Music Review: Skillet - Awake

Genre: Rock
Label: INO Records
Release Date: August 25, 2009

Rating: 3.5/5

I’ve been a fan of Skillet since their self-titled debut about 10 years ago. I was hooked by songs like “Gasoline” and “Saturn.” Very little in the Christian music scene sounded like that at the time, and I was thrilled to find them. Hey, You, I Love Your Soul followed, with its electronica-rock sound, which intrigued me. Songs like “Locked In A Cage” showcased a hard rock sound combined well with the electronic elements, while “You Love (Is Better Than Life)” and “More Faithful” were beautifully-crafted ballads that were lyrically moving.

Much has changed since then. Skillet has modified their sound over and over, finally experimenting with a “symphonic rock” sound on 2006’s Comatose, which garnered all types of praise among critics and fans. The band has returned now with Awake, and the shifting styles seem to have settled on the sound that made Comatose so successful. Awake packs a similar power to it, combining crunchy guitars, strings, and soaring melodies. The album is enjoyable, but in some ways, it made me long for the days past.

As I said, the song-writing and sound on Awake are both very similar to Comatose, and the first two songs, “Hero” and “Monster,” would have fit right in on that album. There are more slow songs this time around, with “Don’t Wake Me,” “One Day Too Late,” “Should’ve When You Could’ve,” and “Forgiven” doing excellent mainstream rock ballad imitations (think Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman, etc.). The lyrics deal mostly with relationships and seem targeted mainly at teens, which make up a large part of Skillet’s now-giant fan base (in fact, the album debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200).

The crunchy guitars return on the powerful “Sometimes,” as John Cooper sings of the struggle in believers between fighting sin and giving in to temptation. The real surprise on the album to me was “Lucy,” a piano-based ballad sung to a girl named Lucy who has apparently passed away. It’s difficult to pick out exactly who Lucy was, but the longing and sadness of experiencing her loss is poignant in the lyrics. It served as an interesting change of pace to close out the album.

Overall, fans of the band will likely not be very disappointed with Awake. They’ve settled into their identity, and the production is again top-notch. While reviewing this, I went back and listened to their debut and Hey You… again, though, and I was just a little nostalgic for those days, when Skillet was a pushing the envelope a little more and there was more of an edge to things. That shouldn’t really take away from this very solid album, though, and I can still enjoy Awake for what it is, a polished modern rock collection that will keep Skillet right near the top of the Christian music scene.