Stop The Bleeding

Stop the Bleeding is the debut album by the Christian metal band Tourniquet, originally released July 01, 1990 on Intense Records. It was remastered and independently re-released in 2001 on Pathogenic Records. The re-release included new artwork, an expanded booklet, and several bonus tracks including demos and live versions featuring Luke Easter on vocals.
Stop the Bleeding was recorded at a studio called Mixing Lab A & B, Garden Grove, California. On this album the band's line up consisted of Ted Kirkpatrick, Guy Ritter and Gary Lenaire. Almost half of the lead guitars were played by session musician Mark Lewis. Lenaire, as seen in the video, played leads on "Ark of Suffering" and the remainder of the record.
An interesting fact on the recording of the album is that drummer Ted Kirkpatrick injured his left foot which is his main kick foot for drumming prior to the recording. The injury occurred during an "Artists vs. Label" softball game when a label executive accidentally stomped Ted's foot while he was rounding second base. This required Ted to record the album under a great deal of pain.
The band faced other obstacles as well such a power failure which forced the producer to mix the songs over again. Tourniquet's vocalist at that time, Guy Ritter, has said in an interview about this situation: "At about 3 am we are still trying to sleep, all of a sudden the lights go completely out in the studio! Gary was like, 'What was that?' And I said, 'I think it was a power failure!' (laughing) And we looked at each other and went, 'UH-OH!' We called Bill and he was screaming, 'WHAT?' He had to come back in and mix a lot of the stuff over because of that power outage.
Another funny time was when we were recording Tears of Korah and we completely forgot a verse! We did not even notice it 'cause, well, the song is like 35 minutes long! We used to have the joke, 'Oh, it's a Gary [Lenaire] song.' The whole second side of vinyl would be just Gary songs or maybe just one since they were so long! (laughter). Harlot Widow was like 12 minutes, Tears of Korah was like 8 minutes or something. So anyway, we didn't even notice it was missing it was so long. And remember we were recording on 2-inch tape, so it's expensive to do, to put an eight-minute song down. So I am in the vocal booth recording my parts when all of a sudden I go to sing the third verse and there is nothing there. I was just stunned! The guitar solo was there and I was supposed to sing another verse. This is back in the days of tape. So what Bill did was he switched over to a couple of tracks and I recorded the vocals to the third verse to the second verse on different tracks. I was going 'How are you going to fix this, how are you going to fix this?' when we were mixing the album. He bounced down the second verse to half-inch tape and then he bounced the same verse again to the third verse to half-inch tape and then the rest of the song to half-inch tape and then got out a razor blade and cut it up and spliced it all back together so we had a complete song."
On the original booklet, the production credits were given to Roger Martinez, vocalist of the fellow California based Christian thrash metal group Vengeance Rising. However, the album was actually produced by Bill Metoyer of Metal Blade Records. Ritter has said about this: "Roger Martinez was asked to co-produce our first album. I think he asked to do it. (Imitates Roger) "I need some uh co-producing points here. I would uh like to uh co-produce Tourniquet. Yeah that would be really great uh, if I could uh co-produce Tourniquet, yeah." So they let him. It was kind of weird and we were okay with it just for the name on the credits. Everybody in the world at that time loved Vengeance Rising, so if they saw his name on the album, more power to Roger. But we would be in the middle of a session and Bill Metoyer would be getting everything perfect and everything set up great and Roger would turn to Bill and say 'Yeah, um, Bill, um, yeah, can I have one more DB please on track 2, um yeah, one more DB?' And so Bill would pretend... I don't think he would even change it and Roger would say, 'Yeah, sounds good, Bro.' (laughter) That, to us was one of our favorite things. And we did that continually on the next 2 albums. We would always say to Bill, 'One more DB please.' (laughter)"
Musically, the album was said to be "unlike anything else on the market at the time." Stop the Bleeding is known to incorporate classical music to 1980's inspired speed and thrash metal riffs. Guy Ritter's vocals on the album shift between low baritone and high falsetto vocals. Ritter has said that he was inspired by glam metal vocalists. His vocals were higher on the demo versions: "In some of the early demos of those songs there were lots more high parts. That whole first verse on 'You Get What You Pray For' was all high. Only on the final versions in the studio are all the parts lower. So we did tone it down a little before we recorded it."
Ritter's falsetto vocals were often compared to those of King Diamond. However: "And it is true, A lot of people used to ask me, 'Have you heard King Diamond sing?' And seriously I had not ever heard him sing until after Stop the Bleeding came out. So many people said, 'Oh come on, you probably listened to a lot of King Diamond.' Finally I was at Ted's apartment and he pulled out a CD, and he said, 'OK. You have got to listen to this King Diamond and see what you think.' And I had to agree that 'Wow this is kind of similar' (laughing)."
The artwork on album cover contains a snake being restrained by chains. This artwork was used to represent the power that good has over evil, and how that relates to the death and resurrection of Christ, which was the ultimate victory over Satan. This concept was inspired by the bible verse 1 John 4:4, which in part reads "Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world".
The song "You Get What You Pray For" was the first single by the band. The song charted quite well and was a GMA Dove Award nomination for "Metal Recorded Song of the Year".
A video was done for the song "Ark of Suffering" which contained graphic footage of animals in labs and meat houses which received some airplay on MTV before it was banned for being too graphic. The video won the Christian News Forum Contemporary Christian Music Award for "Rock Video of the Year" and it was voted by the Heaven's Metal magazine's readers as their "Favorite Video of the Year". The video is also included on the Ocular Digital DVD.
Ritter has said about the song airplay: "They [MTV] did play it ["Ark of Suffering"]. And quite a few times as a matter of fact. We had people like Tom Scholz (Boston) and Paul McCartney and Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane/Starship) calling MTV saying, 'You have got to play this video.' So what was happening was that 'Animals Agenda' and some of these other magazines were calling these celebrities that they knew and saying, 'We need you to call and get this MTV video on the air.' And that is how it got played. By these stars, who we never got to meet! I can't take credit for that. (laughter) And there was an interview too, I think in 'Animals Agenda' where they interviewed Ted Nugent and then they interviewed us and put it back to back in the same magazine. He talked about slaughtering the animals and then we would come back and say, 'don't slaughter the animals.' I still have that article. It was pretty cool."

Lineup

Guy Ritter (Holy Danger, Echo Hollow, Flood) - Lead Vocals
Gary Lenaire (Holy Danger, Echo Hollow, Cripple Need Cane, Flood) - Guitars/Vocals/Bass
Mark Lewis - Lead Guitars
Ted Kirkpatrick - Drums/Bass

2000 Live Tracks
Luke Easter - Vocals
Aaron Guerra - Guitars/Vocals
Steve Andino - Bass
Ted Kirkpatrick - Drums

1990 Demo Tracks
Guy Ritter (Holy Danger, Echo Hollow, Flood) - Lead Vocals
Gary Lenaire (Holy Danger, Echo Hollow, Cripple Need Cane, Flood) - Guitars/Vocals
Mark Lewis - Lead Guitars
Ted Kirkpatrick - Drums/Bass/Rhythm Guitars