The Top Ten Christian Rock Bands!
Posted by 7th on September 18, 2004

Back in 1987, I was really starting to get into some music that my parents didn't care for... Dead Kennedys, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones, X, The Cramps, and an unhealthy obsession with a band called The Descendents, amongst others.

They didn't care for songs about police brutality (though my dad laughed at the Dead Kennedy track Police Truck,) and they certainly didn't care for Enjoy, the Descendent's opus to farts.

So my mom, being the devout Uuber Christian that she is, did the only thing she knew to do. She shoved me in the car and hauled ass to the Lanham's Bible Bookshop on Brainerd Road. There, I was forcibly exposed to a world I'd never known existed. The world of Christian Rock.

Christian Rock officially started in 1976 with Petra's first album. Christian Metal's earliest influence came from 1978 with the debut of Rez Band, but Petra's where it really started. From then till now, every imaginable form of rock has been copied by the Religious Right, from rock to metal to pop-metal to punk to rap and hip-hop. But its heyday was in the 80's.

For every metal band out there, there was a Christian sound-a-like. The Christian Rock section of the Bible Bookstore was almost as large as its secular counterpart at Camelot Records. And for the most part, the production quality was just as good as the mainstream stuff... but the message was different. This was mostly due to the mainstream cross-over success of a little band who's actually number 10 on my list. So let us begin with...

10) Stryper

Stryper started out under the name Roxx Regime, then switched to Stryper and donned yellow and black matching jumpsuits, and the rest is history. Lead by lead singer Michael Sweet, and accompanied by the guitar licks of Oz Fox, Stryper took an idea and ran with it: they took songs that were basically love ballads, and made the lyrics vague enough to where they could've been about God, or about a hot piece of ass down the block. The first of these, Honestly, went platinum. Their openly Christian songs never got airplay, only the cheesy love tracks. But God, did those tracks sell records. During hair metal's heyday, Stryper was one of the biggest acts around.

Then they began noticing a depressing trend. 90% of the audience at their shows were Christian Youth groups. They realized that they weren't pulling in the mainstream audience. Their solution to this was to release a secular album completely devoid of any mention of God or Jesus. It was called "Against The Law" and depicted the band members on the front cover as mug shots on a cop's desk. There was no mention of sex, drugs, alcohol, or any of what you'd hear on national radio. But God was out of the picture. So of course, they were instantly abandoned by their formerly adoring Christian fans. They recently reformed and have returned to their Christian roots. In fact, they played at this year's Nights Of Joy Christian music festival at Walt Disney World... just a few days after their bassist quit the band again "for personal reasons." Since a friend of mine once told me a story about being a roadie and snorting coke with Stryper members, I'd have to assume that Gods love just wasn't filling the void for him that white china had left behind...

Click here to see the video for Free by Stryper

9) Barren Cross

Barren Cross hit the scene around 1987. There's just no other way to say it. The ARE Iron Maiden. Set an Iron Maiden track next to a Barren Cross track, and you can't tell the difference, short of the Jesus stuff of course. Their lead singer, Mike Lee, sounds so much like Maiden's front man that you'd swear it was him. Hell, back in the day when he was still young and had all his flowing teased out hair, he even LOOKED like Bruce...

barren Cross hit their peak with their late 80's release Atomic Arena, which included a track that drew a lot of publicity, an anti-abortion song called "Killers Of The Unborn," a song sung from the point of view of an aborted baby.

The vocals included the lines:

The operation's over
I'm now in pieces in a garbage bag!
The guilt will now take over
'Cause where's the relief you thought you'd have?

And lovely thoughts like:

Just makes you want to go out and hand out Jack Chick booklets, don't it?

Click here to hear Crying Over You by Barren Cross

8) Deliverance

Deliverance came from the same roots as Barren Cross, one of a dozen Barren Cross soundalike bands that hit in the early nineties, including Recon and Sacred Warrior, amongst others. They were part of a Christian Metal movement out of L.A. that was run by a sort of metal Christian guru guy who called himself "Pastor Bob." Pastor Bob would include his thoughts on every band's release, and what their music meant for Christians (these were all albums released on the Intsense Records label, a devision of Frontline Records.) Bob himself looked kinda like Sam Kinison, but with less self-respect.

Deliverance, as a band, were really good. Excellent musicians. But their lyrics trended towards the more gloom and doom aspects of Christianity. Everyone's awful. We're all sinners, we don't deserve Jesus, we're all gonna burn. Really peppy, upbeat stuff. THough their singer sounded nothing like Dave Mustain, I always thought of them as the Christian Megadeth. And I mean that in a good way, oddly enough.

