Your first Christian Metal/Hard Rock release that got you hooked

was chatting with someone about this a few days ago. I was a big Maiden fan whn I was younger (like alot of us) but really wanted to find something Christian so I remember talking my dad into buy me this Ultimate Metal compilation and the minute Burn came on I was hooked.

What was it that got you into Christian Hard Rock or Metal?

Stryper - Reason For The Season EP on vinyl. I had heard of them but had never HEARD them. It was the first Christian Metal band I had ever heard and my friends and I were blown away.

Soldiers Under Command, 2nd purchase was Bloodgood Detonation and Saint Time's End.  However my next favorite was Whitecross s/t.  I never get tired of that album!

Stryper - In God We Trust

that is sooooo far back I can't recall for sure. probably something from one of the following:

Petra
Resurrection Band
Servant

I wasn't all that familiar with Christian rock/hard rock and metal before 1984. For the Christmas of 1984 my parents bought me 2 cassettes: Chris Christian Let the Music Start and Farrell and Farrell Choices which were aduly contemporary or pop. In 1985 I got into rock/hard rock and metal bands like Petra, Daniel Band, Jerusalem, Rez Band and Stryper. I really liked Rez Band Bootleg and Hostage, Daniel Band Run from the Darkness, Stryper The Yellow and Black Attack and Soldiers Under Command.

A compilation called Extremely Loud Guitar.  It had a bunch of weird, obscure bands I'd never heard of.  Bands like Stryper, Bride, Tourniquet, Vengeance Rising, etc.

Before that the hardest think I listened to was Petra - Beyond Belief.

It was a combination of things for me.  One of my best friends had been listening to a lot of the bands I was into in the mid-to-late-80s...Great White, Black N Blue, Manowar, Tesla, etc.  He felt convicted to give up secular music, but wanted to keep listening to that style of music.  He got into bands like Bride, Barren Cross, Saint, and Petra.  One summer we had a job together and I started listening to a lot of his cassettes.  I loved the music, and was even more drawn to the message.  As a result, I went almost strictly Christian metal for about 3 years or so.  So, I would have to say it was Saint's Too Late For Living or Time's End, along with Bride's Live To Die that really got me started.  The first one I picked up on my own was One Bad Pig's Smash.


Arttie

As a kid I grew up listneing to As I Lay Dying, Demon Hunter, The Showdown, Underoath, Haste The Day

The first album I ever bought with my own money was For Today's Portraits

So I was "hooked" in the sense that I discovered a band on my own and found one of my life long favorites

Coincidentally, Blessed By A Broken Heart, Ultimatum, and Mortification are the bands that got me into pre-2000's Christian Metal

For me, I bought two albums at the same time and that began my foray into Christian metal.  It was Stryper's "To Hell With The Devil" and "Soldiers Under Command".  It would be a couple of years before I would go Christian music only which I did for over twenty years.  Only in the last three or four years have I ventured back out into secular waters, but I still listen to a ton of Christian stuff too.

It was 1987 and a friend in high school gave me Bloodgood Detination.

Oh yeah, much like Alldat stated, I am still 60-70% Christian music...at times bordering on being exclusive again. I hear a lot of secular stuff because of my review site, but I don't hang onto it, regardless of how good I think it is. As a father, I am VERY careful about what I expose my kids to.


Arttie

I grew up listening to country and gospel. Then back in the early 80s I spent the summer with my aunt and uncle and became really good friends with their neighbor's kids who were close to my age at the time and they all got me into Petra, Degarmo & Key, Rez, Sweet Comfort Band, and Servant. Never looked back.

Rez Band with Colors, didn't know there was Christian music like that. Then Daniel Band opened the door and the next couple years exploded with Saint and Stryper and …….

arttieTHE1manparty wrote:Oh yeah, much like Alldat stated, I am still 60-70% Christian music...at times bordering on being exclusive again.  I hear a lot of secular stuff because of my review site, but I don't hang onto it, regardless of how good I think it is.  As a father, I am VERY careful about what I expose my kids to.


Arttie

I don't have kids, so I don't have to worry about that.  I just can't listen to some of the lyrics for very long.  We have made car trips and started listening to Hair Nation on XM.  After about an hour, I switch to something else.  My wife will ask me why. I have to tell her that I can't stand another song about sex with some floosie or about getting an erection.

Nope, I get it. I don't relate to it any longer. I'll listen to what i regard as "neutral" bands...typically melodic hard rock bands like Journey, House of Lords, Far Cry, LaValle, etc. But, I appreciate Christian music. It speaks to me. And I stay current, also. My Tahoe currently has Disciple, Ledger, 7th Time Down, Skillet, Newsboys, and Ashes Remain in the change. My 7 yr old's first concert was Newsboys and 7eventh Time Down; my 11 yr olds was Disciple, Secenth Day Slumber, Project 86, and Random Hero. We all went to WinterJam last year to see Skillet. It's just what we listen to.


Arttie

My first Christian Hard Rock exposure was Resurrection Band's DMZ.  Stryper's The Yellow And Black Attack came next.

It was Resurrection Band Colours album and also Servant Shallow Water album bought at a local Christian bookstore probably around 1980... My first concert was seeing Rez at Montclair state college a couple months after buying the record. Seeing them play at 12 yrs old, I was completely hooked forever... something I’ll never forget...Then it was Barnabas, Petra, Daniel Band, Saint and a few years later Stryper and Tourniquet ...we are blessed to have all this music!

Hard to pin point an exact moment. Probably Stryper - Reason for the Season cassette that my older brother let me listen to. Before that, Petra "This Means War" was one of my favorite hard rock finds. After that I got into more main stream 80s metal and then trash with Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax. I think the defining album that got me back into Christian metal was the Hot Metal Summer cassette with Deliverance, Tourniquet and others, and the "Art for the Ears" sampler.

This is an easy question for me:  Whitecross’ first s/t album. And to this day it remains one of my all time favorite albums!

Sinbreed - When Worlds Collide. That album was undeniably christian. Such a shame they went another way after that, I couldn't even enjoy that release anymore.

First one I can remember is Petra's This Means War, but I never bought that album.

Next one I can remember is Stryper's The Yellow and Black Attack, which was actually released earlier, but I didn't hear it until later - and I bought that on vinyl. I must have listened to Reason for the Season a million times. I can actually remember listening to it and moving the needle back to the beginning of the song as soon as the song was finished.

Next big release that actually got me really hooked was Petra's Beyond Belief, which was also the first CD I bought.

I think Petra broke a lot of folk into rock.

I listened to Jerusalem, Petra, Fireworks, David & The Giants, and Resurrection Band circa 1978-1980, but the album I really consider to be my first Christian "Hard Rock" album is Jerusalem's "Warrior".

I don't consider Jerusalem's previous releases, or those by the other mentioned bands, as truly "hard rock" albums. More like rock albums with "hard rock" moments sprinkled in.

My first Christian "metal" album was a trifecta...

1984
Saint "Warriors of the Son"
Stryper " The Yellow and Black Attack"
Messiah Prophet Band "Rock The Flock"

I had heard Petra and Stryper in middle school through youth group friends but thought they were cheesy because I was already into Metallica, Celtic Frost, Exodus, Anthrax, etc.  Lightforce--Mystical Thieves, which I heard in a Christian bookstore, was the first thing I remember thinking was solid.  Then Deliverance--Weapons and Vengeance Rising--Once Dead came along and I was hooked.