Hello.

This post will become the About page and is an attempt to help visitors figure out what my goal is with this site.

My name is Jonathan and I’ve been a fan of Metal for as long as I can remember. I can remember sitting in my older brother’s room and listening to Danzig’s I, II, and III, White Zombie’s La Sexorcisto and Astro-Creep, and of course, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and the whole gamut of various metal from the time.

In the early summer of 2000 I got saved and knew that among other things my music should probably change to reflect that change. The thing was, the only “Christian” music I knew was that P.O.D. was supposedly a Christian band and Creed had positive lyrics. I traded in every CD I had and got South Town by POD and My Own Prison and Human Clay by Creed (The Warehouse was brutal when it came to CD for cash trade in). The thing is, for a metalhead like me, this simply doesn’t work. I had $25 left to my name and headed to the local Christian book store and asked if they had any metal or hard rock. I got a quizzical look from the sweet old lady behind the counter and she pointed me to their music selection. They serendipitously had a small basket of cassette tapes and an old walkman for sampling music and I set out to figure out what I could find. Only one of the tapes worked well enough to tell anything and it was ZAO – The Splinter Shards the Birth of Separation. Who knew that Christians could produce such amazing metal? I was thrilled and plunked down the last of my cash on the spot to start down a new path.

Time makes fools of us all and my music selection has been of mixed moral character.

May 7, 2013 news drops of Tim Lambesis (of As I Lay Dying) arrest. I’m devistated as As I Lay Dying had been one of my favorite Christian bands. At one point, in an interview with him something he said nailed me right between the eyes and tail-spun my musical choices for far longer than I’d care to admit. I won’t attempt to quote from memory but basically he said that most Christian bands are liars and don’t care about Christ at all and that they are just using Christianity to further their careers. He said that he was basically just using Christian buzz words to pepper his lyrics with enough so they could skate by. I allowed that to hit me way too hard, this guy had been a big figure to me and I felt like I couldn’t trust anything I thought about Christian music any longer.

Well… it’s 2017 now and I recently have started overhauling my life once again. I’m trying to eat healthier, act healthier, and choose healthier music. When I sat down to start figuring out bands I could trust I realized that I had to get past this roadblock in my brain or I’d never succeed on this journey.

This site is intended to help me work through that struggle by highlighting bands that aren’t just on a Christian label or just ‘Christian’ by virtue of some default assumption but whose lyrics reflect that relationship with Christ which is the most basic and fundamental block of Christianity. It’s not that I want to cast judgement on anyone or anything, you won’t catch me smack-talking any band or person. I’m just trying to illuminate groups who I believe have great music and great lyrics.

I hope you find Righteous Metal helpful in your journey down the Righteous path.