We'll Never Say Goodbye: Children 18:3 In Memorium

I hereby request a temporary moratorium on "big announcements" from bands. I'm not sure anything else could cause me more pop cultural anxiety than the words "big news" coming from a band I really love after the Joey Jordison/Slipknot split, and now Children 18:3's announcement that they were launching a Kickstarter for their new, and apparently final, album.

My love for Children 18:3 has gotten some odd looks from people in the past, and truth be told, I can't really blame them. I first heard of and saw them when they opened for Brian "Head" Welch's solo band in Bismarck in 2010, and when they first strode out on stage and launched into "All My Balloons", I was left a tad speechless. They were, well, pretty different, and not the kind of band that I expected to be opening for a heavy metal guitarist. I spent most of their set dodging LeeMarie's boots (my fault for standing with my hands resting on her monitors), I admired their energy, and the contributions of one member in particular who we'll get to in a moment, but I wrote them off a bit. It wasn't until a week or two later when I was still singing "All My Balloons" that I stopped to consider what I really thought of them.

The energy was what first caught my attention, and it remains one of my favorite qualities. I'll mosh to anything, but Children 18:3 makes me want to dance, as stupid as that may sound on a site called Heavier than Hell. They make me want to run around and dance and jump, theirs is a very potent, happy vibe that I need every once in a while. A lot of this energy is due to the drumming of one Seth Hostetter, the member I singled out earlier. Type "Seth Hostetter drum solo" into YouTube and you'll come up with pages of results, all of them jaw dropping. The man plays with a speed, precision, and endurance I only see in like, thrash metal drummers. With his unrelenting power behind them, Children 18:3 go past simple pop punk and pick up that energy I described earlier and become a force that is kind of hard to ignore. Combine all of this with the great, inspiring lyrics of songs like "Oh, Bravo" and "We'll Never Say Goodbye" and the vocal trade off between David and LeeMarie, and you've got quite a potent mixture.

I'm not sure we'll see a band like Children 18:3 again, and that's a damn shame to me. But the adage goes that it is better to leave people wanting more, and that will have to be the case here I guess.

We'll never say goodbye...