Norma Jean started their music career as a nu-metal band called Luti-Kriss.
When forming in 1997, the group “went with a rap-metal approach” before starting to make the music that most fans would recognize as Norma Jean today. Such is the info preserved on an old band bio found on the website of Orange Amplifiers.
It states that the Luti-Kriss were “often described as the Christian equivalent of Limp Bizkit, Korn, (hed) p.e., Methods of Mayhem or Rage Against the Machine” before they changed their name. Of course, that’s all ancient history compared to the band’s eight studio albums under the current name.
Still, the group did begin as a devout outfit peddling sonic wares that hewed closer to nu-metal or rap-rock than anything else. It’s almost quaint now to think of a time when the Christian music industry positioned performers as note-perfect substitutes of a popular genre or artist for believers’ consumption.
But it did happen. However, Luti-Kriss didn’t get very far in their first incarnation. Under the early moniker, the act released just one studio album, 2001’s Throwing Myself. The following year, Norma Jean debuted with the inaugural release under that name, Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child.
As longtime listeners know, that was the beginning of a lasting tenure in metalcore. Norma Jean has since released the albums O’ God, The Aftermath (2005), Redeemer (2006), The Anti Mother (2008), Meridonal (2010), Wrongdoers (2013), Polar Similar (2016) and All Hail (2019).
Luti-Kriss, Live in 2000
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