Skillet Strike More Gold And Platinum
(ASPR) Skillet is celebrating a major milestone with 30 million RIAA-certified units across 21 titles, including 11 newly awarded honors, as the band prepares to release its new independent EP, After the Storm, October 9.
Leading the new certifications is Skillet's career-defining smash "Monster," now 7x Platinum, further cementing its place among rock's most enduring hits. The song has surpassed 5 billion global streams.
Additionally, "Back From the Dead" is Gold and Skillet's 2016 album Unleashed is Platinum, previously certified milestones that are now being publicly recognized alongside the band's latest honors.
The certifications arrive during one of the strongest periods of global momentum in Skillet's career. The band currently averages more than 12 million monthly Spotify listeners, while a new generation continues to discover its music through streaming, social media, gaming and sports. Earlier this year, Skillet completed its biggest international run to date, playing to approximately 90,000 fans across 23 European cities, with sold-out shows and record-setting ticket sales at venues including Paris' Zenith.
And while Skillet's catalog continues to reach new heights, the band is firmly focused on what comes next.
Arriving October 9, the six-song After the Storm finds Skillet returning to a heavier, rawer sound while frontman John Cooper delivers some of the most vulnerable and hopeful songwriting of his career. Produced by David Cowell (Sleep Theory), the project brought Cooper back to his hometown of Memphis to record for the first time since Skillet's 2003 album Collide.
"This EP is special to me," says Cooper. "It reignites what Skillet was always meant to be-which is music that helps lift people out of dark times. I wrote these songs because I needed to be lifted out of my darkness."
The EP's latest single, "Lift Me Up," follows "Scream," which has already surpassed 5 million global streams. Both songs reflect the intensely personal season behind After the Storm, which finds Cooper writing candidly about betrayal, anger, depression, faith, perseverance and ultimately hope.
"Lift Me Up" pairs a syncopated groove and crushing guitar riff with Cooper's declaration: "I'm not gonna die tonight. I'm gonna rise above it."
"When I wrote it, so many things were dragging me down," Cooper says. "I was asking God to lift me up."
"Scream," meanwhile, channels the frustration and volatility Cooper sees permeating modern culture-and his own struggle through a difficult personal season-into an explosive cry for meaning and help.
Skillet will take the new music on the road this fall with a U.S. headline tour beginning in October, bringing together a catalog that now spans multiple generations of fans with the next chapter of the band's music.
The band's nine newly awarded RIAA certifications include:
"Monster" - 7x Platinum
"Hero" - 4x Platinum
"Awake and Alive" - 3x Platinum
"Feel Invincible" - 3x Platinum
"Not Gonna Die" - Platinum
"Falling Inside the Black" - Gold
"Finish Line" - Gold
"Rise" - Gold
"Sick of It" - Gold
"Back From the Dead" - Gold
"Unleashed" - Platinum
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