Disciple has forged a path through Christian hard rock marked by musical intensity, a tireless work ethic and a no-holds-barred approach to presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ that has left an indelible mark on countless listeners over the past two decades. After a several album stint signed to Fair Trade Services, a season which saw the release of the most successful and impactful songs of their career, the band chose to take a break and make an album entirely supported by the help of a deeply dedicated fanbase. The result was an incredibly successful kickstarter campaign that saw the album funded far beyond the initial goal.

The past two years have also seen another major game changer for Disciple: excepting lead singer and founder Kevin Young, every other position in the band is filled by a different member than those present for 2012's O God Save Us All.

Although the challenges of independence coupled with recent dramatic lineup changes would have daunted many artists, Disciple fearlessly plunged into the unique creative process, resulting in one of the best albums of their career. Attack is an album with Disciple's unique legacy stamped all over every hard-hitting, truth-carrying song.

The music and the ministry of Disciple played a profound role in the formation of my relationship with Christ and has continued to be a constant grace and encouragement in my life ever since. This made it a special privilege to speak with frontman Kevin Young about this chapter in the band's history and the heartbeat behind Attack.

Attack comes out in a week, and you have a brand new band since the last album. What kinds of things were you looking for in the new members you were selecting?

My MO has been to look for guys that I know before I start delving into people I don't know. With the addition of Jason Wilkes, I was already friends with him since we'd toured with High Flight Society before. He wasn't a bass player, he was actually just a rhythm player in his band. I called him and said "hey, you're like a better singer than I am, and you're not really playing with anybody right now. I wanted to see if you would come and help me sing in my band."

He said "sure!" And I said "the only thing is, I need you to play bass too. Can you play bass?" He said "no, I can't, sorry." So I said "do you think you can learn?" And he said "sure!" So that's how it came about.

Josiah was a recommendation of a friend, and Andrew was somebody I met in Germany. Joey, our drummer, was someone I met on tour a few months before he tried out. So it's mostly guys that I knew, and it just worked out that way.

What makes Disciple 3.0 unique? What about them sets them apart from the past two incarnations of Disciple?

There's all kinds of personalities in bands. Most bands have a combination of leaders, nice guys, the funny guy, the crazy guy, the one who gets in trouble all the time. There's always this combination of all these personalities. And on a personal level, the level that no one sees, these guys were the nice guy of each of their bands that they used to be in.

So they're all really low maintenance, super chilled out, and extremely nice to everybody. We're probably not going to hear any complaints from anyone ever that someone was mean to them, because they're all so nice. Not that the other band members weren't nice, it's just they weren't this nice. These guys are like the ultimate in that.

The other thing is that I think we all have a little more in common musically than the other bands in the past did. We still come from a wide array of places. But the first version of Disciple was very different from each other, and in the second all the band members were extremely different from each other. Writing a song as a band was always a challenge, because they really had strong opinions about very different things. And those strong opinions got in the way of our writing I think.

With this one, we have a lot more in common. Even though we're coming from different spectrums, the core is rock music. We're coming from different spectrums of rock instead of different spectrums of pop and country and all these other things. So that's definitely helped, and it was a really smooth process because anytime someone wrote something, normally we all were very excited about it.

Does that mean that all the band members had a pretty solid hand in the writing of Attack? Were you able to collaborate pretty heavily?

Absolutely. A little less than half of the last two albums were cowritten by writers outside of the band. On this album, there was only one song that was cowritten with me and someone outside the band.

So you've got an album of eleven songs that came from the band. This legitimately is a Disciple album. Which I felt really good about, and I told them from the get go that I didn't want to go outside unless we had to.

And we really didn't have to, there was just a songwriting appointment that I had with somebody that I didn't want to cancel. I went and did it, and we ended up coming up with a great song, which is the song "Unbroken." We all fell in love with the song. Again, we didn't have to go outside, it was one of those things that just kind of happened. I think the Lord had His hand in it, really.

But I'm very proud and very excited about eleven songs off the album coming from the band. That was definitely a goal, something we'd wanted to try.

It definitely results in all the songs sounding really unified, in the way it sounds and thematically as well. This might be one of the most unified albums that Disciple has ever done. What kind of things were inspiring you that created this really strong, powerful theme?

I felt like this year for me personally, every time I would sit down and write, a lot of the things I was going through were unique to me as an individual as far as being attacked spiritually, this battle in my mind. There's a verse that talks about taking your thoughts captive, making them obedient to Christ. The battle has definitely always been there. I just don't think I was as aware of it as I have been this last year, like literally having to fight that battle on a daily basis. I'd be on long drives and having these thoughts just enter my head, and I'd be shouting in my car, having these spiritual fights with thoughts in my head.

So when I picked up the pen to write, a lot of that happened. Things like "Dead Militia," that's a song that serves two purposes. It's not only about the end times, but it's also about this fight of tearing down the world's system and what the world thinks is important. It's this fight within me about serving Christ and following what He would think is important as opposed to following whatever this culture or social media thinks is important, or whatever the TV is shoving in my face every day.

So you're right, a lot of these themes have a lot in common with that. And it came from those types of places.

Specifically, one of the songs that's been getting the strongest response from fans is "The Name." What kind of concepts or ideas were driving that? It's a pretty special song.

It is an extremely special song. It's a song that I've wanted to write for years and years, and again, not to say anything bad about anybody else, but this band was very unified in wanting to write a song like that lyrically. In the past, unification over a song like that wasn't present.

Believe it or not, I actually didn't write the lyrics to that chorus. The music was sent to me, and I wrote lyrics very similar to "Yesterday is Over" to it. And I was like "oh my goodness, I've got this amazing song."

And Josiah's the one that wrote the music. I was like "I'm so pumped, I've got lyrics to this song!" And he goes "oh, I wrote some lyrics to it too." And I was like "...oh, OK. Well, send them over, I'll listen to them" thinking in my mind there's no way. Because "Yesterday is Over"'s lyrics are really strong, really powerful and I felt really good about them.

But he sent me his lyrics, and it was "I will not be afraid to speak Your name, I don't care if they drag me off in chains. No power from hell can shake my faith. I'm not afraid to speak Your name." And I was just like "oh my goodness, this is the song I've that been wanting to write for years and I just couldn't." I didn't know how. I mean, I probably have three or four different drafts of songs that I've thrown away trying to write that song. And he nailed it perfectly.

I finished it out with verses borrowing from "Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus" and a bridge that really speaks His name boldly, sings His name. And I'm really glad that people are responding well to it, because I think Disciple's been thirsty and hungry for a song like that, and I think Christian music in general has been thirsty and hungry for a song like that.

It's not an easy thing to do, because you're always faced as an artist with wanting to be bold about your faith but also wanting to be relevant and not come off cheesy. I think one thing that helped us was to just not care what anyone thinks anymore. Being older really helped that. If someone wants to say that we're a cheesy Christian rock band because we say the name of Jesus, then good for them, because I just don't care anymore. Our band's not going to be for them anyway. I've reached a place where those voices just aren't important in my life anymore.

So I'm very glad that people are responding well. Partially because it's very easy to say God, anyone can talk about God, but you talk about Jesus, and everybody starts getting weird. But you know, that's the name that's above every other name. At His name every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, and if I can't be bold about His name, then what can I be bold about?

I gladly and openly talk about a Keurig coffee machine, or I'll gladly talk about Monday night football last night. How much more should I be open about talking about the name above every other name? And that's the name of Jesus.

(Stay tuned next week for part 2, in which we talk about the advantages and challenges of the independent route and some of the unique impacts and aims of Disciple's ministry.)