Valley Of The Kings

I consider myself fairly musically astute and connected. Hailing from the day that the now-lost art of intricate record sleeves helped foster a connection between the music, the band and myself, I tend to still find myself tracing the career-arcs of musicians. What this means is, that I am still fascinated by the interconnectivity that a single drummer or guitarist can have in a twenty-year period. Many would be surprised to find that the guy who started out playing rock with Michael Bolton went on to have a healthy run with KISS as well.

Which is also why perhaps I had never heard of the Kings of Leon, since they have no secular umbilical scar to which they can point. I had heard them mentioned in a context that implied they are the go-to punching bag for the apostolic de La Mancha—the disenfranchised UPC preacher’s kid, Christian rock band that preaches Jesus from the edge—or, to us that “judge” such things, an existential windmill.

Not wanting to make any assumptions, I sought them out. What I found, in my opinion, was something far sadder. In fact, nothing to me is sadder than high-visibility backsliders, whose cursing betrays them to a degree that one can literally see them pinned to the ground in the public square by their oppressing devils, forced to slap themselves in the face and say, “Jesus is a fairly adequate Savior for most of mankind.”

I could start listing the who’s who of ex-Apostolics that have gone this way, many of them now looking like they should be climbing out of a Volkswagen during rodeo week. But I won’t. It’s just too painful, and I take no pleasure in it.

If nothing else could make an Apostolic’s blood run cold, than maybe this should: Self proclaimed “Ex-Rev” and comedian, Sam Kinison walked out of the faith at some point in his life, hailing the same sexual and alcohol-addled activities our dear K of L talk about here. Kinison, a former Pentecostal preacher, maintained the same, high-volume delivery and crescendoed approach to his comedy that his sermons did. He also took great pains to give his former Lord a good slap from the stage, mocking the blood, the return, and the crucifixion. He even joked that God would wake him up in the middle of the night and stop his heart, for, and I quote, “all those f-ing jokes.”

Seems prophecy should have been listed along side his amazing rhetorical gifts. In 1992, someone came knocking. I don’t think it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

So before I’m accused of calling the Kings of Leon blasphemers, please note that I do not make that claim. But as these young ,talented men make their trek through the secular world, it would do all good to remember that there are many toll booths between the church platform and the lyrics to Holy Roller Novocaine (caution: blatant sexual entendres). And when it comes to the Gospel, the world doesn’t accept denial on credit.

Sadly, I’d have a world’s more respect for a band that just walked out on God, and forgot him completely, instead of using him as a sort of comic foil—an Egyptian straw-man from which they can claim to be in exile. But it doesn’t stop there. To name one's album Because of the Times and then galvanize one’s music to be in spite of them is the lynchpin that transforms the erstwhile Kings of Leon and boils them down to the devil’s favorite fundamentals for energetic young men: The Princes of Pathetic.

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