Loud Faith

You're sitting with one album: Norma Jean's Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child, Solid State, street date 13 August 2002. Produced by Adam Dutkiewicz with Norma Jean at Zing Studios. Josh Scogin on vocals — his only Norma Jean album. First outing under the Norma Jean name after the Luti-Kriss chapter, the rename forced by venue confusion with Ludacris. Runtime stretches toward an hour of what Cross Rhythms called unrelenting guitar noise. Christian metalcore / Solid State hardcore, early 2000s — for Loud Faith, this cut is the album itself, not a band timeline.

Self-ID, without a sermon

In 2002 they were a Christian / Solid State metalcore band coming off the Luti-Kriss name change. Faith is on the lyric sheet without a youth-group brochure — musicOMH and JFH both clock the "Christ is not a fashion" line on "Memphis Will Be Laid To Waste." One sentence of scene ID, then back to the record.

What the critics keep saying about this album

AllMusic's Jason D. Taylor is the clean chaos brief for this LP: audio chaos; bludgeoning blasts of macabre hardcore/metal that are as confusing as they are cataclysmic; few bands could park a 15-plus-minute track in the center of an album and keep momentum — Norma Jean does it with "Pretty Soon, I Don't Know What, but Something Is Going to Happen"; the real problem is that in all the commotion the band sometimes gets lost amid the carnage, dragging songs with no end in sight; still, an intimidating album of gargantuan proportions; Dutkiewicz somehow captures all the mayhem without letting the songs turn muddy or noisy. That's praise with the bruise left on.

Mike Rimmer at Cross Rhythms put a 9/10 on it and called the product an hour of unrelenting guitar noise from the great bunch who used to record as Luti-Kriss — Solid State serving extreme music to new extremes, sepia cover against teeth-rattling hardcore. Andy Kelly at Jesus Freak Hideout heard a hardcore revolution: technically and musically astounding; gritty production that still rises above most peers; "Face:Face" inspired by Proverbs 30; "Memphis Will Be Laid To Waste" featuring mewithoutYou's lead vocalist and lyrics that state Christ is not a fashion or a fleeting fad; highlights also in "Creating Something Out of Nothing, Only to Destroy It" and "I Used to Hate Cell Phones, But Now I Hate Car Accidents"; downside — slightly repetitious, and the second half not as strong as the first; still, hardcore just does not get much better than this.

musicOMH framed the Converge influence without reducing the record to a clone: Converge-shaped metalcore given a kick; gargantuan riffs that slow, speed, stop, and start; Dutkiewicz guitars jaw-dropping; Scogin sounding like he gargles acid for breakfast. Later write-ups park the title as a metalcore landmark, with influence heard in bands like The Devil Wears Prada and Of Mice & Men. Different desks, same point: this LP is the Scogin-era document that still clears a floor.

Four tracks from this LP

The Entire World Is Counting On Me, And They Don't Even Know It — opener; musicOMH's cardiac-arrest riff lesson; Kelly's marked improvement on Scogin's vocals with less effect reliance.

Face:Face — Proverbs 30 inspiration per JFH; lasting playlist cut alongside Memphis; hardcore that still teaches the dual-register scream.

Memphis Will Be Laid To Waste — mewithoutYou guest vocal documented on the JFH card; "Christ is not a fashion" as the faith line that travels without a tract; the song kids still name first.

Pretty Soon, I Don't Know What, but Something Is Going to Happen — Taylor's 15-plus-minute centerpiece that doesn't kill momentum; the dare that most metalcore albums still won't take.

Leave "I Used to Hate Cell Phones…" and "Organized Beyond Recognition" for the embeds. Loud Faith wants the four songs that still make a Christian-metalcore / Solid State stack make sense when you drop this album in. Taylor's "lost in the carnage" note and Kelly's weaker second half stay on the board — this is a 9 with bruises, not a brochure.

Host score

9 / 10.

Not a 10 — Taylor already said the band gets lost in the carnage, and Kelly flagged a softer second half and repetition. Not an 8 either — Cross Rhythms hung a 9/10 on an hour of guitar noise, JFH called it a hardcore revolution, Dutkiewicz kept the mayhem clear, and "Memphis" / "Face:Face" still outlast the lineup that recorded them. Nine is the number for Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child as a singular Loud Faith cut: Scogin's only Norma Jean LP, landmark weight, chaos with a producer who wouldn't let it turn to mud.

Where this album sits on Loud Faith

Christian metalcore on Solid State in 2002 wasn't a side quest — Zing rooms, Converge-shaped riffs, Proverbs on the lyric sheet, Hot Topic kids learning the long song in the middle. Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child is the rename document: Luti-Kriss gone, Scogin for one album only, Dutkiewicz holding the carnage in focus. One album. One cut.