That's not a judgment. It's just honest. My taste in music runs wide. Classical to country. Pop to hip hop. Gospel to classic rock. I've always believed that good music is good music, regardless of the genre label someone slaps on it.
But screamo? Metalcore? Post-hardcore?
(metalcore is probably more accurate)
Not typically my lane.
So I was genuinely surprised when I found myself completely captivated by a vocalist named MAPHRA on YouTube. She covers songs from some of the heavier corners of rock and metal, and something about what she does stopped me mid-scroll and held me there.
I'm still trying to put words to why.
It starts with the voice.
MAPHRA is doing things vocally that most singers can't do. She moves between melodic, soaring passages and full-on screamed delivery with a control and intentionality that you don't often hear. Vocal coaches have noticed. The metal community has noticed. People who never listen to this kind of music have noticed.
That last group is the interesting one. Because it raises a question worth asking.
What is it about a particular artist that pulls people outside their normal listening habits? What makes someone who genuinely doesn't gravitate toward a genre stop and pay attention anyway?
I think it comes down to restraint and placement.
Screamo, at its most overwhelming, can feel like a wall. Constant intensity. No variation. No invitation. And for a lot of listeners, that wall is exactly where the conversation ends. They hear the aggression and they assume there's nothing underneath it worth finding.
But what MAPHRA does, at least in the covers I've heard, is use those heavier vocal moments strategically. As punctuation. As emotional climax. As contrast against the melodic sections that carry the melody and the meaning. That dynamic range is what opens the door for people who would otherwise never walk through it.
It's the same reason Amy Lee of Evanescence worked.
Amy Lee didn't just make heavy music more accessible. She made it emotionally legible to people who didn't have the vocabulary for it. She showed a generation of listeners that there was depth and beauty operating inside a genre they'd written off. Evanescence became a gateway because Amy knew when to go heavy and when to pull back, and the space between those two things is where the feeling lived.
MAPHRA feels like she understands that same dynamic.
Whether she'll have Amy's cultural footprint is genuinely too early to say. But she's standing at a similar threshold. And that matters.
Then I actually listened to the lyrics.
One of her covers is "Circle With Me" by Spiritbox. And if you've never heard it, I'd encourage you to set aside whatever assumptions you have about the genre and just let her cover of the song speak.
Because it's doing something theologically serious underneath all that intensity.
The song builds around a central tension. There's a voice in the song making a promise. An offer. A seduction. And the narrator is caught somewhere between recognizing what's happening and being drawn into it anyway. The imagery is layered. Vultures. Birds of prey circling. A martyr's weight. An altar. A dying sun.
And then this:
"I held the power of a dying sun. I climb the altar and I claim my place as God."
I'll be honest. The first time I heard that lyric, I felt something uncomfortable in my chest.
Not because it was dark or disturbing. Because it was familiar.
I've read that story before.
The temptation that echoes through the song.
In the Gospel of Luke, chapter four, Satan takes Jesus to a high place and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. Every nation. Every throne. Every seat of power spread out below him.
And then the offer:
"To you I will give all this authority and their glory. It has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours."
It will all be yours.
That phrase lives at the center of "Circle With Me." It echoes through the whole song like a temptation that won't stop speaking.
It could all be yours.
It could all be yours.
And what I heard when I slowed down and really listened was not a celebration of power. It was a portrait of what happens when someone accepts the deal.
The narrator isn't declaring triumph. She's confessing a descent.
She's describing what it looks like when ambition tips into idolatry. When the pursuit of greatness quietly replaces the purpose behind it. When we start believing we deserve to occupy the altar instead of approach it.
That's not a satanic lyric. That's a diagnostic one.
And it's remarkably honest.
The line that caused me to pause.
After that confession, the song does something even more unsettling.
It invites you in.
"Circle with me."
I've been turning that phrase over since I first heard it. Because on the surface it sounds like an invitation to join the vultures. Come circle the dying thing. Come feed. Come be part of the descent.
But I don't think it's that simple.
Is it temptation speaking directly to you?
Is it someone who already said yes, calling out from the other side of the choice?
Is it a warning dressed as an invitation? Look at where I ended up. Do you still want to follow?
The song doesn't resolve the question. And I think that's intentional.
Because that's exactly how temptation works. It doesn't announce itself as the wrong thing. It arrives wearing the language of your ambitions. Your gifts. Your potential. It says this could all be yours, and it sounds reasonable. It sounds like opportunity. It sounds like the voice of someone who wants good things for you.
The most dangerous lies are the ones that are mostly true.
What makes art worth sitting with.
I've been in ministry long enough to know that the most powerful teaching doesn't always look like teaching.
Sometimes it looks like a song that makes you uncomfortable. A lyric you can't shake. A question that keeps surfacing when you're trying to sleep.
The best art doesn't hand you the answer. It holds up a mirror and makes you sit in the discomfort long enough to figure out which voice you've been listening to. And whether you'd recognize it when you heard it again.
That's what "Circle With Me" did for me.
And MAPHRA's cover is what put it in front of me.
(DISCLAIMER - Brace yourself if you're going to watch this video, because it is very heavy metal in a screamo genre, if you even know what that is. For some of you that may have never heard this before, it might terrify you.)
There's a tendency, especially in certain faith communities, to write off entire genres of music based on surface-level signals. The aggression. The distortion. The screaming. The dark imagery. And I understand the instinct. Not all of it deserves defense.
But dismissing something entirely because of how it sounds means you might miss what it's actually saying.
A song about the seduction of power and the cost of saying yes to the wrong voice is not a satanic anthem. It might be one of the more honest pieces of theological reflection I've encountered in a while.
It just happens to have a guitar tone and vocals that would peel paint.
One last thought on MAPHRA.
I don't know if she'll become a defining voice for this generation the way Amy Lee became one for hers. The cultural conditions are different. The music industry is different. The way artists build audiences has changed in ways that make it harder to predict that kind of impact.
But what I know is this.
She made someone who doesn't listen to this genre stop scrolling.
She made that person actually listen.
And then that person went looking for the meaning behind the lyrics and ended up sitting with a theological parallel that sent him back to the Gospel of Luke.
If that's not influence, I don't know what is.
What's the last song that made you think about something bigger than the music itself?