WELCOME TO THE MODERN ROCK & METAL CHANNEL!
This is the first video of a series that I intend to bring to the channel, a biographical record of bands that were influential or that stood out in the world's modern rock and metal scene!
The name Oh, Sleeper references the passage of Ephesians 5:14 which says; "Awake, O thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee."
Oh, Sleeper was formed in 2006 by former members of the post-hardcore emo band Terminal, who soon after the band's breakup, and this is not a pun because the band broke up, would start this new project.
With Ryan Conley on drums, Lucas Starr on bass, James Erwin on rhythm guitar, Shane Blay on rhythm guitar and clean vocals and Micah Kinard on lead screamo vocals, they released their first studio album entitled When I Am God in 2007 on Solid Records states records, and go on tour with established bands in the Christian scene like Demon Hunter, Living Sarifice, Underoath and Norma Jean.
In 2009 they released their most successful album so far, Son of the Morning, a very ambitious album within the Christian scene because it is an apocalyptic duel between God and the devil and about the rapture in its lyrics, so ambitious that the guys managed to enter the position 120 of the billboard 200 that year and also were among the 7 best Christian albums of the year.
With this album, Oh Sleeper marked their identity in the Christian scene as a controversial band not for their acts as musicians in private life, but for the lyrics that sometimes put the Christian faith in check as a means to believe on the subsequent album, the children's album of fire, or extreme violence on the part of God against satan in the final judgment represented by the lyrics of the song The Finisher where we have the following expression "They will sing while I cut their horns" this iconic phrase that originated the symbol of the band that lasts until today in their albums, the broken pentagram or broken pentagram, a kind of inverted pentagram but without satan's horns representing his defeat for God.
In 2013, after the end of the contract with solid state records, Oh Sleeper set up a crowdfunding with their fans to launch a new EP entitled The Titan that addresses a sci-fi theme with the organization The Titan corporation controlling humanity in its songs and along with this EP it is announced that the band would enter a hiatus, thus releasing its members for new projects as was the case of guitarist and back vocalist Shane Blay who, along with the members of As I lay dying who were also in a " possible" hiatus created the band Wovenwar.
After 3 years of hiatus, they returned to the studios in 2016 and released a new single, Oxygen, taking many by surprise and leaving everyone waiting for a new cd. This new single is very reminiscent of the songs from the EP The Titan that they released in 2013, both in lyrics and in sound, using and abusing the technique that Shane Blay uses to make drop scales, always half a tone or even a whole tone below or above regarding the other instruments, this characteristic was very present in the other singles that were released in 2018 "Decimation & Burial" then "Fissure" in 2019, in the EP "The Island" also in 2019 and finally in the cd Bloodied/Unbowed also in 2019 .
All Oh, Sleeper albums culminate in an epic story, and this new album Bloodied/unbowed couldn't be different. The story revolves around two characters fighting in a resistance army against the same Titan Corporation where one of these characters after seeing the battle leaves his army and decides to fight against it, and against his own captain and the other stays in the allied army to continue fighting and defending the resistance, making an allusion to those who weakened in the faith. Both meet again in the course of the album, marked by their respective difficulties, but still inflexible in the passion as it is narrated in the whole album, that is, the portrait of a society without feeling, without emotion, living only to live.
My opinion of the band is that everyone matures, ages and goes through different experiences and this results in changes in sound, lyrics and etc. Just like the first albums, the current songs have a weight and dramatic load that accompany our lives and our challenges, especially for those who lived the MetalCore scene in the mid-2000s onwards like me, so I can say that the last works speak a lot with me simply because they managed to be a different band on the scene, which is not concerned with passing on a vision that "we are Christians and praise be to the creator" but about their difficulties and still imprint all that within a fiction like them they did on the last albums, so we can only wait for a new album.
1 янв 2023
