Post-adjustment or not, I just can’t dig The Human Romance that much. Trust me, I’ve tried. The riffs are great and it’s some of Ryan Parrish’s best work yet, but it just doesn’t do it for me.

There’s nothing wrong with clean vocals at all. I actually think maybe some bands have a hard time after they lose a member and replace them. For example, The Eternal Return was their first album after losing Kris Norris, and it was a let down for me. Another example, Deflorate by The Black Dahlia Murder was their first record with their new lead guitarist, and it is by far my least favorite of thier albums. Ritual (their new album) is awesome, just like The Human Romance, because both bands had some time to adjust and figure out what works with the new line-up.

I used to sort of be a Christian, too, but that fell by the wayside around the time I started getting REALLY serious about music. Mostly because I hung out with a lot of pentecostals and they tended to frown upon my Catholic ways of doing things, and I’d get mad because people seemed so down on Catholics and I actually LOVED the services and the rituals and the paganness of it all, and I didn’t want to be part of any group that wanted to tell me how I could and couldn’t worship, so I stopped calling myself a Christian, and over the years my beliefs changed to match.

When I was writing about Christian metal on my blog, Mortification were the only Christian metal band I actually liked. I find the lyrics – especially with the clean vocals – can be so distracting. A lot of people talk up Antestor as a “grymm” option, but I heard one album and thought it was HORRID. The worst mediocre black metal. But then, all my readers started suggesting bands, and I got heavily into groups like Living Sacrifice. And now you’ve introduced me to Zao, so thanks!