As Skillet celebrates its 30th anniversary this month, the Christian rock band is dropping one of the most vulnerable, angst-ridden collections of its storied career. After a tumultuous season in frontman John Cooper’s life, Skillet has emerged with the appropriately named After the Storm, a six-song EP out Friday (Oct. 9) that takes an unflinching look at hurt and betrayal, yet continues to serve up a message of hope that has become the band’s signature.
“We definitely have talked a lot about mental health and depression in our past. This EP has a lot more of that,” Cooper says. “[The songs] are honest about the hurt and the difficulties of life and the ups and downs, but there is hope. Even the title, After the Storm, gives you hope: ‘Okay, I’m still here.’”
Skillet members Cooper (lead vocals, bass), his wife Korey (guitar, keys), Jen Ledger (drums, vocals) and Seth Morrison (lead guitar) have built a successful career in mainstream rock while continuing to grow their fan base in Christian music. They have been certified for moving 30 million equivalent albums by the RIAA, and the band’s seven-times platinum 2009 hit “Monster” has surpassed five billion global streams, while becoming the first Christian song to surpass a billion streams on Spotify, according to the streamer.
Following an international run, Skillet is on tour in the U.S. through Nov. 10 on their Comatose 20 Years, Still Screaming Tour — in celebration of the band’s landmark 2006 album Comatose, which Cooper credits with “changing the trajectory” of the band’s career.
Obviously, career success doesn’t make people immune from personal challenges — and After the Storm was inspired by Cooper’s fractured relationship with the church he and his family had helped build and had attended for years.
“It was just a really tough couple of years seeing, I think, just some of the worst of Christianity,” he says. “Of course I’m still a Christian. I have my faith and am not doubting my faith or shaken in that way, but I’m like, ‘Man, how can people hurt each other this bad?’ . . . I just don’t understand it. But it’s not like God doesn’t know. It’s not like it’s a surprise to Him that you are angry and you’re not doing good, so tell Him and ask Him to help you. It was a real exercise of faith to me. God is my refuge and He is my strength and He’s not going to let me down.”
Though Cooper declines to go into specifics about the situation at his church, he more broadly adds he feels there are church leaders who think they know “what’s best for everybody else and if you don’t do what they say that you’re going to be in spiritual danger. Or to disagree with the church leader that you’re coming against God himself….There are a lot of churches who want to create rules on top of the Bible’s rules and then say, basically, ‘You’ve got to do our rules to be a Christian — and if you don’t, you’re not welcome.’ It’s just stuff like that and it’s happening everywhere. I just think that we’ve got to do a better job at being gracious toward people and allow people to live their lives.”
Copper says he’s still in the healing process. “I feel like I’ve come through the other side, but every day [the schism] still enters my mind at least once because it has been such a life-altering thing,” he says. “It put me into a state of chaos and depression for quite a long time, and I battled it every day. I’m back. I still have a little bit of a limp, but I can see the places where God wanted to change me, and I believe that the changes are really good and that I would not have made these changes had I not went through it. God never changes us during times of prosperity. It’s always during times of suffering…. Suffering is good in the end, but when you are going through it, it ain’t fun.”
The songs on After the Storm chronicle that turbulent season. The EP is coming out on Skillet’s own Vydia-distributed Hear it Loud imprint. “I am not the most in-this-business, industry-inclined person — that is not a natural gift of mine — so I didn’t have that many expectations,” Cooper says of launching Hear It Loud in 2013 (thought Skillet remained on Atlantic Records until 2022). “My only hope was it would allow us to release music more often — when we feel inspired, when we believe in something —rather than having all the red tape and all the cooks in the kitchen.”
“Scream” immediately raised its hand as lead-off track. “Everybody had a gut reaction like, ‘Oh that’s the single,’” Cooper says. “It doesn’t have a lot of fluff in it. It’s just simple and I think it’s got a lyric that everybody on planet earth can relate to… Everybody knows that feeling: ‘I just want to scream right now, because life is hard.’”
While Cooper says “Scream” isn’t specifically about social media, “there is a nod to that in the opening lyric of the song, ‘The silence behind the screen.’ Part of the information overload is everybody telling you what you need to believe and what to do, the new cause you need to get up in arms about or yell at somebody for. It’s just overwhelming.”
Cooper also looks forward to fans hearing new single “Lift Me Up.” “I like how heavy that one is. It has a groove to it, but the chorus is really melodic,” he says. “It’s kind of inspiring: ‘Things are really hard, but I’m not giving up.’”
In addition to Korey producing three cuts on the EP — “Scream,” Grave Stomper” and “Heaven Help Us”— the band worked for the first time with writer/producer David Cowell (Sleep Theory, Nevertel). “We don’t do a ton of outside writing with people and I’m kind of picky these days,” Copper admits. “I just want to work with the people that I know and like, but I had a message from Dave on Instagram.”
And it turned out there was already a connection: “[Cowell] starts telling his stories from Memphis. He used to come watch Skillet play before we were signed,” Copper says. “He was at the filming of a live recording we did in 2000. He’s actually in the crowd and in the photo. He’s like, ‘Skillet is one of my favorite bands of all time, and I want to write a modern version of the kind of music that you made in 2003, 4, 5, 6.’”
Working with Cowell also took Skillet back to Memphis. “Things happen for a reason I believe, so here we are on our 30th anniversary of the band, going back to Memphis for the first time since 2003, working with someone who grew up listening to the band,” Cooper says. “It just felt meaningful to me, and it felt deep. It just felt like we’re starting over. It was a really fun experience.”
The frontman embraced the nostalgia. “I drove to my childhood home — which I literally hadn’t seen since I was like 16,” says Cooper, who currently lives in Nashville. “Life goes fast, and you go through a lot of ups and downs and there’s a lot of pain, but there’s a lot of joy a well. It’s life. Life is hard. It felt nostalgic and it felt special.”
The fact that he and his bandmates still enjoy making records and touring three decades later is not lost on Cooper. “It’s multigenerational when you go to the shows — just last week, we saw three generations of one family singing Skillet songs,” he says. “Korey and I always talk about it, ‘Can you believe we’re still playing music?’ In certain metrics, we’re getting bigger than we were, which is weird. Our listeners are growing, and we have lots of young fans, and our touring numbers are good. So, we’re going to enjoy it while we’re here. We’re blessed and thankful to play music that hopefully helps people get through hard times.”
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