JOHN COOPER: SKILLET's New Music Will Have Touches Of 'Prog' And 'More Metal Aspects'

In a new interview with U.K.'s The Sound Lab, John Cooper, the frontman and bassist for the Grammy-nominated Christian rockers SKILLET, was asked if there are any plans for him and his bandmates to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of their self-titled debut album in 2026. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "There's nothing special for 30 years, like a 30-year concert or a specific thing. We should do something like that. For about six months we've been saying, 'We should do something,' but nobody's come up with anything good yet. So if we do, I'll let you know. But we need to do something.

"The funny thing is, is that because we have so many new fans over the last five years, a lot of the younger fans, they can't wrap their head around us being around for 30 years," John continued. "So whenever I've said it on a few interviews, '30 years next year,' you see these comments, like, 'How old are you guys?' And I'm, like, '35. Don't ask.' Anyway, it's kind of a funny thing.

"But we are gonna be releasing new music [in 2026], Lord willing," Cooper added. "We're working on it now. We have a couple of songs finished already. So I'm kind of hoping that next year will be the release of new music that will be a nice 30-year kind of… I don't know… Starting over — let's start over again, release new music. Feel like a young person again, releasing songs that you love and songs that you believe in, singing about things that you care about. That's what I hope."

Asked about the musical direction of the new SKILLET material, John said: "Yeah, we are in the middle of that now. Sometimes you don't wanna speak too early because things can change in the studio. You're sure it's gonna be one thing and then all of a sudden it starts [going in a different direction]. But that kind of happened a little early this time, and so I feel like I can share a little bit.

"The Christmas song that we [released in November, 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel'], we did experiment with some of the new things that we are already trying in some of our newer music. And it's been kind of fun because it's been a bit of a… SKILLET's been around for so long, we've had so many different sounds and things we've tried. We have a lot in the arsenal, so you can kind of pull out something that maybe you hadn't done in a little while and try to make it fresh again. And that's kind of what we did on this Christmas song on the really heavy parts. There's some more metal aspects to that that I don't think we've done anything that heavy since, like, 2003 maybe. And that was really fun, getting to do some of the really low tunings again. And we've always done a little bit of it, but we kind of went overboard. And that's because we're kind of going a little bit that direction on the new stuff as well. Also, what's kind of cool with this resurgence of metal is… For people that've seen SKILLET live, they may or may not recognize — I don't know — SKILLET live, we have more touches… I don't mean we're overboard prog, but we have some touches of prog metal in our set, more than we do on our records. And some of that is because as music shifts and changes, some of the younger fans weren't really understanding that stuff 10 years ago. It just wasn't in their wheelhouse. We did a touch of that at the very end of a song, one of our songs called 'The Resistance'. 'The Resistance' ends with this prog rock kind of jam session, and our fans loved it, but we're having a little bit more of that in our live show. And so now we're able to bring some of that. We did it in the Christmas [song], 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel', and we're doing some of that in the new music as well. And I'm, like, why not? It's 30 years. We need to come out with a bang and show people that we're still as young as we used to be— ish [laughs], sort of."

In various interviews over the years, John Cooper has said that he "always had faith in God" and that his mother was a "Jesus fanatic." He also claimed that he was willing to put his career on the line to take a stand for Christ.

In April 2021, Cooper told the "Undaunted.Life: A Man's Podcast" that it was perfectly fine for Christians to play rock music. "I would say that music is created not by the Devil; [it is] created by the Lord," he said. "All things were created by God. So instead of thinking that the Devil owns a genre of music, I would say capture that music and bring it back into subjection under the Lordship of Christ."

John has written in depth about his views in the two books he has released so far, "Awake & Alive To Truth", which came out in December 2020, and "Wimpy, Weak, And Woke", which became available in late 2023.

Cooper told Baptist Press about how his faith directs him to speak out on cultural issues: "If Jesus is the truth, then that means He has something to say about culture, politics, abortion and sexuality. The Bible has something to say about these things."

SKILLET's latest album, "Revolution", arrived in November 2024 via the band's Hear It Loud imprint.