Your very first Christian metal albums

I listened to a variety of music before I discovered metal and, if anything, I listen to a wider variety now. There are very few genres I write off completely.

Ghosty wrote:

TZ75 wrote:Now the next question…

What did you all listen to before metal?

Like I said in my last post, I started with Hall and Oats and then Oingo Boingo. But I admit that I was growing up during Michael Jackson’s heyday, and I was a fan. My first rock/pop concert was at the L.A. Forum on his Bad tour.

These were the bands I listened to mostly before getting into metal as a kid:

AC/DC
Duran Duran
Huey Lewis and the News
Skid Row
White Lion

I consider Skid Row metal.  

When I started picking my own music it was what is now called classic rock. I got into nwobhm and then thrash as it started.

Pethead wrote:I listened to a variety of music before I discovered metal and, if anything, I listen to a wider variety now. There are very few genres I write off completely.

Diddo. Except not country back then. DC Talk, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith were the CCM staples. Lots of classical as my mom was a piano teacher.

Walls by DC Talk was kinda a pre-metal song for me. But I didn't move first to rock. I kinda jumped straight to metal.

Black Rider wrote:When I started picking my own music it was what is now called classic rock. I got into nwobhm and then thrash as it started.

In other words… you experienced the golden era of rock/metal. The timeline “sweet spot”.

Pethead wrote:I listened to a variety of music before I discovered metal and, if anything, I listen to a wider variety now. There are very few genres I write off completely.

Cool Choir avatar. 

TZ75 wrote:

Ghosty wrote:

TZ75 wrote:Now the next question…

What did you all listen to before metal?

Like I said in my last post, I started with Hall and Oats and then Oingo Boingo. But I admit that I was growing up during Michael Jackson’s heyday, and I was a fan. My first rock/pop concert was at the L.A. Forum on his Bad tour.

These were the bands I listened to mostly before getting into metal as a kid:

AC/DC
Duran Duran
Huey Lewis and the News
Skid Row
White Lion

I consider Skid Row metal.  

Yeah, You're right. In my head I was thinking them as Hard Rock for some reason lol.

Ghosty wrote:

TZ75 wrote:

Ghosty wrote:

TZ75 wrote:Now the next question…

What did you all listen to before metal?

Like I said in my last post, I started with Hall and Oats and then Oingo Boingo. But I admit that I was growing up during Michael Jackson’s heyday, and I was a fan. My first rock/pop concert was at the L.A. Forum on his Bad tour.

These were the bands I listened to mostly before getting into metal as a kid:

AC/DC
Duran Duran
Huey Lewis and the News
Skid Row
White Lion

I consider Skid Row metal.  

Yeah, You're right. In my head I was thinking them as Hard Rock for some reason lol.

I think they were on the border of hard rock on the debut, but Slave to the Grind is definitely metal. 

Hard rock and “hair metal” are in the same ballpark.

TZ75 wrote:Now the next question…

What did you all listen to before metal?

It started with late 80's and early 90's CCM, an inherited taste from my parents.  Then it was rock, primarily Petra.  Metal was just the next logical step up the heaviness scale.

As far as diversity in my taste, my wife says I "only listen to Christian rock."  Yep.  Everything from The Choir to Antestor.  And I only listen to "Christian friendly" to be more precise (about 80% of my collection is safely called Christian).

TZ75 wrote:

Ghosty wrote:

TZ75 wrote:

Ghosty wrote:

TZ75 wrote:Now the next question…

What did you all listen to before metal?

Like I said in my last post, I started with Hall and Oats and then Oingo Boingo. But I admit that I was growing up during Michael Jackson’s heyday, and I was a fan. My first rock/pop concert was at the L.A. Forum on his Bad tour.

These were the bands I listened to mostly before getting into metal as a kid:

AC/DC
Duran Duran
Huey Lewis and the News
Skid Row
White Lion

I consider Skid Row metal.  

Yeah, You're right. In my head I was thinking them as Hard Rock for some reason lol.

I think they were on the border of hard rock on the debut, but Slave to the Grind is definitely metal. 

Hard rock and “hair metal” are in the same ballpark.

I guess you could put White Lion in the same category now that I think about it? Well, I really can't think of anything outside of metal that I regularly listened to other then the non-metal acts I just mentioned. Even though I grew up listening to pretty much everything from Soul to Country. My family's musical tastes were all over the place.

