Monster
Skillet · Awake (Deluxe Edition)
A raw cry for rescue from the darkness within
What do these signals mean?
- Edifying: Points the heart toward God, truth, hope, or love.
- Worth Weighing: Real good and real concern together. Test it before you take it in.
- Take Caution: Leans toward what could dull or mislead. Approach carefully.
- Consider Avoiding: Celebrates what Scripture warns against. Little here builds up.
Weighed against Scripture
“For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Paul's anguished cry about doing the evil he doesn't want and being unable to stop echoes the song almost line for line. The song captures exactly this tension, right down to the plea for someone to deliver.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.”
The psalmist cries out in darkness, feeling unheard, which matches the song's "no one can hear me scream." Lament directed outward in longing for rescue is a biblical posture, not a failure of faith.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The song's repeated confession, "I must confess that I feel like a monster," mirrors the biblical call to honest acknowledgment of what's inside us. Confession that names the darkness is the first step toward the light.
Monster gives voice to the internal war many people feel but rarely say out loud: the sense that something ugly lives inside them and they can't beat it alone. The lyrics never glamorize this; they're ashamed of it and desperate for outside rescue. That honest confession of need, even without naming God as the answer, is closer to Psalm-like lament than to despair. Skillet leaves the door open rather than slamming it shut.
Dark, monster-and-beast imagery throughout, but no profanity or explicit content. The violence is metaphorical and pointed inward, describing the singer's own inner struggle.
The song doesn't resolve into hope, but its core cry is "why won't somebody come and save me." That longing for rescue is genuine and pointed outward, away from self-sufficiency. It reaches without arriving.
Skillet is a Christian rock band, and this song fits their consistent pattern of naming darkness honestly in order to point toward the need for something greater than oneself. It's meant to articulate what listeners already feel, not to celebrate it.
When you listen to this song, does it leave you feeling named and understood in your struggle, or does it leave you feeling stuck there with no way out?