Stop the Bleeding is the debut studio album by the American Christian metal band Tourniquet. It was originally released on Intense Records in 1990. A remastered version was released independently on Pathogenic Records in 2001, which was later re-released in 2011. Retroactive Records released a Collector's Edition remaster on June 26, 2020. The remasters include updated artwork, expanded album booklets, and bonus tracks.
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 (his main kick 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. During a late-night recording session, the studio experienced a power outage, requiring producer Bill Metoyer to remix parts of the album. Another incident occurred while recording Tears of Korah, an eight-minute-long song, when the band accidentally omitted an entire verse without noticing. Since they were using two-inch tape, re-recording was costly. The error was discovered in the vocal booth, prompting Metoyer to creatively splice the missing verse into the track using half-inch tape and manual editing techniques.
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.
Roger Martinez was involved in the co-production of Tourniquet's first album. According to band members, Martinez expressed interest in co-producing, and his involvement was primarily for the recognition his name would bring due to the popularity of his band, Vengeance Rising, at the time. During recording sessions, producer Bill Metoyer handled the technical aspects, while Martinez would occasionally request volume adjustments, which Metoyer sometimes pretended to make. The phrase âÂÂOne more DB, pleaseâ became an inside joke among the band and continued through subsequent albums.
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 Jesus 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.
The song "You Get What You Pray For" was the band's first single and stayed on top of the CCM metal charts for 21 weeks. It was also a GMA Dove Award nominee for "Metal Recorded Song of the Year."
The band's controversial music video for "Ark of Suffering," which contains graphic footage of animals in laboratories and slaughterhouses, 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." The music video was later included on the VHS tapes Hot Metal 4 in 1991 and Video Biopsy in 1992, as well as the DVD Ocular Digital in 2003.
About the song's airplay, Ritter said:
<sup>1.</sup> Excluded from the 2011 Brazilian remaster.
Tourniquet
Additional musicians
Demo recordings
Live recordings (2001 remaster)
Production
Additional personnel