Thresher

In the mid to late 80's the thrash scene was thriving in both the secular market and in the Christian market. Bands like Vengeance Rising, Deliverance, Sacrament and Believer we're leading the pack in the Christian thrash circuit. In 1989 somewhere in Pennsylvania a demo tape would emerge that would make a long lasting impression on the Christian Thrash scene. That demo was called... "Totally Possessed" The band... THRESHER!!!!!
The band would release and distribute only 500 copies of that first demo tape, selling it at their shows and through print magazines like Heaven's Metal. That demo would catch the eye of many people in the scene and in the industry. This tape, if you can find one today, goes for quite a few bucks on sites like eBay!
After the success of the demo the band would next record a couple of tracks that would be included on two much sought after compilations for REX Records. This would garner even more attention on this young and thriving band. Next, with label interest in both the Christian and Secular markets, they would go in and record what would be their next and ultimately their final, full length release entitled "Here I Am".
We stumbled into the Christian Rock seen in a band called Lazarus back in 1983 (I think, so long ago I can't remember) We did some regional stuff and recorded a cassette demo called "Breaking into the Night". This opened a lot of doors for me and my writing began to flow in a direction of outreach to the metal crowd.
After Lazarus, I went into hiding for several years and was writing a lot. Having a number of tunes and wanting to record them I hooked up with my good friend, Dave Kurtz of Lifeline. I met Dave through Jeff Newman, my good friend who drummed for Lazarus. Dave had an 8 track studio in his basement and we struck up a deal to record what later would become the "Totally Possessed" demo.
I traded Dave an old Marshall combo amp with camo speaker cover for recording time, a pretty good trade on my end, I think Dave just wanted to hang out and he knew I was a great cook.
Well in the process of that we felt something stirring from the Lord, we began to pursue a band which became Thresher. We talked Jeff into stretching into a whole new style, which actually was a new style for all of us. We had never played speed metal and Jeff was into the Talking Heads, the Who, Rush, and a lot of other classic rock groups.
Dave was trained classically on trumpet and piano and I think his favorite group was Meatloaf, ha, ha. (just kidding) I think this was in 1985-86, and we performed and did some recording until the fall of 1991.
Our passion became to play a style that took some work (we were old guys even back then) and to incorporate a strong gospel message lyrically. Much of the secular thrash of the day was pretty dark and much of the Christian Metal seemed superficial in message content.
~Mark Buchanan

Roxx Records managed to hook up with Thresher to get the previously unreleased album from the early 90's, "Here I AM", pressed onto CD.