After 30 years working at rock radio stations, Matt Talluto lost his job during the pandemic. It felt as if he’d lost his purpose.
But in his searching, jobless and defeated, Talluto found Jesus. His whole family came to faith. He started listening to Christian talk radio and got a job as an evening DJ with Hope 100.7, a Strong Tower Christian Media station in the Dayton, Ohio, area.
As a new Christian and longtime rock enthusiast, Talluto started to discover old-school Christian rock by groups like Audio Adrenaline and Pillar—music that, for him, “sounds just as good as mainstream rock” with the “positivity of God attached to it.” He also noticed that none of it was playing on Christian radio.
He started dreaming of a way to return to the rock music he loved while preaching Jesus, “the coolest dude ever born,” to fellow hard-music fans. So he built his own streaming station in his basement.
Last year, Talluto shared his project with his general manager. The interest was almost immediate; Strong Tower wanted to branch out to new formats and began projecting how much capital it would take to eventually turn Talluto’s basement streaming channel into a full-blown terrestrial station.
He had a particular audience in mind: dads. Specifically, men aged 25–51, “the dads who are taking their kids fishing, camping, and hunting,” Talluto said.
For now, Iron-FM—“where one man sharpens many”—is a streaming station that “keeps it loud while sharing the Word of God.” It’s geared toward the male listeners Talluto set out to reach, with taglines like “Whether you’re on the job site, hitting the gym, or driving the kids to practice, we’ve got the soundtrack to keep you fired up and inspired.” As a dad in his mid-50s with two young adult children, Talluto is creating the station he would want to tune in to.
Christian rock has never had a home on the radio. Stations like K-Love focus on contemporary Christian music (CCM). Christian bands like Skillet and Thousand Foot Krutch get more airplay on secular rock stations, where their edgier music fits the sound profile. Even the burgeoning Christian alternative rock scene and festival circuit of the 2000s didn’t transfer into a radio play.
“Christian radio shut the door on rock fans a while ago,” said Mike Couchman, an operations manager for Joy-FM. Some successful rock groups like Paramore and Twenty One Pilots once participated in the Christian rock scene, he said, but they pivoted to the mainstream.
Christian stations had tried to segment—seeking younger audiences with alternative and hip-hop—but the experimental period was short-lived, and most settled on the CCM music that had the biggest appeal. Air1, a station owned by K-Love’s parent company, was originally envisioned for Christian alternative but ended up focused on the popular contemporary worship.
“The assumption these days is that if you want to reach anyone under 30, you need something worship-oriented,” said Couchman.
Obadiah Haybin, who hosts an evening show for Way-FM and previously worked as a programming director for RadioU (a Christian rock/alternative station based in Ohio), said that Christian rock shifted as rock declined across the industry during the early 2000.
“Christians live in the world; their listening habits reflect the mainstream,” Haybin told CT. “By the 2000s, it wasn’t rock artists who were driving culture and trends; it was hip-hop artists.”
Haybin also pointed out that Christian rock’s core Gen X and millennial audience seemed to age out of the genre by the 2010s, and there wasn’t a rising generation of new fans to replace them. Young Christians had access to hip-hop, EDM, and easier access to secular music.
As Christian radio went all in on adult contemporary, the gender gap grew. Women in their 30s and 40s are the core audience for Christian radio, which tends to play popular artists like Lauren Daigle, Brandon Lake, Tauren Wells, Elevation, and Hillsong, whose fans are mostly women.
“I love Lauren Daigle, but her music isn’t mine,” Talluto said.
Christian rock groups like Thousand Foot Krutch, Skillet, Pillar, and P.O.D. have a predominantly male listenership, and Iron-FM is a test case to see if their fans will tune in to a Christian rock station.
Recent data from Nielsen shows that radio is still overwhelmingly the most frequently used ad-supported audio medium for Americans. Adults over the age of 35 spend three-quarters of their listening time on broadcast radio—mostly talk, adult contemporary, and classic hits.
