September 20 of this year the mainstream rock band, Disturbed, released their latest album, Ten Thousand Fists. I’ve been listening to it lately and just love the music. Their unique sound, as pioneered by their album, The Sickness, has achieved a great balance between metal and rapcore. Almost every track is jam-packed with adrenaline that automatically makes you want to at least bounce your head to their pretty solid beat. Some of the tracks, like Guarded, are definitely going on my Zen Micro’s work-out playlist for 24-Hour Fitness.

Other tracks, however, I have a hard time listening to, and for good reason. Although most of the songs address issues of personal pain and disappointment with life and society, some include lyrics with negative spiritual overtones. One song, Deify, is even outright blasphemy!

Deify chorus:
You’re no immortal
I won’t let them
Deify you
They view you as the new messiah
Deify you
Renew belief in some demented man

I reserve no apologies for utilizing my “next track” button when songs like this start playing.

If you choose to listen to this album, be aware that the band’s spiritual outlook on life attacks Christianity, offers no hope for struggles, and offers harmful advice for dealing with pain. Why anyone would choose to live like this is beyond me.

(Due to the graphical nature of their album cover, I have decided not to post it for public display. However, having said that I know most of you are curious now. Use this link if you need a visual of it: Ten Thousand Fists album cover)

“Our father, God, Allah, we thank you for this moment in time. Bless Kanye, bless his album, take over his album and take it to the highest place possible . . . In the name of Jesus, in the name of Allah and the spirit of our inner essence. Amen.�
- Prayer by rapper Common prior to a Kanye West concert, Blender, September 2005, p. 126.

lol! Who’s he praying to? If he actually had any idea about the “gods” he’s praying to he’d know that his prayer is one of the most rediculous ideas out there. Here’s a guy who I guess trying to please a lot of people but in doing so proves his total ignorance of who God is, Allah, and whatever “inner essence” is. These concepts are all completely opposed and contradictory to each other. He might as well pray to the gods of oil, water, and gravy.

“My body was made for sin.�
- Singer/actress Jessica Simpson, Blender, September 2005, p. 46.

Jessica is going downhill fast. Whats’ the deal with her? She used to be the last female pop artist that held some kind of morals, but after her sexually-charged appearance in Dukes of Hazzard and a statement like this, I start wondering where her morals went. When asked about her role in the film, she says that God put her here on this earth to make people happy. “If showing clevage makes people happy, then that’s what I need to do. Besides, I work d*** hard for my body so I’m gonna show it.” She’s lost my respect.

Furthermore, The Parents Television Council examined 136 shows on MTV over a six month period and discovered there were 1,480 instances of swear words (938 bleeped and 542 non-bleeped) in the 71 hours of programming studied. The PTC also reports that 73% and 78% of 12-19 year-old watch MTV. That’s more than a swear word every 3 minutes! Plus, the network’s intentional agenda of promoting casual relationships, meaningless sexuality, and selfish “do what feels good” mesasges should make a Christian reconsider if anything positive could come out of consuming it’s programs.

On the other hand, the Christian band Relient K is making the charts in the mainstream market. Their music video of Be My Escape from their latest album made it into the top 10 on MTV’s TRL. The band even performed the song live on TRL on August 16, 2005. Watch the video on MTV’s site by clicking HERE.

I love it when God uses unsaved worldly people to unconsciously share His gospel to the world. All people are created by God and thus cannot help but unintentionally communicate His message, even when they are directly opposed to it. In the case of the successful mainstream band, Good Charlotte, it’s hard to hear their new ablum released in late 2004 and not hear its dripping theological overtones.

The album, The Chronicles of Life and Death, clearly communicates that band is searching for something deeper and more meaningful in life, and by doing so they unintentionally point to God as the answer to their search. Check out some of these lyrics: Continue Reading

Ya know when you first listen to a new band’s CD and you’re like, “Ugh, I don’t really like any of this stuff” and you decide not to listen to them again? There’s a lot of Christian bands like that. You hear a couple songs from ‘em and you decide they’re another sub-par band that some Christian record company signed. That’s how I was the first couple times I listened to Seven Place’s album, Hear Us Say Jesus. Not really sure why I even listened to it again because I had the “lame” impression several times, but for some reason the past couple days some of the songs just really clicked. Now I listen to tracks like See the rain, Even when and All in my head on repeat (including as I write this). Kinda weird. You can click on their album cover below to hear 30-second clips from the album. You may hear and think it’s a weak album, in which case I completely understand why, but give it some time and a couple tries and it might wear on ya.