Click here to hear Flesh And Blood by Deliverance

7) Saint

Saint hit the scene in 1987 on the independent Pure Metal label, where so many of Christian Metal's more prolific acts called home, namely Whitecross. Saint was a dead-on rip-off of Judas Priest. Much like Mike Lee from Barren Cross, this guy must've sat for hours listening to tapes of Rob Halford.

They only had three releases in the time I was aware of them, and I only owned one of them myself, namely Time's End (which had an album cover that depcited two weird demon-dragon thingies swimming through a lake of fire... real wholesome Christian imagry, in other words) but they nonetheless left their mark.

They recently reformed, and as you can see, have stuck to their Rob Halford roots, as they look for all the world like old gay club trolling chicken hawks. Personally, if I was pushing 147 years old, this is not how I would dress. And I would also realize that the metal revival movement should be limited only to those who sold at least 250,000 records and stay home to play with the dog.

Click here to hear When by Saint

6) Bloodgood

Bloodgood hit in 1985, also on the Frontline/Intense label (though they weren't proteges of the mysterious and all knowing Pastor Bob.) Founded by bassist Michael Bloodgood (his real name, no less) and fronted by lead singer Les Carlsen, Bloodgood is one of the few Christian Metal bands who did NOT sound like someone else. But in this case, that's not neccessarily a good thing. Les Carlsen, even in his late thirties when the band was at their peak, sounded like a 60 year old man. His voice is raspy and frail sounding... He sounds like Dana Carvey trying to sing heavy metal with his "Grumpy Old Man" voice.

Despite that, thanks mostly to the better-than-average talent of their other members, Bloodgood was a success. But in 1988, they released their new album A Rock and A Hard Place, a much softer, less metallic album, and their star began to fade. Plus their founding guitarist left to start a solo career that went nowhere, leaving them with a much less proficient axe man in his place. They're still around today, but I have no idea if Les still sounds 60, or has already deteriorated to the sound of a revived corpse (which let's face it, would only have been a minor lapse in quality.)

Click here to see the video for Crucify Live by Bloodgood

5) Shout

I know, pretty gay looking, eh? Looks like the Sigfried and Roy of Christian pop-metal. Shout was actually the brainchild of front man and lead guitarist Ken Tamplin. Tamplin's guitar work was second only to Whitecross's Rex Carroll in the Christian Rock arena. While having a unique vocal talent, the band's style was closest to Poison or Bon Jovi, radio friendly power ballads that made you jump on your feet and pump your fist for Christ. Their debut album It Won't Be Long was song after song after song that sounded just like something you'd hear on the top 40 of that time.

If you could make it past the Christian overtones, and enjoyed that era of hairspray and heavy metal, then you would've adored Shout.

Unfortunately, another band who'd already been calling themselves SHout didn't find them adorable at all and threatened a lawsuit after their second album. So theychanged their name to Magdallan. Then Ken left the band and began releasing his own stuff under the name Tamplin and Friends (including a track that musically was a complete rip-off of Highway To Hell, but with a flashier, 80's style guitar solo... and it praised Jesus.)

Now, the other band is extinct, and with the nostalgic return to Metal going on these days, Shout is back for more. Let's hope they left the make up at home this time.

4) Petra

Only four? yes. In 1987, even though I wa a huge punkhead, I held in secret a deep love of arena rock. This was the same year Mom bought me my first Christian Rock tape, Petra's This Means War! album. When Petra first hit the scene, they had a general 80's rock sound, and a flamboyant Talking Heads wannabe singer named Greg X. Volz. Volz's last Petra album was entitled Beat The System, and wanted to be Talking Heads so bad it wa pathetic. Then, in 1986, Volz headed off on his own to make it bigger and better and... vanished completely. In his place came the raspy voice and long 80's hair of new front man john Schlitt. The sound went from trendy new wave to in your face arena rock. If you took Journey, added a hint of Rush's front man, then overcast it with a healthy dose of Survivor, the result would be Petra. While not metal by any means, their anthems were the kind that got the blood pumping, the kind of songs that had kids raising their lighters and shouting the lyrics back at them.

In the mid 90's, founding guitarist Bob Hartmen left the band, and they moved more towards a soft alternative sound. It was afwul, honestly. But now I hear Bob is back, and they're slowly moving back to the sound that made them huge. Perhaps we'll see them soon on a commerical follwing a guy around singing his name sometime soon, who knows.

Click here to hear Life As We Know It by Petra

3) One Bad Pig

I know that band name must garner some weird looks. One Bad Pig made my list for one reason alone. They were the first Christian PUNK band. Hailing from Austin Texas, they were a punk band in style only. The whole concept started as a joke. The band was coming home froma Christian Music festival, and saw an advertisement for a local radio station, whose mascot was a mowhawked pig in black leather. The leader singer commented "Man, that is one bad pig." The rest of the way home, they traded made up stories about a mythical punk band named One Bad Pig that shot to super stardom...

