SKILLET Announces New Music and Anniversary Tour

Wait…
Comatose Is 20 Years Old?

I refuse to accept this information.

Somewhere in my brain, SKILLET’s Comatose is still one of their “new” records.

Then SKILLET goes and announces the Comatose: 20 Years, Still Screaming Tour, and suddenly I’m doing math this 40 year old never asked to do.

What do you mean 2006 was twenty years ago?

I’m only 25.

To celebrate the anniversary, SKILLET has announced a major fall headline run produced by Live Nation, along with the arrival of brand-new music. The band’s new single, “Scream,” arrives July 10 and serves as the first taste of a new chapter that John Cooper says reaches back to the band’s roots while pushing forward into some of their heaviest material yet.

“We went back to Memphis and worked with a producer who knew the band before we’d made our first record,” Cooper says. “Life has taken some great turns, but it’s also taken some painful turns. Now we’re here, and we still have more of a story to tell. The music kept getting heavier, and I said, ‘We’ve got to go all-in.’”

That intensity is reflected in the new single, which Cooper says was born out of the emotional exhaustion many people are feeling in today’s culture.

“I don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticing the volatility of the world and how social media is a cesspool where people are constantly yelling at each other,” Cooper explains. “It’s not helping anyone’s mental health. In this landscape, it’s easy to feel like nothing matters. ‘Scream’ is about wanting your life to matter when the world feels chaotic and overwhelming.”

If the new music looks ahead, the tour takes time to look back.

“When we released our 2006 album, COMATOSE, we all had a feeling that we were making something special,” Cooper recalls. “What we didn’t know is that the album would change the trajectory of the band’s career.”

That’s probably an understatement.

The record helped establish the sound that would carry SKILLET into arenas around the world. It laid the foundation for a catalog that would eventually produce massive crossover hits like “Monster,” which recently surpassed four billion global streams and became the only song by a Christian artist to exceed one billion streams on Spotify.

But for Cooper, the legacy of Comatose isn’t measured by streaming numbers.

“At every show, someone tells me that this record helped them through the darkest times of their life,” he says. “That is why we wanted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Comatose by doing something we have never done—commemorating the album by dedicating a large portion of the show to these songs that are so meaningful to the band and so many others.”

That means fans can expect more than just the usual hits. According to Cooper, some of the songs have been played thousands of times. Others have never been performed live.

For longtime fans, that’s reason enough to be excited.

For the rest of us, it’s also a reminder that the soundtrack of our youth somehow became classic rock while we weren’t paying attention.

And frankly, I’m still not ready to process that.

SKILLET’s new single “Scream” arrives July 10, with additional new music expected later this year. The Comatose: 20 Years, Still Screaming Tour launches September 30 and runs through November, including a Florida stop at one of my favorite venues. Orlando’s House of Blues on November 10 at Disney Springs.