Armored Saint: The tragic history of the band
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Hailing from Los Angeles in the early 80’s the band Armored Saint shared more in common with the new wave of british heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Saxon than the hair metal bands that ruled the sunset strip. While they would be influential in the metal underground scene and signed to a major label it hasn’t always been easy for the band as tragedy would hit close to home. Stay tuned for the full story. Grateful
Armored Saint would be a highly influential metal band in local circles, even though they didn’t break big nationally. Formed in 1982 by the Sandoval brothers including guitarist Phil and drummer Gonzo they soon added vocalist John Bush, bassist Joey Vera and guitarist Dave Prichard to the lineup. The name Armored Saint came from the 1981 medieval fantasy film Excalibur. The band would record a 5 song EP that caught the attention of metal blade records who released the song Lesson Well Learned on the compilation album titled Metal Massacre 2, The band would soon enough sign a deal with metal blade in 1983 before landing a major label contract with Chrysalis records the following year. It was a strange signing given that Chrysalis records didn’t have a lot of metal acts on their roster and as you guys will soon find out it wasn’t a smart business move.
Armored Saint would release their first album through Chrysalis in 1984 titled March of the Saint. While it would be met with positive reviews and the song Can U Deliver got the video treatment paying homeage to Mad Max and received some airplay on MTV overall it was a frustrating experience for the band members who felt like their sound was too sanitized. Produced by Michael James Jackson who previously worked with Kiss, Joey Vera would recall in a 2006 interview with fullinbloom music how the band fought with their producer revealing
Our producer Michael James Jackson (KISS, Creatures of the Night) was never there or always on the phone. But we didn't quite see eye to eye with him anyway. One day he told us that he didn't like Black Sabbath. From that day on it was like "you just don't get it".. Suddenly we had all of these outside people messing with our thing, slowing tempos down, making things overly polished, trying to manufacture a "sellable item". And the producer and our manager let us spend over 300,000 on our first record. To this day we are still in debt for that one.
According to the same interview Vera would admit that the label seemed happy enough with the sales of the groups first album that they were allowed to make another for Chrysalis.
Armored Saint’s following record 1985’s Delirious Nomad would see the band team up with Ozzy Osbourne producer Max Norman to get the sound they wanted. Unlike their previous record the band didn’t do any music videos for the album as Vera would reveal in the same interview. Just as Delirious was being finished, MTV cancelled their Heavy Metal Programming. So we decide to not make a video at all. Save the money and put it towards tour support. 6 months after Delirious came out, MTV added Metal programming back into their program. We were pissed.
During the recording of the album founding member and guitarist Phil Sandoval left the group.
In 1987 the band put out what would be there last album with Chrysalis titled Raising Fear. Due to the departure of Sandoval the band would record the album as a four piece. The album Raising Fear represented probably the lowest point in Armored Saint’s career with their label. Vera would reveal a number of factors working against the band including the fact that the label was undergoing major personnel changes, they lost their A&R man, Chrysalis brought in outside song writers to help the band write radio friendly songs and finally they were against letting the band tour in Europe, which the members of Armored Saint felt was key to widening their reach. Following Raising Fear’s release they were dropped by their label. The album also represented a dark milestone for the group as it would be the last record that guitarist David Prichard would play on as the musician would receive tragic news that he was diagnosed with leukemia.
His cancer would be discovered as the guitarist was taking a test to see whether he would be a suitable candidate for a strong acne medication. Prichard would pass away in February of 1990 part way thr
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