Music is very important to me.
I'm a musician myself, and that is the what I consider "my ministry."
However, I don't play in "religious" bands per se, because for the most part, the "religious" bands that I hear about are Christian bands, and I'd feel like a hypocrite playing in a band that says Jesus is THE way to God, because as Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita "All roads lead to me."
Also, not to overgeneralize, but most Christian bands suck, at least Christian Rock bands.
They tend to play very superficial music of a given style(whether it be Goth, Metal, Punk, Rap, etc..), and just throw in references to Jesus here and there so it's clear that they have no real message in the music itself, all of their message is in the words.
I mean, each to his own, but music is the art of manipulating sound to inspire some sort of emotion in the listener, if all you care about is words, then go into poetry or prose, those are arts of manipulating words.
As far as Christian music goes, I love Moby, Johnny Cash, Rozz Williams, and really soulful Gospel music.
Having a boyband sing about Jesus over cliche watered down Punk Rock or Metal just does bad things for both music and Jesus, and I'm not interested in working with people who hate music that much.
My Favourite band is the Cure, which is why I have 2 Cure links, the official site, which is only updated like every 9 months or so, and Chain Of Flowers, which is updated almost constantly, and read often by members of The Cure.
There is also a link to a Virgin Prunes site. The Prunes broke up about 11 years ago, but if you happen to be into U2, it would do you well to go there and find out about the Virgin Prunes.
They were sort of an "evil twin" to U2, a sister band. U2 covered the poppier side of things, and the Virgin Prunes covered the darker and experimental side of things.
Although I'm nonchristian, I'm not ANTI christian either, but I do see a lot of modern so-called "Christian" theocrats who need a good kick in the ass, and I think Marilyn Manson does that pretty well, which is one reason why the link to the Marilyn Manson site is here.
And believe it or not, I think Manson is actually one of the best teachers of Christianity around.
His very existence has taken "christian" organizations (such as the American Family Association) to the point where they are so threatened by him, they've spread endless, disgusting rumours in fliers and on the internet about him killing animals and raping children.
They've gone so far as to forge legal documents just to shut him down.
Call me crazy, but lying doesn't seem very christian to me....it seems there were commandments about "not bearing false witness" or something like that...
Nefarium is a dead link, however I've revived one of the basslines I wrote for Nefarium as the song "Twinklebat".
Crash Worship was a ritualistic industrial percussion band from California, they used to put on quite a show....nudity, fireworks, fog machines, chaos...
Sadly, the Cocteau Twins have broken up, I found this out as I was building this site. It happened about the 6th of February,1998. This was particularly sad for me, because their music is beautiful, and I have many memories of making out and having sex and cuddling to their music, and now there will be nothing new from them. They're leaving their site up though, so you can find out alot about them there.
Cruelty Pageant is my own band. I'm currently the only human member, which is both a great thing, and an annoying thing, because while I have complete creative control, I find it hard to find time to work on my music, with car problems,crappy dayjobs, and little time at home to myself to work unfettered(I find other people being in the same house distracting). But we(that is, myself and my sequencing software, Peter Niles) did manage to get to something like #185 on the MP3.com Goth charts, and at one point, we were one position ahead of Gene Loves Jezebel(Micheal Aston version), so that's something to swell my ego..
"Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man." -Claude Levi-Strauss
"Far from being a mere aid to poetry, music is certainly an independent art. In fact, it is the most powerful of all the arts, and therefore attains its ends entirely from its own resources." -Arthur Schopenhauer
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