Stop the Bleeding is Christian metal band Tourniquet's debut album, released originally in 1990 on Intense Records and remastered/re-released independently in 2001 on Pathogenic Records. The re-release includes new artwork, an expanded booklet, and several bonus tracks including demos and live versions featuring then-lead vocalist Luke Easter.
Recording history
The band recorded Stop the Bleeding at Mixing Lab A & B studio in Garden Grove, California. The band's line-up consisted of Ted Kirkpatrick, Guy Ritter, and Gary Lenaire. Session musician Mark Lewis played nearly half of the album's lead guitar solos. Prior to the album's recording, during an "Artists vs. Label" softball game, a label executive accidentally ran over drummer Ted Kirkpatrick's foot while rounding second base, requiring Kirkpatrick to record the album under a great deal of pain. The band faced other recording obstacles as well, such a power failure that forced the producer to mix the songs over again. In an interview, then-vocalist Guy Ritter reminisced: In the original booklet, the band gave co-production credits to Roger Martinez, vocalist of fellow California-based Christian thrash metal group Vengeance Rising. However, Metal Blade Records' Bill Metoyer actually produced the album. Ritter said about this:
Overview
Musically, the album was said to be "unlike anything else on the market at the time" and incorporates classical music to 1980s-inspired speed and thrash metal riffs. Guy Ritter's vocals on the album, which he said were inspired by glam metal vocalists, shift between low-baritone and high-falsetto vocals, although they were performed higher on the demo versions: Ritter's falsetto vocals are often compared to those of King Diamond: The album cover art features a snake restrained by chains, representing the power good has over evil and how that relates to the death and resurrection of Christ, which was the ultimate victory over Satan. The bible verse 1 John 4:4, which reads in part, "Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world," inspired this concept.
Reception
The song "You Get What You Pray For" was the band's first single and charted quite well. It was also a GMA Dove Award nominee for "Metal Recorded Song of the Year." The band's controversial video for "Ark of Suffering," which contains graphic footage of animals in laboratories and slaughterhouses and appears on the band's Ocular Digital DVD, received airplay on MTV before the channel ceased airing it after complaints that it was too graphic. Despite MTV's ban, the video won the Christian News Forum Contemporary Christian Music Award for "Rock Video of the Year," and Heaven's Metal magazine readers voted it their "Favorite Video of the Year." About the song's airplay, Ritter said:
