracks that come close to “Rebirthing”.
Some of the songs don’t. “Better than Drugs” has a heavy riff that sounds almost like Linkin Park without electronic elements, it has a real kick, but I can’t get over the fact that its chorus is John Cooper yelling “You’re better than drugs, your love is like wine”, to God. The title track has a similar topic about how he needs “an overdose of you”, but the song’s powerful chorus, guitars and strings are at least enjoyable, and the “I don’t wanna live, I don’t wanna breathe” easily gets stuck in my head. “Yours to Hold” is a power ballad with a simple melody designed to make you cry immediately, but there are too many songs like that. The song’s violins are too hidden in the background, treated as an afterthought.
“The Older I Get” is another part acoustic, part rock track, this time about how John’s life starts slipping away from him as he ages. He was probably too young for a song like that, and the song itself sounds nice, but also like a bland copy of Three Days Grace, which Skillet has often been accused of being. Right after “Older”, there’s “Those Nights”, which has exactly the same melody, same leftover from “Minutes to Midnight” and “One-X” feel, but with some industrial sounds.
That’s not to say that everything after “Last Night” is bad. “Falling Inside the Black” has some speed and urgency, a nicely dark industrial and vaguely symphonic background, and finally some interventions from Korey’s voice. That’s great, because I could have done without John’s “Falling inside the black, black, black!” yell, in his raspiest voice. I like raspy voices, but his voice often sounds a little grating, and he’s not particularly subtle or graceful in his delivery. Considering the album’s style, you can’t help but compare him to Adam Gontier and Chester Bennington, and well, he’s obviously not as good.
But there’s one song near the end that can make us forget all of this band’s weaknesses, and show what they are truly capable of. “Whispers in the Dark” has a wonderfully gloomy mix of heavy riffs and strings, and tons of conviction and angst in John’s voice as he promises to save you, just follow his whispers in the dark. The last part, with the guitar solo, dark strings and last chorus, is truly impressive. In the lyrics, is John pretending to be God, or claiming that human love is just as real as divine love, and can save you as well? Pretty poetic stuff, which you don’t really find in the rest of the album.
This song, along with “Rebirthing”, is my favorite Skillet song, and makes you really wish they had more songs like those. Because of those songs and some other nice moments on the album, I’d say this is among Skillet’s best work, and probably their only mainstream album you need to hear. They’ve been making the same album over and over for years now, but this one is good, mostly. It was nice to actually review an album I knew but not really, and find out that it was better than I expected. Its main flaws were not preachiness like I feared, but rather the repetitiveness and gaps in quality between songs. As for its derivativeness, it made the album enjoyable because it reminds me of things I enjoy, rather than making it too predictable. It’s a nice time capsule of the mid-2000s, all the rock bands from that time period rolled into one in the best of ways. And it has a nice dose of fallenmania, which creates the album’s most interesting moments. If the fallenmaniac inspiration is responsible for the album’s best parts, then you’ve made a good fallenamniac album. We’ll get more of those in the future, but your next Christmas present will be something completely different.