Illegal music downloads are still pretty easy to find. Although there are several legal pay-for music services out there, two years ago none seemed to really convince me that the service was worth paying money for. For the amount of time I’d have to put in to paying for something I could just as easily download it for free and not have any restrictions on the music file. The obvious key for legal online music companies to be successful is to make legal music so simple, so versitle, and so flexible that it’s worth paying the money for. In my opinion, these companies haven’t really hit that point until just recently. The legal online music community is finally at the place where I will gladly pay to use their services to save me the time and energy I’d otherwise put into illegal downloads.

Sometime around last year I subscribed to Rhapsody music service, a legal online music company, in striving to become a little more legal with my music downloads. I paid $8.95/month for unlimited access to all the streaming music my little heart could desire. The service was simple to use, I could easily have all my music syncronized on any computer, and I had the option to stream the music, saving me lots and lots of diskspace. The downside was that I could only listen to the music on a computer — I couldn’t transfer any of it to a portable mp3 player or burn them to CD without buying the track for $0.89 per song, which could obviously add up pretty quick.

Well, along with recent efforts to become completely legal with all my music, Rhapsody has added a new service that not only makes that possible for me, but also makes it worth the extra money. Now, for the cost of one album a month ($15), I can download and transfer an unlimited number of tracks to my 5 GB Creative Zen Micro mp3 player to take with me wherever I want. That’s somewhere around 1,500 songs I can now take anywhere for the price of one album a month. And the process is so simple: just connect the mp3 player to your computer, easily find the music you want (out of 1,000,000+ tracks available), drag it to your mp3 player, let it sync, and you’re good to go. I can also sync individual playlists or use the Creative Zen Micro as an external hard drive to store normal computer files. It’s not that I can’t find this music for free in other places, it’s just that now paying $15/month for such simplicity and ease of use is totally worth it.

So yeah, as I write this I am downloading hundreds of songs off Rhapsody and sync’ing it to my Zen Micro, all legally! Not that this makes anyone else excited besides me, but just thought I’d share anyway.

In other brief news, we leave for the missions trip a week from today. Oh so much planning and little details to remember and work out. Hopefully by the end of today I’ll finally have the bible studies finished and sent out to the leaders to review this week. It looks like we’ll have over 40 campers, which will make camp much different from last year when we only accepted 18. That’s 220% growth! Good thing all the Redeemer people are coming to help with that. Whew…

Also, Pastor Rol gave me the option of preaching on Memorial Day since he’ll be out of town. He usually arranges to bring in guest speakers when he’s away, but he asked me if I’d like to teach that Sunday instead. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to take his offer, but I just may. I would conduct the message much differently than a normal sermon because, one, I hate “preaching,” two, I always like to find new effective ways of doing things, and three, I can get away with doing weird things since I’m the youth pastor. I think it’s kinda expected of me now anyway.

Okay, off to do laundry, food shopping, cleaning up around the apartment, and working on missions trip bible studies, and of course filling up my Zen Micro.

I just realized I can post my Rapshody playlists on here. Here’s what I’ve been diggin’ lately (well, tonight anyway as I put this site together):

1. Right Here (Album Version) – Staind
2. The Wait Is Over – Disciple
3. Stripped Away – Disciple
4. Into Black – Disciple
5. Only You – Disciple
6. Rise Up – Disciple
7. Worth It All – Disciple
8. Shine Down – Disciple
9. Falling Over – Disciple
10. Go Ahead – Disciple
11. Beautiful – Disciple
12. Be The Quiet – Disciple
13. Backstabber – Disciple
14. All We Have Is Now – Disciple
15. Tribute – Disciple
16. Heavy – Collective Soul
17. She Said – Collective Soul
18. Shine – Collective Soul
19. Energy – Collective Soul
20. Run – Collective Soul
21. Gel – Collective Soul
22. Precious Declaration – Collective Soul
23. Why Pt. 2 – Collective Soul
24. The World I Know – Collective Soul
25. Next Homecoming – Collective Soul
26. Listen – Collective Soul
27. December – Collective Soul
28. Forgiveness – Collective Soul