Bride - The divurgence from normal

New Years Eve, it must have been 1997 or so, I was the DJ for the Youth Group's party. I played a lot of the normal Christian Rock we all listened to. Towards the end of the night I slipped in some Bride. Nobody seemed to notice as everybody was heavily into the variety of Board and card games going on. As the night continued I wondered who was in charge of the countdown, it seemed like it was getting late. As some random Bride song was blaring from the chrome 80s era turntable cassette deck combo that had a sony discman with the cassette adapter plugged into it I happened to look down it my watch. It was 12:30. I didn't know what to do. I looked over at the youth leader Tony, he was very into an almost too violent game of spoons, he had no idea we missed the countdown. I then looked over at my best friend Josh, he was taking his turn at Monopoly. I didn't know what else to do So I just loudly said, "10!" and everybody just started counting down. Nobody ever knew any better.

If you were a teenager in the mid-90s listening to Christian Rock you had to listen to the holy trinity of Gospel Alternative Jars of Clay, who I covered yesterday, DC Talk, and The Newsboys. Sometimes I include Audio Adrenaline in that short list but trinity is better sounding that quadrinity. I was going along the same path as everyone else in the youth group until I started listening to late night Christian Radio.

I think there was a real sweet spot of edgier Christian music in that era right before the influence of bands like Limp Bizkit spoiled everything for me. Skillet's debut album was awesome with the hit single Gasoline was awesome. There were a few Metal bands struggling with the whole grunge thing floating around. You had Guardian, who's earlier stuff was typical hair metal, release a grunge song called bottle rocket (which I loved). There was Tourniquet, one of my favorite bands, whose early stuff was thrash metal that sounded like Megadeth, release an album of grungy rock called Crawl to China with one of my favorite songs as a mid teen. Then there was Bride.

Bride was a successful Christian Metal act in the 80s with a sound similar to Guns 'n Roses. By the time I first heard them they were trying out the whole grunge thing too. They're album the Jesus Experience is one of my favorites, it's even got scripture references in the lyric sheet! The first song that got me hooked on them was The Worm.

The part that hooked me wasn't the bass line, raspy vocals or catchy chorus it was the BGVs. I loved the harmonies in the chorus. I think I taped this song off of the radio and played it over and over again until I finally bought the CD, A CD I've owned 3 different times and bought again on eMusic.

On a trip to Dallas with the new youth group leader Tony, who was a mid-20s guy that was a great friend to us and son of the worship leader, I convinced everybody to let me pop in Bride. By this time my church friends knew that I had quirky music tastes, I'm surprised they let me listen to anything. The guys in the car didn't like The Worm but they went nuts for a song called I Love You.

We cranked this song all the way up and for a couple hours we head banged all the way to the Dawson McCallister Conference about broken families.

Tomorrow I'll cover another teenage classic, Fiver Iron Frenzy, a band my wife is not repulsed by.