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Most bands these days want to distance themselves from being "Christian <genre>", even when all the members are Christians and the lyrical themes are to do with their faith.
I think even among Christians, "Christian rock" gets a bad rep, and I think it's because it suggests that artistic integrity is subsumed under conformity to the expectations of a certain audience- to whit, a subset of American Christianity. Back when I took an interest in it in the 90s, all the interesting bands were in conflict with their record companies for just that reason.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
But when we talk about "Christian rock" or "Christian metal", we aren't just talking about Christians who make music. We are talking about extremists. If you've seen the footage of Paula White or Kenneth Copeland with Donald Trump, you know what I'm talking about. The Christian rock brigade have far more in common with the televangelists and faith healers than they do with the tradition of church art and iconography you're talking about. In fact most of them are the kinds of Christian who wouldn't even count Catholics and adherents of some other denominations as Christians at all.
@Philly_Q is right, Rex Carroll was a great shredder, but these are people who would vote for a dictator if he promised to ban abortion. And there's no separating the art from the artist, because the whole point of Christian metal is to hit you over the head with their toxic ideology.
EDIT: With regard to OP, I can't comment on whether Wytch Hazel are THAT kind of Christian because I haven't paid enough attention. I'm not saying all Christians in metal bands are extremists, but I am saying that's fundamentally what the genre "Christian metal" exists to promote.
So, I don't automatically reject the idea of Christian rock/metal, as some might. But I haven't looked too closely into their specific beliefs. I'd hope that musicians I like - Trouble, King's X, Kerry Livgren, even Dave Ellefson and the aforementioned Rex Carroll - aren't the kind of Christians who are homophobic or anti-abortion. But I don't know.
Before Whitecross he was in a (non-Christian) band called Fierce Heart who had one really great album. The singer/bassist, Larry Elkins was fantastic but he never seems to have done much else. That also had an instrumental, called Echoes.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
I think it's probably slightly more complex than that. I think the reason there was ever a "Christian music" market at all (for pop and rock music I mean, not for music to sing communally in church services) was the Evangelical church in the US, and the stuff it preached about being separate from secular culture. You get a whole parallel system of music production and distribution, selling products from Christian record labels through Christian bookshops to a Christian audience made up mostly of people who believe in a very conservative, very proscriptive version of Christianity with its own set of in-group signifiers that need to be there in the music to prove the artist is "one of us". Less conservative strands of Christianity don't have the same strong feeling about shunning everything secular, so they're less likely to be very interested in Christian music, so they don't need to be catered for.
You end up with the situation that existed in the 90s, where bands whose members are Christians, and whose lyrical themes are Christian want to be professional musicians. Mainstream labels won't touch them because they're a bit *too* Christian, but the Christian labels need them to tick all the right boxes in order to appeal to their conservative Evangelical market. This might mean going full-out with songs about how Catholics aren't Christians or everyone's going to hell if they don't stop having any fun, or it might just mean *not* saying certain things, not writing songs that don't directly address some aspect of faith, or not taking a position on an issue that goes counter to the accepted line. And they don't fuck about either- I've known of Christian artists who were cancelled before it was even a thing, simply for having a swear word on an album, or an extramarital affair, or coming out. All the albums come off the shelves of the Christian stores, the gigs get cancelled and it's game over. There might be a way back from marital infidelity for an artist, but once you're out as gay you're dead to them.
So it's not necessarily the artists who are pushing the agenda (although I'm sure plenty of them do), it's the audience.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Ironically I feel that it prevented many Christian musicians fulfilling the best use of their gifts that they believed they had received.
I remember discussing this in Christian circles back at uni (I used to regularly play in a Christian Union band) and I often said that I felt Christian music was too much of a ghetto, too limiting. And while I understood musicians working within it for a steady living, ultimately it stifled creative expression. And for me back in my Christian days that the songs I found most realistic and moving about such life experiences tended to come from the secular music industry.
To be fair, I'm sure there are artists who have found the secular music industry every bit as stifling and prescriptive.
I found an interesting article about The Prayer Chain's Mercury, which is a definite candidate for "best album you've never heard of" that goes in to some of the detail around how the Christian music industry dealt with boundary-pushing bands.
https://medium.com/chrindie-95/the-prayer-chain-s-mercury-969ce84e07e9
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Thanks for the link I'll take a look.
Edit: I should add it's worth me admitting that I was a complete hypocrite during my CU era in the 90s. I hated all the CCM I was exposed to and didn't like any of the stuff the worship band had me play on. But I was just happy to be playing live. .
https://soundcertified.com/speaker-ohms-calculator/