Roadside Monument - Critical Response

Critical Response

Throughout their history, Roadside Monument has had several clashes with some Christian bookstore chains, who cited their songs as being "controversial". Examples of such songs included "Sperm Ridden Burden" (which Lorig said Ford wrote about seeing a child on a bus who was being raised by a single mother) and "O.J. Simpson House Auction" (the news on television when Lorig was looking for the title to the song he was working on). The band members did not mind that their music was not being sold in Christian bookstores, because they preferred to think of themselves as a "band" rather than as a "Christian band". In an interview with HM Magazine soon after their breakup, drummer Matt Johnson said, "... I think the problem comes in when you start using the word 'Christian' as an adjective. And when I start hearing talk like that, my first inclination is to run totally in the opposite direction.... It's just a debate that I've been over and over with people so much, that I'm not even sure what to say anymore. It's like, I'm a Christian and I play music, and if that means my band is a 'Christian band', then whatever."

Many fans of Roadside Monument like the band because of their creative sound. They are credited as being key contributors to the original emo sub-culture and sound of indie rock which existed in the mid to late nineties. Their songs featured unique structure that was a blatant rejection of the verse/chorus structure followed by many popular songs. In addition, their unusual guitar parts, abnormal rhythms, and abrupt tempo changes, topped off by Lorig's emotional vocals, gained them acclaim and made the band's style almost unable to be labeled. Indeed, reviewers of the band would describe them as emo, math rock, or just regular rock.