Awake

Got it for my dad’s birthday! He loves it!

This is another great Skillet album. However, it is their most "radio friendly" album to date. This might put off some listeners. Generally, Skillet always have a mix of heavy, soft, and pop songs on their albums. This album is no different, but the attempt at making the album more radio friendly hurts the album in some ways - mainly, I feel like Ben has to hold back on his guitar playing, especially solos and weird guitar noises (which are cool), and the ballads are more generic-rock-ballad sounding that Skillet has ever sounded before. Even on the heavier songs, it seems like Skillet are holding back a little, making sure that every song is a potential rock or pop radio single.Now, please don't take that criticism to mean that this is a bad album. In fact, I think quite highly of the album and believe that Skillet have never put out a bad album. I get the impression that this is the album aimed at the masses and meant to put Skillet "over the top" in terms of being a well-known rock act.Overall, great album, but as a fan of rock, I would love to have heard more cool guitar work and risk-taking. On other Skillet albums, a lot of the songs will have a part in the middle where you want to say "wow, that was a cool change up" or "man, that little part was awesome." This album has slightly fewer of those moments, probably due to the more pop-rock oriented production, but they are still there. Still, a great album, and I have no major complaints.I prefer the more rock oriented songs, and here are my thoughts:Hero - good lyrics, great song, good use of Jen's vocals.Monster - good lyrics, great song, but I wish the studio version had the cool growl that they do live in concert.Sometimes - cool little guitar riff, one of the better heavier songs.It's not me, it's you - pretty good song. catchy rock riff. cool lyrics in the intro.Awake and Alive - good song, good use of Jen's vocals (or is that Corey's vocals?), cool use of the synthDead Inside - cool riff, pretty good rock song.A lot of the other songs are more ballad oriented or more pop-rockish, and those are good too, but I don't feel like giving them all an individual review. Maybe I'll update this review at a later date.-If you ever have a chance to see Skillet live, do so. They put on a very good live show.-I enjoy the mix of male/female voices in some songs. They don't overuse it, and it adds to their unique sound.-If you like the band, check out their past albums. They have a wide variety of musical styles and influences. There are super-heavy songs (far heavier than anything on Awake) and far softer songs as well. There's grunge songs (the first album) and electronic/industrial influenced albums as well.-Really, I wish they would release a remix album featuring studio remixes similar to the live versions of their songs. "Better Than Drugs," from "Comatose" has a really cool intro live, and "Monster" has a cool deep growling voice saying "Monster" in the middle of the song (neither of the album versions effectively capture the live version greatness of that growl). Some of the songs also seem to have more complicated bass/guitar parts in concert as well, and those bits sound better too. These guys are incredible in concert, and I worry that the influence of producers/record label/radio is taming their sound down a bit too much. I enjoy a few pop-rock songs and ballads from Skillet, but I still wanna hear the band "lay it down" musically on a few of the heavier numbers. I don't even mean make the songs super-heavy; I just like hearing layers of guitar and cool riffs, rather than the "bar chords without lead guitar" sound that's taken over the radio. Thankfully, the band hasn't fallen to that fad, but this album does feel like it has less "jamming." Ben and John can jam! Let them!Despite my apparent concern, still a great album.

Great band and songs

I've been a semi-fan of Skillet for a few years now but sometime in the last year or so, after hearing their 2003 album Collide, I became suddenly and inexplicably hooked to their work from that album onward (their earlier stuff is alright but not my favorite). Awake was actually the third album I had heard from them (the first being Rise, followed by Collide as mentioned earlier) and, when I heard it, I considered it my favorite album by them. It's currently my second-favorite after their 2006 album, Comatose, which I consider to be a perfect album.Awake is the first Skillet album with current drummer and female vocalist, Jen Ledger, who honestly made the band really awesome due to her solid drum work and pleasant voice which perfectly complements John Cooper's gritty vocal work. This album takes the Comatose sound of symphonic hard rock and blends it with a more radio friendly, fun approach that makes for an enjoyable ride. Whether the catchy opener Hero, the epic anthem Awake and Alive (my favorite Skillet song to date), or the beautiful ballad finale Lucy, this album has a pretty solid blend of sounds and genres to create a really unique release.I personally consider Skillet to be the modern resurgence of 80s arena rock and heavy metal. They have a similar energy and feel to their music, but with a much more modern sound that fits in with the hard rock sound that most people enjoy nowadays. While I do think this album had too many ballads, it also happens to have a lot of Skillet's best songs including Awake and Alive (as I mentioned earlier), Forgiven and Never Surrender. And if you're able to get the Deluxe (AKA - "Fan Club") Edition, you get three bonus tracks (one of which is a Monster radio edit) which could have easily replaced a couple of the ballads, or perhaps even Monster, which I consider to be one of their most overrated tracks. It's not terrible, it's just kind of annoying. Dead Inside feels like it was straight off of Comatose, and Would It Matter is an emotional ballad of significantly higher quality than most of the ballads on the album.Other than the overabundance of ballads and focus on Monster, this album is an extremely solid album that makes for a very enjoyable listen. If you're just getting into them, this is a good start. It is the bridge between the heavier, symphonic-driven approach of Collide and Comatose respectively, as well as the more accessible approach of Rise and Unleashed, thus making it a great balance and a great start. I'd say 4.5/5, but I rounded up as there's no middle ground for the stars here on Amazon.

I choose this rating because I never listen to the other Skillet songs until I listened to this CD, I always listen to "Hero" and "Monster" as my favorite songs in both versions on YouTube before I purchased this product for my 20th Birthday, and realized that the rest of those tracks are as cool as those two.What I like is just "Hero" and "Monster", because when I danced and sang along to them, I felt like a rock star on concert to the extreme, like I'm living that scene from "Risky Business", only this I keep my pants on rather than in my underwear as I still rock and roll, hardcore style.I would recommend this product to Skillet fans, hard rock/heavy metal fans, and music-in-general fans alike!