John Cooper says he loses four pounds after every Skillet show. The vocalist knows this because he weighs himself before and after every show.

"Every show, [I'm] just sweating like crazy!" he exclaims.

During a recent phone conversation with REVUE, Cooper comes off as an energetic front man, even when he's not performing. But that's a given if you're a member of Skillet, a rock band that is known for heavy guitar riffs, epic strings and high energy shows.

"I think the biggest thing [audience members] are not prepared for is how energetic and a little bit psycho onstage," Cooper said. "We're really, really enthusiastic."

Cooper and his band mates have needed all the energy and enthusiasm they could get since their latest album, Awake, was released in August. In the past few months since the release, its single, "Monster," has been picked up by ACC College Football, MTV's series "Bully Beatdown," and NBC's "The 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania" special.

"[Life's] been a little crazy recently, everything's been real busy, in a good way. I didn't expect things to come out so strong," he said of life since the release of Awake. "All of a sudden, [people] want to know what's going on, and it's like, ‘Well, we've been doing it for 13 years, man!' It's very unexpected, because we've been doing it for so long, it has really been like a whirlwind."

Before those 13 years, Cooper had a goal of playing Christian music in a mainstream market. Since it had taken so long for the band to reach his goal, Cooper admits he didn't think it was his calling. Now that the band has reached that level, Cooper describes the end result as "a shock."

"I think struggling to keep walking the line between Christian and mainstream music is a difficult thing to do, and you want to make everybody happy," he said. "You want to make your fans happy, you want to make that stand for what you believe, but you also want to be relevant to people that don't care what you believe, that just want to listen to your music."

Overall, Cooper says he wants his fans to be happy, and that is the band's ultimate goal. Part of obtaining that goal is to maintain Skillet's sound, while keeping the music fresh.

"Awake definitely has some signature Skillet-sounding songs," he says, "but then, the other side of that is, what are people not expecting us to do after Comatose? And what they're not expecting us to do, probably, is to strip all the production away - no strings, no keyboards - and just do an in-your-face, hard, rock song, and that's what we do with "Monster"...it's just kick your face in, baby!"

Skillet wsg Hawk Nelson, Decyfer Down, The Letter Black

The Deltaplex, Grand Rapids
Dec. 6, 6 p.m. doors, 7 p.m. show
$20-45
deltaplex.com, (616) 364-9000

Photo: David Molnar