Still from the “Ark of Suffering” video
When I was taking guitar lessons in fifth grade, metal, as a genre, was still something completely foreign to me and more the property of high school students I regarded as both terrifying and mysterious. My own paperback practice books teaching Auld Lang Syne, Greensleeves, and Michael Row Your Boat Ashore contained advertisements for other volumes from Mel Bay teaching METAL, a style that seemed both highly technical and hedonistic. The guitars pictured on those covers were raked with animal stripes and flames, and strummed by glamorously accessorized hands. My own, long-haired teacher, a metal-looking figure, played a lot of “hard rock,” it was clear, but kept me on the straight and narrow. He just swore occasionally (and apologized right after).
Which brings us, somehow, to the topic of Tourniquet, a Christian, animal-abuse-protesting metal band based in Milwaukee. By way of Kickstarter, drummer and constant member Ted Kirkpatrick has raised $8,566 to release a new album, “Onward to Freedom,” sometime this fall. He also raised $28,475 in a 2011 campaign; the band released its “Antiseptic Bloodbath” album in 2012, the cover of which depicted a disemboweled cow.
See below the cover art for Tourniquet’s 2014 release, along with more of the band’s albums from the past decade and a half (via Bandcamp), something to catch the old flavor of metal and its mystery. Whether you enjoy Tourniquet’s particular tang of ideology, and religion, is another matter.
Onward to Freedom, Fall 2014
Antiseptic Bloodbath, 2012
In the Shadows of the Masters, 2010
Ode to a Roadkill, 2010
Where Moth and Rust Destroy, 2003
Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm, 2000
Acoustic Archives, 1998
