Storm the Gates of Hell

“Storm the Gates of Hell” is the title for the latest album from the Metal band, Demon Hunter. I had quite high expectations for their newest album since I loved the previous one (The Triptych). I got the ‘Special Edition’ of the album as I like to watch interviews with the band members and hear their commentary about the album. What follows are some thoughts from a fan so it might not exactly be a dispassionate critique of the pros and cons of the musical complexities expressed in this album. So here we go…

One thing that impresses me of this band is the whole presentation of the album. The covers and the booklets are well designed. The cover design is a departure from the conventional CD cover design (a positively artistic departure at that):

I like how the cover opens like a door; Hell’s door with the logo of the hunted demon on it. The demon is ‘hunted’ because of a hole in its head–presumably made by the Hunter’s weapon. I liked the symbolisms. As you open the doors you see a statement on the inside of the doors…

“Hell Hath No Fury At All”

I liked the very bold statement. This statement of rebellion to dark forces is very appealing in the midst of bands that sing about embracing darkness. The irony is that those bands that sing about embracing darkness started out as a rebellion themselves! Now there are so much of them that they are the “mainstream” and bands like Demon Hunter are the rebels!

All this prepared me for the sonic pleasure that awaited. As usual, I played the CD in my home theatre and the first song was “Storm the Gates of Hell”. The start sounded like the stampede of the hunters and the hunted but what followed it could only be best described in the words of the bassist, “…pure aggression from beginning to end, no ceasing, no letting up, no choruses, not giving you chance to breathe…y’know just pummeling from beginning to end…”. Nearing the end of the song, the phrase “Hell hath no fury at all” was screamed/growled by the lead singer Ryan Clark with ’squealies’ flying off the guitars like arrows in the background. It…was…pure headbanging awesomeness. A phrase like that found its ultimate expression from the mouth of Ryan Clark. It really does makes one think, “Hell hath no fury at all”, indeed. Oh yeah, I was screaming it in my mind too since I did not want to ruin Ryan’s vocal performance by doing it audibly myself.

The song “Sixteen” captured my interest. It had guest vocals from Bruce Fitzhugh of Living Sacrifice. The vocals by him reminded me of the album Burning Bridges by Haste the Day. It was different and dare I say a bit refreshing as well. This type of growling is one of the deepest and darkest form of vocals I have heard. When a whole album is comprised of vocals with only one type of vocal style it would get rather monotonous and grow stale before you know it. The original vocal style would then quickly become unoriginal. However, employed like in the song “Sixteen” it adds to the texture of the song very well while maintaining variety.

Faith is not Blind!

At the end of my previous blog post, I had indicated that biblical “Faith” does not mean “belief without evidence”. So what exactly does it mean?

One of my favourite apologist JP Holding in his article (link) regarding biblical “Faith” offers four different ways people understand the word “faith”:

1. A “faith healer” named Benny Pophagin offers to heal Joe of his lumbago. Benny lays hands on Joe and prays, but the lumbago remains. Benny waves Joe away, saying, “This is your problem. You don’t have enough faith.”
2. A Christian faces several objections to his beliefs that he cannot answer. He says, “I don’t care what people say, I still have faith.”
3. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard “contends that the scriptures included in the Bible verify that the Christian belief system is based on a leap of faith, not on tangible proof.” This is because Christianity involves paradoxes offensive to reason.
4. The famous skeptic Mark Twain said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

The third and fourth points are much closer to the modern use of the word ‘faith’ by skeptical polemic while the first and second points reflect the folk understanding of ‘faith’ by religious people. However, Holding indicates that:

The Greek word behind “faith” in the NT is pistis. As a noun, pistis is a word that was used as a technical rhetorical term for forensic proof. Examples of this usage are found in the works of Aristotle and Quintiallian, and in the NT in Acts 17:31:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

If you are used to thinking of “faith” in terms of our first two examples, this will assuredly come as a surprise. The raising of Christ is spoken of here as a proof that God will judge the world.

The concept of ‘faith’ is also expanded to include “trust”. Quoting Holding again:

With a form of pistis used over 240 times in the NT, it will not be possible to examine every instance of it. But it is enough to highlight some of the more obvious examples.

Matthew 8:5-10 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed… When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

We see the definition of “faith” in terms of loyalty to, or trust in, a deserving patron, exhibited quite clearly here. The centurion knew of Jesus’ miraculous abilities (v. 8). His faith was not “blind” but based on the evidence of Jesus’ past works. He considered Jesus worthy therefore of his trust and came to him for help.

This is the sort of “faith” also exhibited by other people who come to, or are brought to, Jesus for healing. The man with palsy, the woman with the issue of blood, Jairus, the blind man (Matt. 9), the Syrophoenician woman (Matt. 15) — all came knowing of Jesus’ abilities to heal. Their actions were based on evidence and proof. Of course one may argue that their trust was misplaced and that Jesus was a charlatan, but contextually that is beside the point. Our point is that faith is not “blind trust.”

Now, this might come as a surprise to many; it was certainly to me when I first read it as I too had been caught up with the ‘blind assent’ characterisation of the word ‘faith’ and had mistook it for the biblical word ‘faith’. Holding’s article makes so much more sense as he develops the contextualised concept of ‘faith’. I can relate to this type of ‘faith’ readily as I come from a collectivistic culture.