STAVESACRE!

Although they're in the process of breaking up, their earlier albums (Friction and the even better Absolutes) contain some of the best metal I've ever heard.

Their lyrics, too, are amazing--dark, gritty, utterly faithfilled and NEVER in the least bit forced or censored. Just honest, searching Christianity, repenting of a life spent wrong and living the adventure of the journey of faith.

(Actually, their best CD is their latest, "How to Live with a Curse," but if you want metal that gets under your skin and makes you want to do/smash/leap/cheer/kill/exult, the first two CD's are where to go.)

It needs to be driving, melodic, drums have to go faster than my heartbeat, but I need to understand the lyrics. And some seriously awesome guitar riffs and solos wouldn't hurt.


You might check out Dream Theater. Not Christian, but clean. Technically speaking, maybe the best group of rock musicians ever assembled.

Well, you need to listen to my podcast (it's not ALL metal, but there's a bunch of it).

Breaking the Silence is a good female-fronted band that I've been playing a lot lately. Stavesacre is awesome. Invisible Image is another one that I've been playing on the podcast. Pillar, of course, and Disciple. Project 86.

And I hear that Whitecross is trying to come back. So is Barren Cross and possibly Holy Soldier.

I saw White Cross in the late 80s (or might have been 1990) - they rocked.

This might be a tad bit *too* crunchy for your tastes, but Paramaecium is an awesome band. Growly, thrash-around-the-floor type music. I like it, but it certainly is music you have to be in the right mood to listen to. :-)

Disciple is pretty good. I especially like the song "Stripped Away."

How about Red. I reviewed a CD of there's for HollywoodJesus.com. http://live.hollywoodjesus.com/?p=472

Also xDEATHSTARx - We Are The Threat
http://live.hollywoodjesus.com/?p=230

Metallica: pre-Black or after Black?

Most of the suggestions above just don't fall into old school metal stuff, except for Paramaecium. Unless you are talking old Disciple. Stuff I have been liking recently are Final Axe, Titanic, Heel, and The Showdown. Anything by Rob Rock is good, also. He was the first vocalist for Angelica back in the day. If you ever liked Overkill, Ultimatium is like them and also popular with old school metal heads. Retroactive Records is a good place to keep up with old school metal stuff - they re-release old stuff and find new bands that fit in nicely.

http://www.myspace.com/finalaxe
http://www.myspace.com/titanicmetal
http://www.myspace.com/robrock1
http://www.myspace.com/theshowdown
http://www.myspace.com/heelsite
http://www.myspace.com/ultimatummetal
http://www.myspace.com/retroactivewreckage

Whitecross, Bloodgood, Stryper, and a whole host of other old school bands are back together and putting out new music. Members of Vengeance Rising and The Crucified have joined together to form a band called Once Dead that will probably be good, if they ever get an album out.

Also, the guys in Stavesacre get really upset when people call them metal. They are heavy, but I don't know if they are metal. I remember reading somewhere that they hate that label.

Has anyone mentioned One Bad Pig yet?

Wow, these are some awesome suggestions.
I like - (these are loud not necessarily metal):
Pillar
Falling Up
Skillet
Red
Disciple
Decyfer Down
Day of Fire and some
Kutless stuff.

Yeah, okay the ones I mentioned aren't metal per se, but check them out. As a fan of Metallica I certainly enjoyed them. But I'm not hardcore... or Hardcore.

(oh, yeah - I wasn't saying that anything mentioned was not good, just not what would be classified as classic metal)

The vocalist from Ultimatum also has a website that I like to read to keep up with metal stuff. He is an old school metal head that hates grunge, nu-metal, and anything "core." He's pretty honest with his opinions, and pretty funny when he doesn't like something. He does like other stuff like prog, blues, punk, etc. But if you click on his CD collection link, you will see reviews of hundreds of CDs, Christian and non-Christian. He also hates listening to Satanic or profane lyrics.

No Life 'til Metal

Crossbow -- thanks for those MySpace links -- they'll help me this week as I plan the next show ;-)