Skillet's career move from plaintive guitar-based pop to synthetic industrial rock has allowed them a slow, steady entry into the mainstream as well as the platinum-level sales other acts relegated to the contemporary Christian market might not garner.
The Kenosha-based band’s latest, Rise, is a concept album about a young man's coming of age with an appealing share of prog flourishes. Conversely, amid the children’s and adult choirs, string sections and melodic filigrees, lead singer/bassist John Cooper has a few songs that sound poised to become actual pop radio hits. Most of those suggest the intersection of Nickelback and Evanescence. Cooper's gruff, vaguely anglophilic delivery and the earnest petulance of co-vocalizing drummer Jen Ledger come at their hookiest material with a winsome quality.
