Suburba by House of Heroes is hooky, ambitious, and dripping with honest, candid emotion. This is what a rock record is supposed to sound like. This is what a rock record is supposed to feel like. “I like this album because we chose to write about things that we knew,” states House of Heroes front man Tim Skipper. ”We wanted it to sound very American and full of youthful energy. We kept a lot of what we loved about the last record, but we just applied it differently and I think it came out exactly the way we wanted it to. This record is about growing up in middle class suburbia,” states Skipper. “It’s about fighting for your own identity in the face of society's ideas about love, money, religion and power. It’s about having big dreams and going after them with reckless abandon, yet having to reconcile the fact that things aren't always going to go your way. And it’s about realizing, throughout all of it, that God is real and is the one constant among all the variables of life.”

 

Perhaps the most poignant moment of all on the record comes in its most worshipful, on the track “Constant,” where House of Heroes simply states the following: “All thru the night I was fallin', Straining to hear your voice callin'. You never gave out. You never gave in. You never quite gave up on me. You are my constant.”

I got the chance to interview lead singer Tim Skipper about “Constant.” Here are the answers to the questions I asked Tim.

 

Please share the background message behind the song “Constant.” 
 

Our former drummer, Colin Rigsby, co-wrote the song with us. He put forward the idea. His favorite band growing up was Aerosmith. When he first brought us the song, we were like ‘dude, that sounds just like Aerosmith.’ So we changed it around and made it our own. We really liked the concept and the beat of the song. AJ wrote the lyrics. We went with Colin’s initial lyrical idea. We talked a lot about the television show ‘LOST’ at the time we wrote the song. The show was still cool then, they hadn’t blown it with the terrible ending yet. We liked the spiritual parallels with Christianity and trying to live righteously. We liked the idea of when the character Desmond mentioned the concept of someone being your ‘constant’ on the show LOST as being the person who stabilized you on the island. The song fits in a spiritual sense on the album Suburba, which is about our journey as a band. We started twelve years ago, got signed, and we’ve fallen flat on our faces many times. We’ve been humbled and nothing has gone as we envisioned it going. Looking back, nothing went how we wanted, but the one thing that is ‘constant’ is our relationship with Jesus.

 

What does the message of  the song mean to you personally?
 

I remember talking with my aunt once and she told me about how she and my uncle got married when they were 18 years old. I asked her how they did that, since I’m such a different person now in my late twenties than when I was a teenager. She told me that one day ten years into their marriage she said, ‘I don’t know this man and I don’t know if I love him anymore.’ But they both had Christ at the center of their relationship and they fell back in love and that’s the cycle of what happens in a committed relationship with Jesus as the ‘constant.’ She told me there was no way their marriage would have survived if it weren’t for their relationship with God.

 

Please tell me about any Bible verses that connects to the song?
 

Luke 9:57-62: As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

 

How can listeners apply that message in their walks as Christians when they listen to the song?
 

This song and that Bible passage is challenging. We live in a tolerant and accepting culture that doesn’t like to make hard choices or walk the narrow road that Jesus calls us to walk as His followers. We live in a society that seems to be drawn towards pluralism and grabbing what they want and like from different religious beliefs and philosophies. It’s like everyone just does what is right in their own eyes. This song and that Luke 9 passage are about the cost of following Jesus. Jesus tells us that it is hard and it is going to be hard to follow Him. At the end of the day with an eternal perspective it is worth it. Jesus tells us we’ll be persecuted and it won’t be easy to follow Him. The toughest pill for me to swallow is when Jesus tells the guy he can’t bury his father, there isn’t time for that. Another person says they want to say goodbye to their family and Jesus says there isn’t time for that either. The cost of following Jesus is so great, you have to put Him above everything else in your life. If it means bringing glory to God by getting cancer, that’s the cost of following Jesus. He demands our complete obedience to follow Him.

 

Here are the lyrics:
 

Here’s Asbury’s biblical commentary about Luke 9:57-62: “Not all prospective followers of Jesus were aware of the nature of discipleship. He used harsh words to make the issue plain. They would be following a leader who spent nights without a place to sleep. Loyalty to Him must take priority over the burial of family. Indeed burying the dead was a task fit for the spiritually dead. And while Elijah allowed Elisha to visit his parents at home (1Ki 19:19-21), Jesus even excluded that possibility. It has been questioned whether Jesus intended His words to be taken literally. But He was certainly affirming the precedence of His right to obedience over all other claims.”
 

I have had the privilege to see the band in concert twice and heard them perform a few songs from this new album last year. If you like what you hear on this album, don’t miss out on seeing them perform live. I haven’t seen many bands who are even better in concert at performing incredibly tight guitar riffs and singing amazing harmonies than on the studio recording. House of Heroes are the real deal. Suburba is without a doubt the top punk rock album of 2010. I can’t get enough of this album. If you haven’t jumped on the House of Heroes bandwagon, don’t wait any longer. “Constant” is the most played song on my iPod and I love the song, the band, and the biblical message behind the song. Jesus is our ‘constant.’ The cost of discipleship is to make Him the Lord of our lives. This song is a great reminder of that Truth and a profession of faith directly to our King, Jesus, ‘You are my constant.’ Amen.