Vengeance - Human Sacrifice
Bought for me by my mom at a local Christian bookstore, before that I had heard Testament, Metallica, etc. but there's no way my folks would allow me to buy that evil secular metal. Remember the 80's was the height of the satanic panic.

At around 12 yrs old my parents brought home Bloodgood - rock in a hard place and I loved it. I immediately wanted to hear more. Went back to the store like a week later and I found Detonation, which was and always will be my favorite Bloodgood album.

Tourniquet - Stop The Bleeding

In the late 70’s and early 80’s I had Christian Rock albums from Resurrection Band, Jerusalem, Petra, Servant and Daniel Band. Barnabas was even heavier and edgier than those bands mentioned. So it could be argued that Barnabas - Hear The Light, Find Your Heart A Home and Approaching Light Speed could be classified as Metal. Back then it was just Heavy Metal or Rock.
If those bands aren’t considered Metal, then my first Christian Metal album would be Stryper - Soldiers Under Command.

My first metal purchase included
Stryper - Yellow and Black Attack
First Strike - Rock of Offense

I got into Christian Hard Rock and Metal in 1985 and 1986 with the bsnds Daniel Band, Jerusalem, Rez and Stryper. Petra in the mid 80s wasn't really Hard Rock but I got into them too.

In 1987 and 1988 I got into Bloodood, Barren Cross, Leviticus, Messiah Prophet, Saint and Whitecross.

In 1989 and 1990 it was Angelica, Deliverance, Guardian, Holy Soldier, Mastedon, Shout, Ken Tamplin, Sacred Warrior and X-Sinner.

In 1991 and 1992 it was Siloam and Magdallan. The Ken Tamplin version of Magallan was technically Shout I think. Another band had the name Shout so they couldn't use that name.

There are other bands from 1985 to 1992 that I used to have albums that I'm no longer into. There are others I discovered in that period that I got albums years later.

Stryper - IGWT

Impelliteri - Screaming Symphony

I remember my first seven like it was yesterday.

1. Stryper--THWTD. Was blown away, which led me to...
2. Stryper--SUC  Pretty close to as good for me, but not quite.  

Then, some friends, including one of my best friends still to this day, were very much church/youth group kids that went to a different church than me. Several of them were into Petra, and had started branching out into other groups. They shared some cassettes with me, which led to...

3. Whitecross--s/t
4. Bloodgood--Rock In A Hard Place
5. Saint--Time's End
6. Bride--Live To Die

Loved them all...still do.  That summer, I ended up getting a job at a record store (an old RecordTown, if you remember those), and I discovered...

7. One Bad Pig--Smash


Arttie

I bought my first three Christian metal releases at the same time.  Of course, those were the first three Stryper albums on cassette.

In 1986-88, hair metal was all over the radio in NC where I lived.  So I loved Def Leppard, Guns N Roses, Winger, Queensryche, and all the stuff played at that time. Around '87-88 the first dubbed cassettes I had were all Metallica, though.

I had heard Stryper but found them bland compared to the other hair metal bands.  They also looked too feminine for my tastes.  A friend was super into Petra, so I also heard "This Means War."  It was ok.

A youth pastor introduced me to Whitecross, Messiah Prophet, and Tempest.  More dubbed cassettes.  I loved them, especially Whitecross.  I also think I heard the California Metal compilation.  Deliverance's "Attack" stood out.

But then I found Lightforce--Mystical Thieves in a Christian bookstore on a summer camp trip and thought that was the closest thing to Metallica I had heard from Christians.  It was super weird and foreign too, which I loved.  That was the first Christian cassette I actually bought, in 1989.

Then my youth pastor gave me Deliverance--s/t and Vengeance Rising--Once Dead because they were too heavy for him, and it was off to the races!  They blew my mind.

I grew up in a fundamentalist house and all rock music was of the world, especially Christian.  Christian metal was the worst offender to my dad.  So I had to hide any cassettes I had under my bed, and only listen to them on headphones after everyone went to sleep, on the bus, or at friends' houses.  Luckily all my friends in youth group got into Christian thrash and rock too, so between us we had literally everything that came out from '89-'93.  The golden era.