A few months later, myth became reality. The Pig sold records like nobody's business, thought hey were mocked in punk clubs and feared in Christian venues. After years of selling hundreds of thousands of albums but being understood by no one, they dropped off the face of the earth. They still reunite to play the annual Christian Rock festival in Texas, where they're almost revered as Christian rock heroes, but they haven't released any new material in over a decade. Still, if you were a punker who wanted to hear someone who sounded like Johnny Rotten screaming about Jesus in the early 90's, they were your only release. Sadly, I have no audio link for them. But you can read about them and order merchandise at www.onebadpig.com (lame, lame geoshitties looking page, I'm sad to say.)

2) WhiteCross

I have an evil, twisted love in my heart for this band. Whitecross was the one big breakout success for Pure Metal Records. Their self-titled debut album came out in 1987, and revealed to the world one of the best rock guitarists in the last 25 years, a man named Rex Carroll. His solo piece on that album, antitled Nagasake, was a work of pure genius, and blew the shit out of Eddie Van Halen's Eruption in every possible way (and almost seem a direct challenge to Van Halen that never went answered.)

Their sound was pure Chicago-driven hard rock, but their lead singer, the immensely unattractive Scott Wenzel, sounded for all the world like the lead singer of Ratt. In album after album, they released strong, competent metal, harder than pop-metal, but not as dark and disturbing as bands like Deliverance.

In 1991, they left Pure Metal and signed with Petra's label Star Song, and released what is considered their best album "In The Kingdom." The title track was a break away hit for them, and was also unlike anything they'd ever done, a soft, power ballad that was the Christian equivalent of We Are The World. Unfortunately, this album also included their WORST song, a song called Holy War that had some excellent (as always) guitar work from Carroll, but was interspersed with several lame "raps" that were backed up by a cheesy drum machine... and nothing else... several times during the song, all the real music would stop, and this lame ass drum machine would kick in, with some black guy that sounded like they'd dragged him in off the street and shoved a lyric sheet in his face, as the "rap" lyrics sound like nothing a brother would say. They sound like a white guy trying to sound black. I offer up exhibit A:

As you can see, this song was played as opposing sides singing at each other, with Whitecross representing the Christian Good Guys Of God, and the black guy representing...well... Satan and the minions of Hell... hey, I'm not condoning it, that's just the way it was. Go buy the damned album and see for yourself.

Anyway, they followed that up with High Gear in 1993, which was just a rehash of In The Kingdom really, and then Rex had a falling out with Wenzel and left the band. He immediately formed a new metal band called King James (which included former members of Stryper) that released one album then vanished, while Whitecross released one more metal album (Unveiled) then followed that up with twoalternative albums that sucked major ass, namely because Ratt vocals and Pearl Jam instrumentals simply do not mix. Again, this is one band I couldn't find any free music dloads for, but you can download the entire In The Kingdom album (along with Holy War) for .10 a song by going to http://e4q.com/5830.html... Hey, it's worth .10 for the laughs of Holy War, but the brilliant guitar work found in "Love is our Weapon," "No Second Chances," and "Good Enough" are worth every penny. Heavy Metal perfection.... with Jesus...

And that brings us to our number one:

1) Tourniquet

Tourniquet was a late bloomer, hitting the scene in the early 90's... but their sound was unlike anything out on the market at the time. Their lead singer (at that time) had the ability to switch from deep, gutteral, power lyrics to high pitched shrieking screams at the drop of a hat. They employed two lead guitarists, fashioning harmonies and drawing inspiration from classical pieces, forming a tapestry of sound that would be hard to duplicate for any of the major metal acts of the day.

These days, Tourniquet has a more grungy, gnu-metal sound, but their former brilliance occasionally shines through. Still, nothing can top their first three albums, Stop The Bleeding, Psycho Surgery, and Stero Occular Dissonance (a real weird album where every song was named for a medical condition.)

So feel free to click the link below, and if you can get over the Jesus Freak factor, be prepared to have your sucking rocks rocked off... see what I did there?

Click here to hear You Get What You Pray For by Tourniquet

Despite the corny feeling one gets when they listen to a guy with long hair screaming about his love for Jesus, there are some jewels to be found out there in teh world of Christian Rock, for those brave enough to look. But you must be careful... if one listens to them long enough, one starts to wonder if he should throw away his punk records, burn his Dead Kennedy tee-shirts, and join a Suicide Youth for Jesus cult... So take your God Rock medicine in small doses, lest you become lost in its salvation through headbanging ministry...

-=7th=-