20 F E AT U R E T T E
THE AFTERS “We’ve been working on this for a year, so we’ve really had some time to refine the melodies and lyrics and get them to the place we want them to be.”
Album: Children of Fire Label: Solid State Release Date: September 27, 2011 Members: Micah Kinard, vocals; Shane Blay, guitar/vocals; Nate Grady, bass; James Erwin, guitar; Zac Mayfield, drums RIYL: Underoath, The Devil Wears Prada, As Cities Burn
weareohsleeper.com
OH, SLEEPER And so it begins, the prophetic imagery of the broken pentagram is fulfilled through the reigning choruses of the perilous journey in Children of Fire. A Godless nation rises and falls to the screams of a disgraced generation, finding glimmers of hope only in the rabid hands of a questioning soul, the daughter of a King. Children of Fire is the finisher for the trilogy that metal band, Oh, Sleeper, initiated years ago from conception of the album entitled, When I Am God. Both musically and lyrically, Oh, Sleeper intercedes as narrators conveying the stark elements of brutality observed and acted out by a scarred human race: you and I. Children of Fire acts as a novel in which “every song is an integral chapter and a story,” portraying a plethora of historical, biblical, and metaphoric texts. Frontman Micah Kinard expresses the need to raise awareness for ongoing brutality in a world where we become elusive to reality. “I believe that God made us between the angels and the animals, whereas the animals are purely carnal beings and the angels purely spiritual. If we in the middle try to be one or the other, our spirit is going to be lacking, because we are not made to be purely spiritual beings…
BY JOANNA LUGO
so we’re this beautiful blend of both,” explains Kinard. As opposed to the blatant rigor of the battle between good and evil presented in their sophomore album, Son of the Morning, a dialogue concerning soul and flesh is brought to life in dissonant guitar riffs, progressive album structure, mechanical drum kicks, rigid bass lines and the intermingling of lovely and resonating singing with animalistic screaming. This dialogue alludes to a graphic discourse following the lives of a morbidly ruthless father and the tortured mind of his daughter, in which they experience an alternate paradigm of steel and skin. “In choosing the verbiage of marrying the steel to the skin, two completely opposing elements, it’s supposed to represent the father trying to do the most noble thing by doing the most awful thing, and the most innocent one being taken advantage of in the worst way… to show the complete juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness.” Words such as steel, skin, fire, smoke, father and daughter become “multitranslatable” to indicate specific “parallels” on a “molecular level.” Every element associated with Oh, Sleeper is intentional, forcing the audience to obtain a personal interpretation of the infinite pits of depth conveyed by each texture. In a sense, Oh, Sleeper encompasses
the art of storytelling by articulating “through metaphor … writing a story that the music already holds,” says Kinard. For instance, Kinard and Blay display an elevated representation of feminine roles as God’s “apex crown of creation,” through references of innocence, rape and the multi-layered daughter figure. Also, Oh, Sleeper continually uses fire as a metallic and colorful theme to represent the intimate and beautiful power of God. Holding true to the idea of delving into this horrifically poetic record, one must cling to the hope of redemption in order to fully grasp the message that we are capable of being “the true terrorists in the world” and yet also ruining those “instant carnal desires” so as to act on freedom we’ve been given by glory. You will quickly come to find that Children of Fire contains affable components, raw lyricism and barbaric musicality. “And what defense feels like Heaven on my skin if finally I’m free to never breathe again, my body lifts from the ground it was rooted in and I pass a spark as it races to the rest of them.”