Skillet’s John Cooper says church abuse caused depression behind ‘After the Storm’

John Cooper found himself unable to form his own prayers during the worst stretch of the church conflict. He turned instead to written prayers from Puritan and Reformed traditions and even Eastern Orthodoxy because the words would not come on their own. The 51-year-old frontman for Skillet had spent nearly 30 years at the same Wisconsin congregation. His wife Korey grew up there, her father founded it, and her brother-in-law served as an elder referred to as an apostle. The couple and their children helped build relationships over those decades. Questions about certain teachings on authority began to surface. Cooper and Korey raised concerns about what they saw as an increasingly rigid structure that left no room for challenge. Leadership responded by labeling them as tools of the devil and cutting them off from longtime friends and family members inside the church. The isolation brought back struggles Cooper thought he had left behind as a teenager. Anger and depression returned with force. He described a mental break in which he could no longer tell what was real after years of being told his doubts came from the enemy. "You don't know how to pray, and you begin to read the Bible, and everything becomes confusing," Cooper said in the interview. "It was a very dark time. It just caused me a real depression. I had a mental break where I just didn't know what was real and what wasn't real." That season produced the six songs on the independent EP After the Storm, due October 9. Tracks such as "Scream" carry lines like "I wanna scream, nobody's listening, will I ever be enough?" while "Lift Me Up" answers with "Let the demons come, I'm breathing dragon fire, they'll never drag me down." Cooper stressed that the record is not meant to replay his family's private pain.