This is a list that I intend to compose (with the help of many writers and friends) of the Top 100 Christian Rock albums of all time. There is no date limit (when it comes to the album’s release date, that is. This list is for our Jul/Aug 25th Anniversary Issue #144, so there is a deadline for this list to be made!). There is no genre specific categories – we will be fusing rock, metal and alternative rock and all sub-genres for this. I might have some Honorable Mentions that don’t make the list, like an honorable mention for The Cross Movement for best Christian hip-hop album of all time (just using that as a hypothetical example…that would not be my top choice for that genre, though I’d consider them if I were to make such a list).
I will share right now one of my picks. I imagine that I will exclude vast titles from the Petra catalog. Though they are kings of Christian rock, HM is a hard music magazine, so harder/edgier stuff will get an advantage. So, bands like Sanctus Real will surely be on the outside looking in. The anger that this list causes will be part of its charm. I’ll tell you right now that Petra‘s first album with John Schlitt – Back To The Street – is the band’s best album. Fans will cry. We might even have to put Never Say Die on there, just because it has so many of their staple songs on it (like “The Coloring Song” and “Praise Ye The Lord”) or even More Power To Ya, cuz it was such a staple in many of our early Christian rock collections, but man…compared to Believer‘s Sanity Obscure or Tourniquet‘s Psychosurgery or P.O.D.‘s Satellite, how can you add it to the list?
This list will be war for many. There’ll be shouting matches and all that. Whittling the list down to 100 will be really hard. Those that have been reading HM Magazine for a long time will remember our comment-less “Top 50 of the Second Half” visual list in our 100th issue. That started in the ’90s and went forward to the year that issue came out (2003). There’s a lot of good albums to choose from. We’ll have commentary on some of the albums…maybe all of them. Some more than others.
Let’s get started now and share our lists with each other at the Google Group that serves as the HM Magazine MESSAGE BOARD, at this link. You’ll need to “join” the google group, but it’s not big thing to do so. Of course, it’s free. If it gets annoying for some reason, you can opt out at any time.
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