commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Although the term Christian Heavy Metal Rock Star may sound like an oxymoron, the fact is that heavy metal music has long been popular among Christians and born-again Christians. In one of my past lives, I worked with a big jolly born-again Christian, who when he wasn’t listening to Rush Limbaugh, liked nothing better than to plug in that Godly-Satanic sound.
And why not? Whoever said that our actions and attitudes are supposed to make sense?
So although I’ve long been aware of the peculiar phenomenon of Heavy Metal Christian Rock and Heavy Metal Christian Speed Rock, what I didn’t know is that a certain percentage of the Christian Heavy Metal rock stars aren’t really Christians at all – rather, they’re simply rockers with no real interest in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost who have cashed in on the Christian rock market, which is huge, in order to actually get paid for making a glorious noise.
The prime example of this particular form of hypocrisy may be Timothy Lambesis, the former front man in the long-running Christian metal band, As I Lay Dying. Timothy, whose three loves appear to be heavy metal, body-building and his three adopted Ethiopian children, is serving six years in a murder-for-hire plot designed to whack his estranged wife because she was going to get 60 percent of his income and wouldn’t let their three kids go on tour with him and his band.
The Murder-for-Hire Plot
The Daily Mail Reporter writes that Timothy “was arrested in May last year after giving an undercover agent acting as a hitman, money, gate codes and an alibi to kill his estranged wife, Meggan Lambesis.”
This occurred after Meggan filed for divorce in September 2012 to end their eight-year marriage.
According to the divorce records, which were obtained by the Associated Press, Meggan Lambesis had two very specific complaints: 1) She claimed Timothy had become ‘obsessed with bodybuilding’; 2) She distrusted his parenting ability, stating that he had a tendency to become distracted when watching the children (at least he didn’t cook them in an SUV) and had even fallen asleep once while caring for them. (Good heavens, that is certainly sinful!)
When you’re a workout champion, you naturally have to have a personal trainer, and one day last year, Timothy made the mistake of telling a personal trainer at his gym, a man named Brett Kimball, that he wanted to get rid of his wife.
Kimball wasn’t going for it and instead he turned Timothy in to the authorities.
‘He wanted to know if maybe I could find someone to do it for him,’ Kimball testified at a pretrial hearing.
Thus, an investigation began and according to prosecutors, Timothy was ultimately recorded telling a UC (Undercover Agent) that he wanted his wife whacked or, more specifically, according to a statement made by the UC, San Diego County Sheriff’s Officer Howard Bradley, when Timothy met UC Bradley at an Oceanside bookstore in May of 2013, he said he wanted his wife ‘gone’.
In order to keep the quasi-entrapment moving, Bradley he asked Timothy directly if he wanted his wife killed, and the Christian Heavy Metal man replied, ‘Yes, I do’.
Then of course Timothy, who the Daily Mail Reporter describes as a heavily-tattooed gym junkie, had to justify his aberrant desire and explained that his ex Meggan had restricted his visits with their adopted Ethiopian children, ages four, eight and 10, after they separated in September 2012.
But one wonders whether it was really the kids, or the fact Meggan would get the lion’s share of his income. that drove him up the wall.
According to UC Bradley, at the end of their meeting Timothy stated, ‘Just to clarify, just so you know, I do want her dead.’
In what is startling to me, as a down payment for the murder-for-hire, Timothy gave Bradly a measly$1,000 in cash for expenses, along with his wife’s address, her gate codes, pictures of her and dates when he would have the kids, apparently because he didn’t want her whacked in front of the children.
On balance, the fact that Timothy is only doing six years for scheming to kill his wife seems like nothing to complain about; it could have been worse and if his scheme had succeeded and he’d been apprehended, he’d of course be doing life.
Atheist Disguised as Christian Heavy Metal Artist
It turns out that Timothy had another dark secret in addition to wanting his ex-wife killed. Although a ranking Christian Heavy Metal star, he really wasn’t a Christian at all; it was merely a ploy to sell records.
Sarah Fruchtnicht of Opposing Views writes:
Sentenced to six years in a murder-for-hire plot, Christian heavy metal singer Timothy Lambesis admitted he’s an atheist who pretended to be Christian to sell records.
“Truthfully, I was an atheist,” Timothy told the Alternative Press in an interview. “The ‘strategy’ I had at the time was cowardly. Two of the songs on that record were about coming to grips with the idea that life has no purpose, no meaning.”
“These were negative themes I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to deal with in As I Lay Dying songs,” he said. “I thought making As I Lay Dying darker would be bad for my career. That was my thinking.”
Is it just me or does something here not add up? If two of the songs were about the meaningless of life, a singularly non-Christian theme, and if he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to deal with negative themes while in the band, then how could the two songs be on the album? To me, this is a head-scratcher.
If we go back four years, to a 2010 radio interview, Timothy’s hypocrisy is readily apparent in an interview he gave at the time in which he said his songwriting was inspired by his faith.
“I can only really write about what I’m passionate about in life, so naturally my faith, my belief in the teachings of Jesus and His resurrection come across in our lyrics,” he said.
In what is truly an eye-opener, Timothy claims he’s not the only “Christian rock artist” pretending to be devout. He said his bandmates and other Christian bands shared his “strategy.”
This got awkward, however, as his band grew in popularity:
“When kids would want to pray with us after shows, I’d be like, ‘Um, go ahead and pray!’ I would just let them pray,” he said. “I’d say ‘Amen.’ If praying while I have my hand on their shoulder makes them feel better, I didn’t want to take that away from them.”
“When they would specifically ask me to pray for something, I’d say, ‘I don’t really like to pray out loud, but I’ll take that with me to the bus’,” he admitted.
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As I Lay Dying was pretty darned successful. The band formed in San Diego in 2000 and has released eight albums, including 2007′s “An Ocean Between Us”, which reached No. 8 on Billboard’s charts. A single from that album, Nothing Left, was nominated for a Grammy for top metal performance.
The band plays in an aggressive style that features lightning-speed metal guitar riffs along with Timothy’s bogus Christian lyrics.
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Timothy’s curious confession makes me wonder if wielding bogus Christian philosophy in order to win friends and influence people might also exist among a certain percentage – however small – of Christian pastors and ministers. It would be interesting if a few of these noble representatives of Christian doctrine also came out of the closet and confessed that they were actually atheists impersonating men and women of the cloth.
Of course, real Christians will be both incensed and dismayed by such hypocrisy, and I can’t say I blame them.