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.

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 (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. In an interview in 2007, 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 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.

Reception

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:

Track listing

1. Excluded from the 2011 Brazilian remaster.

Personnel

Tourniquet
Guy Ritter – lead vocals
Ted Kirkpatrick – drums, bass
Gary Lenaire – guitars, vocals, bass

Additional musicians
Erik Jan James – bass guitar
Mark Lewis – lead guitar

Demo recordings
Guy Ritter – lead vocals
Ted Kirkpatrick – drums
Gary Lenaire – guitars
Mark Lewis – lead guitar

Live recordings (2001 remaster)
Ted Kirkpatrick – drums
Luke Easter – lead vocals
Aaron Guerra – guitars, vocals, mixing and arranging on "Concert Intro 1999"
Steve Andino – bass guitar

Production
Tourniquet – producer (1990 version)
Roger Martinez (Vengeance Rising) – producer (1990 version)
Bill Metoyer (credited as Gordon Shumway) – producer, mixing, engineer (1990 version)
Eric Greedy, Guy Ritter – engineer (1990 version)
Eric Kibbe – assistant engineer (1990 version)
Matthew B. Hunt – executive producer (2020 version)
Ted Kirkpatrick – producer (2020 version)

Additional personnel
Devino – visual performance art
Jim Martin, Tourniquet – logo concept
Ed McTaggart – art direction
Jim Muth – photography
Ken Taufer – illustration
Charmeine Ellison, Lisa, Meloeny, Cherie Sunn – hair styling
Joe Potter – layout (1990 version)
William Cooke – remastering at Raven Mastering in Chatsworth, California (2001 version)
Rob Colwell, Mark Fields – remastering at Bombworks Sound in McKinney, Texas (2020 version)
Scott Waters (Ultimatum) – design, layout (2020 version)
Ted Kirkpatrick – liner notes (2020 version)

References

External links 
 Stop the Bleeding (1990) at Tourniquet.net
 Stop the Bleeding (2001) at Tourniquet.net

Tourniquet (band) albums
1990 albums