“Where we wanna go”

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 22nd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The return of a Christian band known for mashing genres—and making noise.

BROWN: The music group Set for the Fall’s latest album I Said What I Said takes listeners on a journey from anger to redemption.

And WORLD’s Arsenio Orteza says the North Carolina band delivers its message with enough volume and musical muscle to reach audiences beyond the Christian music scene.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: If you’re looking for a reason to call our current decade the Roaring Twenties, try the band Set for the Fall. It’s a quartet known for its high-volume alternative metal. It debuted with an EP in 2013, but listeners are most familiar with this track from its 2017 album 3 Nails.

MUSIC: [“Let Go” by Set for the Fall]

This is “Let Go.” It exemplifies Set for the Fall’s combination of raw emotion and faith-based intensity. The group takes its name from Simeon’s words to Mary in Luke 2:34. But the band’s lead singer Joey Lassiter says the expression “set for the fall” has other meanings as well.

LASSITER: It was to capture that whole—you know, when you fall down, when you fail at life, are you going to get back up? Pretty much what we've been about is second chances and, you know, tenacity to just get back up and keep stumbling through this thing we call life.

The group has just released its third album, I Said What I Said. It was seven years in the making, and it’s the band’s loudest and heaviest yet.

MUSIC: [“Product of Pressure” by Set for the Fall]

This is “Product of Pressure,” a track remixed by the group’s drummer Dylan McLain. I recently spoke with Harrison Muffley, one of Set for the Fall’s two guitarists. He explained what the band wasn’t hearing in the initial mix that McLain was able to bring out.

MUFFLEY: You can't really explain it. It’s not easy to just be like “Ah, add a little bit more punch. Add a little bit more low end.” But when Dylan sent that first mix for “Product of Pressure,” I was like “That's it!” It reminds me of us live. And I think that's what we've been searching for.

Not every song on I Said What I Said slams as hard. Like many metal bands, Set for the Fall includes at least one more radio-friendly track.

MUSIC: [“Black Box Heart” by Set for the Fall]

This is “Black Box Heart,” a song that Muffley says likens a relationship to a plane crash. It’s rather mellow, so it’s no surprise that the band didn’t include it in its most notorious show to date: a performance at the Insane Clown Posse’s 2025 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Insane Clown Posse is a duo best-known for purveying “horrorcore,” a hip-hop sub-genre focused on the dark and the transgressive. The Posse’s fans are self-defined outsiders known as Juggalos. They revel in the group’s atmosphere and do so most visibly at their annual “Gatherings.” According to Donovan Roybal, Set for the Fall’s other guitarist, the Posse’s Violent J was somewhat surprised that a Christian band wanted to perform there.

ROYBAL: He’s like “Just so you know, the Juggalos are different kind of people. Like, you know what you're getting into?” He didn't say those words exactly, but that's what he was saying.

The group’s set went well; you can watch it on YouTube. And according to Lassiter, crashing an Insane Clown Posse party exemplifies what Set for the Fall is all about.

LASSITER: We love doing the crazy stuff. I mean, we wanna play places that you would not normally see—anybody who considers himself a Christian would not be caught dead. We're like “Yeah, we'll go there. That's where we wanna go.”

And by going there, Set for the Fall is following in some very powerful footsteps.

MUSIC: [“Changed” by Set for the Fall]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

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