You can file this one under the Classic Christian Albums heading for Metaphysical Monday. Released in 1999, this album is second only to MxPx’s Life in General as far as Christian punk albums go (in my opinion). While remaining fairly obscure in the underground, Blaster the Rocket Man created an album of incredible musical and lyrical excellence.
The music of Blaster the Rocket Man was a mix of punk/horror punk and rockabilly. It was eery and fast and fun. Otto Bot’s voice had a giant dynamic range, swinging from a wolf-like growl on “I Like Lycanthropy” (fun fact: I once ordered 250 stickers with “Equal Rights for Werewolves” on them and sold them at the BTA merch table in honor of this song) to an almost Elvis-like croon on other songs.
The lyrical content amazes me to this day. The title of the album refers to the literal meaning of Christ’s words that “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.” In glorious fashion, Otto Bot fleshes out what that looks like in the world of classic horror characters. Who drinks blood? A vampire, of course! Likewise, we are all monsters until we eat the flesh of Christ and find our salvation. Drawing heavily on C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, the album goes into all sorts of tongue-in-cheek analogies that portray life in Christ as a world of fantastic creatures and hideous sins.
This may not be a Classic Christian Album in the sense that everyone in the world loved it. But it is a personal classic for me and I regularly meet fans of underground punk that cherish this album as a pinnacle of horror-punk/rockabilly. Limited copies were pressed, so buying one now might cost you a bit (a quick search on amazon yielded a result of several copies, all being sold for over $20). But seriously, check this one out, 13 years later!
