I Wish You’d All Be Ready For This Amazing Cover Song

By Jeffery X Martin

Christians have always been fascinated by the end of the world. In their version of this inevitable event, Jesus comes back and takes all of his followers with him up into Heaven, while those who do not believe are left on Earth where Satan rules, and something about the Illuminati and the United Nations and the Mark of the Beast and really, it just gets kind of confusing after that. I think it comes down to Christians get to skip last period, which is the class that everyone hates and has a D in.

There’s a generation of Christians who remember the film, A Thief in the Night. It is an intense and strange little movie that spawned two sequels and a host of nightmares for youngsters who sat through the violent and hopeless ending. It’s Christian propaganda at its most lurid, practically forcing the viewer to choose a side. Go to Heaven with the cool kids, or reject that belief system, stay on Earth, and be hunted down like a rabbit by UN Death Squads controlled by Satan himself.

One of the things that makes A Thief in the Night so eerily effective is the haunting theme, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” Besides its awkward usage of English, it’s a sweet little pop song about the Apocalypse and the destruction and downfall of society. You might catch yourself singing along, until you realize you’re singing about your own demise.

That song, long a favorite of doomsday preppers, is now available to listen to in a handy updated format, brought to you the Christian Nightmares Tribulation Band. Christian Nightmares is a blog filled with creepy videos and the worst examples of evangelism. They’ve put together a supergroup, including Sebadoh’s Jason Loewenstein, and re-recorded this threnody. Think of it as bad news for modern man.

This version of the song sounds like Sebadoh and the Flaming Lips getting together at a hookah bar after a long night of being told how rock and roll will destroy your immortal soul. It’s trippy, but not as trippy as the video, which consists of clips of these very real Christian films about life after the rapture, which will involve lots of tattoos, angry elderlies, and guillotines.

Immanentize the Eschaton while listening to shoegaze!