Skillet, 'Rise' Released Officially On June 25: DOWNLOAD And LISTEN To New Album

Skillet announced the official release of their new album, 'Rise,' today, June 25 after chatting live with some fans at 11:45 p.m. EST on June 24.

This morning Skillet tweeted, "RISE is now available on @iTunesMusic! Pick it up here: https://smarturl.it/skilletrise . Let us know your favorite tracks #RISE."

Last night the band invited fans to ask questions via #skillet on Twitter and appeared live on their official website to interact with fans who were excited for the release of the new album.

Leading up to the album release, all of the songs from 'Rise' became available for preview at Billboard.com as part of the 'Skillet, 'Rise': Exclusive Album Premiere." Skillet also released their premiere podcast on Billboard during which they explained some things about the new album.

"Probably the thing that is the most unique about this record is that it's our very first concept record, lead vocalist, John Cooper explained in the podcast. "Basically this album is telling a story from the first song to the last."

"Anyway, it's exciting," Cooper added. "It's an album basically about your typical teenager coming into adulthood and they're faced with all these problems in the world, all the terrible things we're seeing out there, school shootings and bombings and hurricanes and floods and also all the inward problems and things happening in their own lives where they're being bullied at school and pressure from their parents and fighting in a broken home and all these kind of things. So, the story is telling about this person who is trying to rise above all of this darkness that they are in and it's their kind of search for significance and hope in a hopeless world in faith."

They decided to do interludes to tell the story and to make the new album a little bit more like a skillet show. They utilized phone calls and other interesting interludes to try to get the story across without really talking. These touches make the storyline really hit home in a powerful way, they evoke the feeling of real-life tragedy.

This record was the first record that Skillet recorded with their new band mate, Seth Morrison, guitar player for the band. As a result, they tried to make the guitar parts much more 'in-your-face' than albums in the past. "I think the song, 'Circus for A Psycho,' is definitely the most guitar-heavy and driven song. Right from the intro to the solo, it's blazin' throughout," Morrison said. "So that'll please all of the guitar nerds like me."

With this album, Skillet tried to keep their signature sound while allowing for some new changes to give the album a fresh sound as well. One song in particular that stands out it bit is the song entitled 'Fire and Fury,' on which John Cooper asked his wife, Korey Cooper, bassist for the band, to kind of take some liberties and do her own thing with the tune. "This is my favorite song on the record because of not just the production, but the content," said Korey Cooper. "You know, it's about that sort of unconditional that you can't ever find but you found it and now you're passionate about it."

Jen Ledger, drummer for the band, said that her favorite song on the new record is their song called, 'Madness In Me.' "It just rocks and it really, it makes you want to dance, and it makes you feel tough all at the same time," she said.

"Through the story-line, the story really reaches its, I guess you could say its apex or its climax of the story with, basically the character, he is facing all of these gigantic problems and then he is trying to take control of his life and then he feels beat up and then he's saying, 'you know what, i'm not gonna die,I'm going to hold onto this hope,'" John Cooper explained. "All of a sudden the apex comes when he finally decides that he's never gonna be good enough to make himself happy, he's never going to do it all right, he's going to let people down, other people are going to let him down and he feels he's betrayed himself, and this is the point in the album when he kind of reaches out to God."

This is the point in his journey that he admits that he needs something bigger than himself that he can live for. This leads into the song 'Salvation.' In this particular song, bassist Jen Ledger takes on lead vocals.

'Rise,' marks Skillet's ninth studio album and is expected to be extremely successful, following their last hit album, 'Awake.' The most popular song on the album so far is probably Skillet's single, 'Sick Of It,' which was released pre-dating the album along with its music video.