Writer: Writer: Nastassia Lopez Photo: John Dole
“Hi! I’m John. Do you like my shoes?” John Cooper exuberantly asked as he and the rest of the Skillet band greeted me in the Atlantic Records lounge on the 23rd floor of a New York skyscraper. “They’re all right…a little Edward Scissorhands-ish,” I critiqued. “Awesome!” said John. These shiny black leather kicks, paired with John’s frosted mohawk and silver stud nose ring, are not the usual accoutrements one envisions adorning the lead singer of a Christian rock band from Tennessee. But I was quick to learn that Skillet does not typify your normal Sunday church group.
    John’s rocker wife, Korey—who plays keyboard and guitar and sings back-up vocals on their new album, Comatose—is beautiful, reserved, introspective, and funny. And, when John is at a loss for words, she can finish his sentences in a graceful, refined manner—almost as if she is reading his mind, taking the jumbled words, and fitting them into their correct places.
Drummer Lori Peters and guitarist Ben Kasica are also a huge juxtaposition in character. During our time together, they are happy to let John do most of the talking. But onstage Ben shreds his six-string while Lori wails on the skins.
    Skillet signed with Lava/Atlantic in 2004 and debuted as a mainstream band with their sophomore album Collide. This year the band was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Rock Gospel category. It’s hard not to like them. They’re like those quirky folks next door who have a normal family life during the day, yet they have band rehearsals at night, and never miss church on Sundays. The members of Skillet are grounded in their beliefs; they are able to get their message across without over-sermonizing; and they play big. In short, they rock.

Risen Magazine: How did the band meet?
John Cooper: Well, I started the band in 1996 with other members that are not here. That was in Memphis, Tennessee—where I’m from. We got the band together and we called it Skillet cuz we’re all from different bands at the time—taking all these different ingredients and throwing it into a big Skillet. Korey and I got married a few months after that in 1997.

RM: What is your songwriting process like?
JC: Hitting your head against the wall. No, but songwriting for me, well—some people will get really inspired—it’ll almost be like a release for them to write a song. I’m not usually that way. That has happened to me, but not normally. Usually, I’m like, “Time to write music; time to work.” And I’ll just write in my head. The best for me is when I’m driving by myself on a long trip and just think of melodies and what I want to say. Usually the lyrics are the very last thing I’ll write. They are really hard and you ask yourself, “Has this been said too many times?” And then after I’ve spent about a million hours on lyrics we go into the studio for pre-production with our producer and he’s reading my lyrics and is like “No…” and then we work on it for another trillion hours. It’s maddening! But it turned out well.

RM: What single message do you hope people take from the album Comatose?
JC: I want people that listen to the record to feel hopeful about life; about living; about where the world is going; what they can do to help make this world a better place when it’s seemingly getting darker. In the early 1990s, rock music became more about listening to a record and feeling angry and feeling depressed. There’s obviously some great musicians, some great artists that came out of that time and the reason people were identifying with it was because they were writing things that people feel. Although there is a place for that, I always liked that rock music could help you transcend those feelings.

RM: And how did you come up with the album title Comatose?
JC: I wrote the song “Comatose” a few months after our last record came out and I thought it would be a cool name for a song. Originally it was just the idea of, in a personal sense, waking up—maybe like a spiritual awakening. It’s not just about you and me; it’s about society waking up and realizing that there’s a lot to be done on this earth.
    We’ve joined with the ONE Campaign raising awareness for AIDS in Africa, and there are so many people that say, “AIDS doesn’t affect me.” I’ve lived my life that way, a lot, to where things don’t affect me—I don’t give my time or money or attention to. So it has been a personal awakening in my own life as well. But now it’s like a wakeup call to everyone. Wake up out of your coma! Wake up out of your sleep to what is going on.

RM: And how are you able to find the balance between being too preachy and being able to speak about God?
JC: I think that’s still the biggest challenge. I’m sure it’s the case that we’re not being preachy enough for a lot of our Christian fans. And I’m sure there are people who hear me talking about doing some good in the world, and maybe they get really upset about it. But the thing that I’m noticing is all kinds of people—Christians, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, whatever—are all kind of agreeing that the world is getting darker. We are on a slippery slope. Teen suicide rates are up, as well as drug abuse and depression in teens. And everyone is asking, “What are we going to do about this?”
Korey Cooper: There are truths that transcend a lot of religions: “It’s better to give than to receive.” Any soul is going to benefit more from giving than receiving. We can find truths that reach out to lots of people as a starting place. I’m not saying that we’re never going to say what we truly believe as far as our Christian belief…
JC: Yeah, we’re certainly not hiding that. We hope people think, “Yeah, they are a Christian band