Into the Trenches

I went to the Family Christian Bookstore in Burlington today to pick up the new record by Trenches- a band who feature Jimmy Ryan from Haste the Day on vocals and who have been favorably compared to Warlord and Neurosis. I knew they had it in stock but couldn’t find it, so I asked about it.

And- get this- the woman was like, “we have a few copies but we keep them in the back because someone bought it and complained that the lyrics weren’t included. Since it’s metal and the words are hard to understand the person was worried that it wasn’t Christian and that it would have lots of swearing and bad lyrics in it, so it’s only available for ‘special order'”.

I then, jokingly,  pointed out my age and asked if I could “special order” it and we had a good laugh at the audacity of this other customer. Apparently there are old ladies who will go into the store and buy metal and hip hop records just so that they can return them, complaining that they are not “Christian.”

Honestly how paranoid do you have to be? Yes of course it is not Christian! Never mind the label, never mind that Jimmy has always been evangelically based in his lyrics, never mind that his former band is named after a classic hymn! Some people really seem to enjoy ruining things for everyone else.

All you young people better come to church, but leave the music you enjoy at the door. Don’t even think about infiltrating our culture with that trash. If it isn’t easy to understand worship based and acoustic it obviously isn’t Christian. Grrr….

Oh yeah, this record is awesome by the way… sorry old lady.