For you who love to hear rock music, you must be already know the band Skillet. It is an Christian rock band from United States that formed in 1996 in Tennessee, U.S. Their band members now is John Cooper as lead vocal, his wife Korey Cooper as rythm guitar, backing vocals, and keyboards), together with Seth Morrison as lead guitarist, and Jen Ledger as the drummer. They have released 8 albums, and two of them receiving Grammy nominations: Comatose and Collide. Following its 15 years of music career, it has undergone many changes in its members, at the end only John Cooper who is the founder and also the only original member who still remains in the band.
The band formed in the 1996 with only two original members: John Cooper who was a lead vocalist for Seraph, progressive rock band from Tennessee, and Ken Steorts who was guitarist for Urgent Cry. Both of them often met because they often have tour together, but soon after, those bands are disbanded, and then Ken and John’s pastor suggested them to create a side project in form of a new band. Because it came from various styles of rock, they decided to name the new band Skillet. Soon after that Trey McClurkin became the temporary drummer for the band. It didn’t take so long for a major Christian record company ForeFront Records to had interest in them. In 1996 their first self-titled album, ‘Skillet‘, was released. The album receive good results and they continued to create new material along with their United States tour.
Many fans especially the new one, still curious about the name ‘Skillet‘, the lead vocalist of the band, John Cooper, answers that it was a joke in the beginning to choose that name. It came because originally, all the members are already busy with their own bands that come from various type of rock music. And when they join together to create a new band, they put their different skills and music styles in a giant skillet. And that is the story behind the name of the band.
They continued to work on their following album in the 1997. The album, ‘Hey You, I Love Your Soul’, finally released on April 1998. They need to work hard in the work of this album to change its style that showed in their first album. Finally, their second album has showed how the change their music style by left their post-grunge style for a lighter style of rock.
In the 2000, just before they started recording their next album titled Invincible, Ken Steorts quit the band to create Visible Music College, a ministry college of modern music in Memphis, together with his family. And then Kevin Haaland came to the band to fill the empty position as the guitarist. Soon after that, Korey Cooper came to the band and participate in the recording of the new album as the keyboards player.
They finally released their first worship album, that is also their fourth album, titled Ardent Worship. The album released in 2000 and the first single in the album scored a major hit particularly in Christian music market and brought them to popularity.