If you’re familiar with For Today, you may have seen the Iowans labelled ‘Christian metal’, but frontman Mattie Montgomery feels this tag does both the band and potential fans a great disservice.
“I’m a Christian, but we’re not just a metal band for Christians,” he explains. And while his beliefs do influence their songwriting, Mattie insists their music is for people of any faith, or indeed, no faith at all.
“Each individual can decide what to believe,” he explains. Testament (pardon the pun) to this is the fact that the band – Mattie, guitarist Ryan Leitru, bassist Brandon Leitru and drummer David Puckett – count the pentagram-wielding Motionless In White, who they toured with earlier this year, as good friends.
“They’re awesome,” says Mattie. “Their stage persona is the evil metal thing, and people expected us to be fighting about religion, but we just hung out and had a blast.”
As For Today’s positive message starts to connect with the masses, Mattie’s voice is only going to get louder. Their latest album, Wake, is out now through Nuclear Blast, and he’s also hoping for a bigger presence in Europe. Everything is on the up for them right now, but they met with controversy in 2013 when ex-guitarist Mike Reynolds posted homophobic comments on Twitter. Mattie stresses that those aren’t the views of the band:
“People still think For Today is a hateful band from some comments that another guy made years ago. But the decision to stop working with him had been made months prior to that,” he explains.
With that cleared up, and For Today given a boost by the new record deal, they’re positioned to shed any negative misconceptions and shake up the modern metalcore scene. Well equipped for the long haul, Mattie also has strong opinions about what it means to be in the public eye. To him, being a celebrity is an opportunity to use your voice for good. This is something he did on the band’s last album, 2014’s Fight The Silence – the title track is a call to arms to rally against human trafficking, a cause close to his heart.
“If the band was done, I’d to go out there and help rescue people from human trafficking,” he says. “I want to use my voice to inspire people to take action.”
*Wake* is out now via Nuclear Blast
