Do innovative, unique Christian alternative rock bands still exist?

Back in the late 80s to mid-90s, while we all know there were great metal bands, there were also a lot of truly creative, one-of-a-kind Christian rock bands.  Like L.S. Underground, Poor Old Lu, Danielson Famile, Starflyer 59, but also a ton more. 

Obviously some of those are still around in some fashion, but the only ones I can think of around today from the past decade are Mewithoutyou and Sufjan Stevens.  All I can find other than those guys is a bunch of over-produced mainstream pop rock.  Are there other Christians making interesting rock?  I mean new bands, young guys.

Not that I am aware of. I did enjoy Dighayzoose. They were a great band.

Yeah, they were in that pack!  Good stuff and totally one of a kind.

I've been wondering the same thing.  Your best bet night be to checkout the line up of Audiofeed festival and see if there is any decent alt rock bands in the list 

The 2016 line up is still forming, but here's last year's list http://www.theantidoteradio.com/news/audiofeed-announces-2015-lineup

The Violet Burning
The Prayer Chain
The Choir
Mad at the World

not sure of any newbies though ... but those 4 bands are all good - and some of my faves.

RavenWolf wrote:The Violet Burning
The Prayer Chain
The Choir
Mad at the World

not sure of any newbies though ... but those 4 bands are all good - and some of my faves.

Yeah, those are all good ones from back in the day like I'm talking about.  All pretty dated now, but I'm wondering about modern bands.  It's so strange that interesting Christian rock bands have vanished from the face of the earth.

I guess I'm still stuck back in the day!  

I'm more than happy with my old music most of the time. When I do explore new music ... nowadays it's mostly secular, not Christian. And there is LOTS to explore in the secular realm. They have no shortage of creativity ... unlike what is in the Christian market (limited).

Violet Burning is still around in fact I believe theres an album in the works and a Cover album too i believe

theres a site devoted to Indie Christian Rock http://www.indievisionmusic.com/  this site just relaunched recently might wanna check it out


For the record I would never say the Violet Burning sounds dated.

I read an article a while back (can't find it now) that pointed to the success of Sonicflood around the turn of the millennium as the death-knell for innovative CCM. Most of what radio stations play now is the same kind of worship-esque pop-driven interchangeable songs. Record labels wanted to mimic their success and forced many artists to change styles or conform to the new standard.

I'm not sure if I agree 100% with that assessment, but if you look at the years 1990-2000, then 2000-2010, it's hard not to notice a stark contrast in quality and creativity.

I guess to answer your question: while there are some innovative artists today, I can't think of any that would fall into the alternative rock category. (Nice to see Poor Old Lu, The Choir, and Mad at the World mentioned here though...they put out some great stuff back in the day!)

Throne of thorns wrote:Not that I am aware of. I did enjoy Dighayzoose. They were a great band.

Ive always been a fan of Hot Pink Turtle, Alt with some Funk elements

Seems the 90s as a whole was all about creativity and variety. We had bands from White Zombie to RATM. When 2000s hit metalcore sort of took over and the cloning began. Metalcore seemed to dominate and only recently seems to be on a slow slide down. Unfortunately, generally speaking, metalcore doesn't seem to have brought a lot of innovation or creativity.

MadMap wrote:I read an article a while back (can't find it now) that pointed to the success of Sonicflood around the turn of the millennium as the death-knell for innovative CCM. Most of what radio stations play now is the same kind of worship-esque pop-driven interchangeable songs. Record labels wanted to mimic their success and forced many artists to change styles or conform to the new standard.

I'm not sure if I agree 100% with that assessment, but if you look at the years 1990-2000, then 2000-2010, it's hard not to notice a stark contrast in quality and creativity.

I pretty much agree except I blame Third Day (or maybe Petra) as the start of the worship-music-as-pop-hits thing in the Christian music market.

Sort of back on topic, the bands are still around but so far underground it's hard to find them.  A while ago I Googled a band that sounded like a good opening act for The Choir and came across a website that listed hundreds of similar Christian alt-rock bands.  I was both excited and overwhelmed and decided to "come back to it."  Then I "upgraded" my computer and lost my favorites and browsing history and can't find the website again or remember the name of the band that started it all .  I'll keep looking and IF I can find it I'll post it here.

That would be great, thanks.  I'm sure if I really started digging around I could find some sites or bands, but I was hoping to save the time by just asking. 

The indievision.com site mentioned above says it ended July, 2015, but the message boards are still going so maybe I'll post on there.

I agree, the 90s were apparently a great decade!  I didn't realize it at the time.  I'd say the 70s and 80s were great too, though, in different ways.

While I do like some metalcore from time to time, I agree than 99% of it is the same-iest same same music ever made.  There's more freedom than ever to make and release whatever music you want, but no creativity among the kids.  Or at least the Christian kids.  What a waste.  I sound like a crotchety old man.

Maybe there was more of a drive to do something interesting back then because Christian kids were rebelling against the restrictions of church culture at the time.  Now that churches are all culturally pretty much the same as the world and there's little divide between Christian/secular music, there's less of a compelling reason for Christians to make interesting music.

I miss the days when Christian music had nothing to loose and just played whatever they wanted. Then it got commercialized and it started to follow a formula, which ruined the creativity. Metal was a real outlet for innovative music for a long time, but now it all sounds the same. My band really worked to make heavy music that focused on emotion, not commercialism. I think you might like it...new, heavy, and different. Www.theworldwillburn.com.

Aaron C wrote:

Throne of thorns wrote:Not that I am aware of. I did enjoy Dighayzoose. They were a great band.

Ive always been a fan of Hot Pink Turtle, Alt with some Funk elements

oh man flash back! I had that album and liked it. Do you recall a band called drink water and an album called 3 Murky vibes? Awesome band from NeZealand. Hard to find now though.

Found it!

http://www.reluctantradio.org/

I'm not sure how many are actually any good but finding out should keep us all busy for a while.

johnnycanuck wrote:

One of my favorite bands of all time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the two artists I listen to outside of metal

They are/was/will be every genre

They have done everything from metal to rock to rap to electronic to grunge to 80s synth pop to "you name it"

johnnycanuck wrote:

I discovered this band a few months back - this tune sounds a lot like:

Throne of thorns wrote:

Aaron C wrote:

Throne of thorns wrote:Not that I am aware of. I did enjoy Dighayzoose. They were a great band.

Ive always been a fan of Hot Pink Turtle, Alt with some Funk elements

oh man flash back! I had that album and liked it. Do you recall a band called drink water and an album called 3 Murky vibes? Awesome band from NeZealand. Hard to find now though.

Nope I dont think I ever heard of them

Back in 2002 there used to be an official Deliverance forum (where i was a mod) and the bass player from HPT was a regular, hilarious dude and every friday he would post a story from touring or from recording or whatever it was so cool. It was cuz of their basisst that I got their CD and I was hooked.

I'm liking that Family Force 5!!! Good call Hardcore! I might pick up something from them.

You keep turning me onto some good stuff!

No one has mentioned Hidden Hospitals. I've seen them live once... Amazing 4-piece band:

Good stuff!