{"id":5762,"date":"2010-05-13T12:22:45","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T17:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=5762"},"modified":"2010-05-13T12:22:45","modified_gmt":"2010-05-13T17:22:45","slug":"dont-stress-out-on-this-doug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/dont-stress-out-on-this-doug\/","title":{"rendered":"Don't stress out on this, Doug!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cds<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s what one of my friends tells me. I won’t use any names (Paul Q-Pek, secretly a founding member of Lust Control named “Stanley”). I told him I would not, but I’m also accepting a certain amount of stress. In other words, I’m taking this “Top 100 Christian Rock Albums of All Time” list seriously. I’ve always hesitated on putting together a list like this – even resisting the temptation when “lists” became the craze in magazine publishing. But this being our 25th Anniversary issue I felt it needed some special content and this seemed the perfect idea.<\/p>\n

One of my old friends has decided to give me some friendly jabs that pick at the importance I’m placing on it. In an act of selfish revenge I’m just going to delete his Psychosurgery<\/em> album from the list. Just kidding, Gary Lenaire! Choosing between Psychosurgery<\/em> and Pathogenic<\/em>… was a tough decision as they’re both really close to each other in terms of greatness. Almost flip a coin closeness. Seriously. I’ll go ahead and tip my card here and say that I’ve chosen Psycho Surgery<\/em> (which Tourniquet recently re-released and shortened the title to just one word). They are both packed with great songs and both have epic tunes on them. On the Heaven’s Metal Fanzine list, which is a little more narrow, we’ve got both titles on the “Top 100 Christian Metal Albums of All Time,” and they both might have shown up on the HM “Rock” list, too, but I’ve had to change my strategy and instate a “single entry per band” rule, because once I whittled the list down to 100, too many great, classic albums were being left off the list, so I deleted a “duplicate” album by the Seventy Sevens, P.O.D., U2 and maybe some others off the list. I originally purposefully did not have a rule like that, but it seemed the only way to get some worthy albums on the list. 150 would have been a much nicer number to deal with! But I like challenges, so I’m not gonna mess with the number.<\/p>\n

I haven’t wavered on my two other rules, though. They would be: “No Amy Grant on this list (she’s not really rock, but pop)” and “No Lust Control on this list (even if we deserved it, and we don’t, there’ll be no self-serving crap going on here).”<\/p>\n

There will hopefully be a few surprises from the past and a couple from the present on this list. Most everyone will hate the list. I know that. It’s a list. It’s an educated, informed list the relies on any credibility I’ve earned (or stolen) in the 25 years we’ve done this magazine, so hopefully the credibility will be respected. It’s still just one publication’s list, though. There will be some stuff that people hate for being on there and some “for crying out loud, how could you leave this one off?” type emotions, too. Hopefully, there won’t be any death threats. I think that’s the sort of extreme stressing that my friend was alluding to.<\/p>\n

\"TOPlps1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s been fun putting this list together. It’s made my office a mess at times. Here are some photos from the process. Up top is a shot of some vinyl I got out to preview for consideration. Some of these are classics in their own right. Edin-Adahl’s debut album, Alibi, was one such album. It mixed a little reggae with rock and a vertical connection back in … was it 1983? I’m sad to say I couldn’t make it “fit” on the list. Call me heartless. Call me cruel. I tried. In the upper right corner is a German import by a Christian metal band named Creed (no relation to the Florida-based hard rock band of later years). Notice the similarity of the album cover to Judas Priest’s British Steel<\/em>. sigh. What were they thinking?<\/p>\n

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What the crap is this? Sheila Walsh?! Well, back in the day the 700 Club co-host was a little rocker. She was discovered by Larry Norman, who co-produced a couple songs on her debut album. A little New Wave, a little edge. But, alas, she didn’t make our final cut. That Time To Run Soundtrack<\/em> had some really good songs on it from the Jesus Movement days. Randy Stonehill covers a Larry Norman tune called “I Love You” (not the People version), which was a really moving ballad. I think I put that song on the “Mixtape” sidebar I created (for albums with one great song on it that was so good that it almost single-handedly warrants an album’s inclusion on the list). There’s a Rich Mullins song on here from his debut album called “Save Me,” which drips with acid rock and bluesy swagger. It could’ve almost been an outtake from Zeppelin’s IV album. Yeah, he was a “ccm” artist, but that one song was a doozy.<\/p>\n

\"TOPcds\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ahh, there’s some good ones here. One on the lower left was a comeback album of sorts by The Clergy. Extol’s Burial is a classic in the metal category.<\/p>\n

And speaking of metal, I have an interesting observation. Of the Christian Rock critics I know, many of them look down their nose at Christian metal. That’s surprising to me. I figure it’s their musical taste. But what’s interesting about that is guys like Lester Bangs loved heavy metal. They apparently saw metal as the savior for a “dying” rock scene. Heavy metal became this loud, brash and passionate side of rock that it had been missing in the mid-70s. They heralded bands like Judas Priest as great artists that revived the love and hope they originally had in rock and roll.<\/p>\n

Granted, the Christian rock critics mostly started exercising their craft during or well after the ’80s hair metal craze came upon the rock world, so maybe there’s some understandable mistrust or dislike of the genre based upon the excess and slop that this movement brought upon itself. Maybe. I’m a little bit in disagreement with their fairly common dislike of metal, though.<\/p>\n

Because of HM Magazine’s origin as a metal magazine, our list will lean heavily towards the harder side of things, but like I will mention in our List introduction, new genres that exploded in the late, late ’90s (like indie rock) sure throws a wrench in the whole “you shall know rock by the amount of riffage and heavy muscle it displays,” because indie rock is often lo-fi, quiet and contemplative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There will be some stuff that people hate for being on there and some “for crying out loud, how could you leave this one off?” type emotions, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[3299],"class_list":["post-5762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-tourniquet","cat-17-id"],"yoast_head":"\nDon't stress out on this, Doug! - The Original Heaven's Metal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/dont-stress-out-on-this-doug\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Doug Van Pelt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/dont-stress-out-on-this-doug\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/dont-stress-out-on-this-doug\/\",\"name\":\"Don't stress out on this, Doug! - The Original Heaven's Metal\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-05-13T17:22:45+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/#\/schema\/person\/b155afeb7086c8182b3bb3b435e68c4b\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/dont-stress-out-on-this-doug\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/dont-stress-out-on-this-doug\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/dont-stress-out-on-this-doug\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Don't stress out on this, Doug!\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/hmmagazine.com\/dvanpelt\/\",\"name\":\"The Original Heaven's Metal\",\"description\":\"Former Editor-in-Chief. 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