Skillet are celebrating 11 RIAA honors, led by a 7× Platinum certification for “Monster.” The RIAA’s September 16 listings cover ten songs and one album, with awards reaching across the band’s catalog from Comatose through Victorious. Alongside their biggest singles, the collection includes five songs certified Gold and a Platinum award for Unleashed.
The largest numbers belong to the Awake era. Released in 2009, the album includes “Hero,” now 4× Platinum, and “Awake and Alive,” which reaches 3× Platinum. “Monster” leads both at seven million certified U.S. units. Three songs from the same record have now reached at least triple Platinum, giving that album a particularly strong showing in this round of awards. Skillet’s announcement also puts “Monster” above five billion global streams, a separate measure of the song’s audience outside the domestic certification tally.
Unleashed earns recognition on both the album and song sides. The 2016 release is Platinum, while its opening track, “Feel Invincible,” reaches 3× Platinum. The song immediately following it on the record, “Back From the Dead,” is Gold. That gives the album three places in the announcement, recognizing the full release alongside two individual tracks.
The awards also revisit Rise. “Not Gonna Die” is now Platinum, while “Sick of It” and the title track are Gold. Those three songs all appeared on the 2013 album. The Gold award for “Rise” applies to the song itself, separately from the album of the same name. Further back in the catalog, “Falling Inside the Black” from 2006’s Comatose earns Gold. “Finish Line,” from 2019’s Victorious, completes the five Gold singles. Taken together, the songs represent five studio albums released across 13 years.
Gold recognizes 500,000 U.S. units, while Platinum marks one million. For digital singles, the RIAA combines qualifying downloads with streaming activity, counting 150 eligible streams as one unit. Album awards use a different calculation that includes album sales, track sales and streaming equivalents. These are cumulative thresholds reached over a release’s lifetime, recognizing years of sales and listening.
According to the band, its catalog now accounts for 30 million RIAA certified units across 21 titles. The 11 honors in this announcement are part of that larger total. Skillet also reported playing to approximately 90,000 fans across 23 European cities earlier in 2026, ahead of the next release on its independent schedule.
Their next release, the six song EP After the Storm, is scheduled for October 9. Produced by David Cowell, the project took John Cooper back to Memphis to record for the first time since Skillet’s 2003 album Collide. Cooper described the writing as a response to a difficult personal period, with songs addressing anger, betrayal, faith and the effort to move forward.
“I wrote these songs because I needed to be lifted out of my darkness,” Cooper said in the announcement. “Lift Me Up” and “Scream” are already available ahead of the EP.
