It was a big thing in a way when Stryper emerged on the heavy metal scene back in the mid-eighties. A Christian heavy metal band. How was that even thinkable? But Stryper choose their stripes – black and yellow stripes – to reflect the bumblebee. The bee’s small wings compared to its large, barrel-shaped body should physically not be able to carry it’s mass. Yet it does. So Christian artists should not be able to play heavy metal. Yet they did! Their name also referred to the Isaiah 53:5 verse that says “By his stripes we are healed.”
Christian heavy metal was the topic of a Canadian entertainment and cultural trends program in the mid-eighties. I watched the episode and got to know of a band from Toronto called the Daniel Band. Along with Stryper, this was the beginning of my foray into Christian contemporary music. I later picked up bands like Bride, Guardian, Petra, and Shout. After deciding that maybe I should seriously consider becoming Christian, my biggest pleasure was discovering music.
The local Christian Book Store always had new albums out and you could listen to samples before buying. My new-found Christian friends at school introduced me to bands as well, like Mike Stand and Mad at the World.
For the next few years, I regularly added to my CD collection, having switched over from cassettes around 1990. I also felt that there was a definite change in Christian bands overall. It seemed that 80’s bands were mostly trying to be like secular bands, musically. But by the nineties, Christian bands could hold their own. This observation and sentiment was echoed somewhere as I recall reading or hearing someone express the same opinion many years later.
Christian music took me farther in my exploration of music than ever before. Mad at the World’s debut album was pure synth/tech pop. Deitiphobia and another band (whose name I have forgotten and I can’t find anywhere on the Internet) were industrial. Russ Taff had a gospel/blues/country rock album. Amy Grant was contemporary female pop; the album I purchased was her 1982 breakout album, Age to Age. I brought home pop Maestro Michael W. Smith and Irish traditional/contemporary prog rockers, Iona. There was Lifesavers’ surf punk album, Pop Life, the melodic techno pop of Painted Orange, and the Sarah McLachlan/Jann Arden singer/songwriter folk sounds of Jan Krist. As for metal, my first taste of deep, death metal vocals came with Seventh Angel and Vengeance Rising.
In all honesty, the less obvious the lyrics were about God, Jesus, and the Bible, the easier it was for me to listen and enjoy. I remember driving in the car with a female friend from collage and playing a Petra cassette and feeling distinctly awkward when very clearly the lyrics were talking about praise for Jesus. Though in private I could enjoy singing along to Petra’s praise album, The Rock Cries Out, I felt too much reference to the Bible, God, and Jesus was embarrassing. Yes, I know, Christians would be shocked to read that. But I think for me, the relationship I was trying to cultivate in my Christian life was not meant to be advertised in bright flashing neon signs. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I think I was also conscious of the fact that I was still learning a lot and didn’t feel I had earned my stripes yet (so to speak). So I preferred to keep it to myself more.
Eventually, I felt I simply couldn’t be a Christian because what I believed and considered possibly true and worth considering was different from what most people around me were willing to even consider possible accept. I ended my Christian phase and after some time, sold off a lot of the albums that I really felt were not necessary to keep. I did this twice again over the next twenty years. There were some albums I really liked, such as Holy Soldier’s Last Train, Poor Old Lu’s Mindsize, and The Choir’s Chase the Kangaroo. But somehow it seems I saw fit to rid myself of them. Now I am seriously disappointed to find I don’t have them because now I want to hear them again and I have to find them on YouTube. Perhaps I will have to buy a few of those albums back again.
The latest video on my YouTube channel is about what remains of my Christian CD collection. I leave you with the link and as well, a list of several songs I really like.
Music is a Journey 