Talluto’s project falls closest to the latter category; the majority of the music Talluto plays on Iron-FM is the Christian equivalent of classic rock. He relies on ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s songs, the music of Gen X and millennial youth-group kids.
And while that may appear to be a flaw in the business model—where is the new music going to come from?—it may actually be the feature that makes it work. The target audience is adult men (dads in particular), most of whom formed their music preferences as teens.
Iron-FM’s playlist includes familiar old-guard artists like Petra, Whitecross, Glenn Kaiser (of the Resurrection Band), and Audio Adrenaline. Talluto said he’s eager to feature new artists on the station, but it hasn’t been his focus. (Neither has the Christian hardcore scene, “with the Cookie Monster vocals,” which doesn’t interest him.)
Steve Shore, a programming manager for K-Love, thinks that rock could be poised for a comeback, not just in the Christian niche but across the music industry. He said that the genre has been on the outs for the better part of two decades and that interest in classic rock may be a sign of a major shift.
“Rock kind of died everywhere, not just in Christian music,” Shore said. “But my teenage kids and their friends were listening to classic rock during the pandemic, and those are the kids who are going to be starting the next wave of bands.”
New signs of life may be appearing in the genre already. Despite the loss of some of the touring infrastructure that used to support the Christian rock scene (and midlevel artists across the music industry), fans of the genre say that there is a lot of emerging music to love.
Bands like Behold the Beloved and Gable Price and Friends are making the kind of music Talluto’s listeners tune in for: straight-ahead rock with powerful vocals, distortion, and plenty of driving, four-on-the-floor drumming.
Iron-FM will be a case study for those in the industry watching to see if Christian rock is going the way of oldies and classic rock, or if it’is poised for a comeback. In 2019, data from Nielsen revealed that men between the ages of 25 and 54 listen to radio at just slightly higher rates than women and that they are more likely to prefer rock.
Tate Luck of Way Loud (a rock streaming station run by WayFM), told CT that over the past nine months, the station’s listenership has almost tripled. Luck took over as programming director in May of 2024 and shifted the station’s music selection from a niche, alternative-rock flavor to mainstream rock.
Like Iron-FM, Way Loud is geared toward men, said Luck. The tone is more masculine and “sarcastic,” and the music is curated carefully so as not to venture “too far into the pop side or too far into the metal side.”
“Mat Kearney is about as soft as we go,” Luck said.
Talluto said that he sees signs in the industry that the timing for Iron-FM is right.
“You see Winter Jam selling out night after night,” he said of the yearly Christian music tour for which Skillet is this year’s headliner. “Brandon Lake is filling arenas by himself with no opening act.”
Lake, a popular worship artist who has recently pivoted toward a heavier sound with songs like “Count ’Em” and “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” does seem to be attempting to appeal more directly to rock fans. It’s another sign that some in the industry are recognizing a young audience looking for Christian music that isn’t CCM or contemporary worship.
Luck said that the harder music coming from worship artists is a phenomenon that might also point to an untapped market for Christian rock. Songs like Elevation Worship’s “RATTLE!” are “rock songs with worship lyrics,” and they get airplay on Way Loud.
Last month, Skillet frontman John Cooper told CT that rock speaks to alienated and disillusioned young people, especially men. Talluto agrees and said that the intensity of rock music also speaks to the current cultural moment.
“Since COVID, there’s been a revival. We’re no longer talking about left and right or blue and red; we’re looking at good and evil,” said Talluto. “Rock digs deeper. I don’t know if it’s the distorted guitars or the loud voices. There’s freedom to shake things up a little.”
Although Talluto said dads are his target audience for Iron-FM, rock music may be speaking with unique power to a cohort of young men. Notably, Christian rock bands like Skillet and Thousand Foot Krutch attract younger male audiences while holding on to older fans. Talluto said that one of the most rewarding parts of creating Iron-FM has been discovering new music with his 21-year-old son, who is also a new believer and is into the same music.
“Rock has always been a connection between us,” said Talluto. “And Christian rock has reignited that.”
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