Tourniquet - Gazing at Medusa released

That would be interesting to hear. Not getting the hate for this album, it's still got that TQT sound but I think some people here hated it before it came out.

Scott, check this song out and the classic solo by Poland. Love the doomy feel here.

Metal Wanker: Yeah, it's just not doing it for me. I have the album, and will probably keep it, but only listen to a couple of songs off of it. TQT are very hit or miss with me since Vanishing Lessons.

Troublezone wrote:

scottmitchell74 wrote:

Ah...that brings back memories of wearing those cassettes out!

Yeah, early 90s Christian thrash was actually great imo. Bands like Believer and Tourniquet were unique. Even by secular standards.

Yep, and in a lot of cases better than the secular bands. Ahh those were the days.

scottmitchell74 wrote:

Metal Wanker: Yeah, it's just not doing it for me. I have the album, and will probably keep it, but only listen to a couple of songs off of it. TQT are very hit or miss with me since Vanishing Lessons.

And not coincidentally, that was the last album that featured Gary Lenaire.

Ted probably believes he still is playing thrash .... at least the degree he was ever interested in it.

This is a weird album. Lyrically (and I'm not that much of a lyrics guy) this might be my favorite and initially the album was musically disappointing, but I grew up to love it.

Oddly I've listened Can't Make Me Hate You more than any other tracks in the album and that song was the worst when I first heard the album. Ripper really does AMAZING job in the last part of the song. I'm just wondering how the song would sound like if Guy Ritter was in vocals there...

Damn, I've been listening to a lot of Guy Ritter stuff lately. Dude was a diamond!
Check out this Tourniquet live gig at Cornerstone 1991:

Check out them playing a cover of Trouble's The Tempter with Guy on vocals starting at 35 minute mark.
Guy is a bit weird on stage though. He walks around pretty awkwardly and doesn't always seem to know what to do with his hands, but oh man he sounds just as good on stage as he sounds on record. He nails both the high pitch falsetto and lower vocals and overall sounds really really good.
Check out Tears of Korah at around 12:53-13:10...

Troublezone wrote:

scottmitchell74 wrote:

Metal Wanker: Yeah, it's just not doing it for me. I have the album, and will probably keep it, but only listen to a couple of songs off of it. TQT are very hit or miss with me since Vanishing Lessons.

And not coincidentally, that was the last album that featured Gary Lenaire.

Gary was in Carry the Wounded and in The Collected Works of Tourniquet too. Perfect Night for a Hanging and The Hand Trembler were the last two Tourniquet songs featuring Gary.

Those two songs from Collected Works are great! I wish they continued with that exact sound, but they unfortunately ended up with Crawl To China.

Troublezone wrote:

Those two songs from Collected Works are great! I wish they continued with that exact sound, but they unfortunately ended up with Crawl To China.

Yeah those songs still sound really good and very unique. The sound is really MEATY and thick and fuzzy at the same time. I would love to hear a full album with that sound.

Psycho Surgery and Pathogenic have pretty much the perfect thrash sound but they aren't that unique, while the sound of Perfect Night and The Hand Trembler work super well as thrash sound but has this really unique tone to it. I really haven't heard any other metal song have that type of sound.

Tourniquet have never really had two albums that have the same sound except Stop the Bleeding and Vanishing Lessons that have pretty much the exact same guitar tone. Psycho and Pathogenic are close too with each other but I think they are different enough.

Microscopic View had this weird sharp but really dry sound and WMARD was super muddy.

I think Antiseptic Bloodbath has the best sound after Psycho, Pathogenic and the Collected Works duo, not very unique sound but pleasantly thick.


Perfect Night and The Hand Trembler were also the last two Tourniquet songs featuring Victor Macias - that dude probably had the best stage presence of any Tourniquet member ever. And I really miss his playing on Tourniquet records. The albums he was in have really cool extra bass lines thrown in and it really sounds there is someone on bass who knows how to use bass to but extra life to the songs and isn't afraid to give more meat and detail to the songs whereas when Ted and Aaron have done the bass they more or less just follow the guitar instead of being letting bass be an instrument of its own. They play the bass well and are skillfull enough to make it sound good, but Victor really was waaaayyy above them both.

Rami Airola wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

Those two songs from Collected Works are great! I wish they continued with that exact sound, but they unfortunately ended up with Crawl To China.

Yeah those songs still sound really good and very unique. The sound is really MEATY and thick and fuzzy at the same time. I would love to hear a full album with that sound.

Psycho Surgery and Pathogenic have pretty much the perfect thrash sound but they aren't that unique, while the sound of Perfect Night and The Hand Trembler work super well as thrash sound but has this really unique tone to it. I really haven't heard any other metal song have that type of sound.

Tourniquet have never really had two albums that have the same sound except Stop the Bleeding and Vanishing Lessons that have pretty much the exact same guitar tone. Psycho and Pathogenic are close too with each other but I think they are different enough.

Microscopic View had this weird sharp but really dry sound and WMARD was super muddy.

I think Antiseptic Bloodbath has the best sound after Psycho, Pathogenic and the Collected Works duo, not very unique sound but pleasantly thick.


Perfect Night and The Hand Trembler were also the last two Tourniquet songs featuring Victor Macias - that dude probably had the best stage presence of any Tourniquet member ever. And I really miss his playing on Tourniquet records. The albums he was in have really cool extra bass lines thrown in and it really sounds there is someone on bass who knows how to use bass to but extra life to the songs and isn't afraid to give more meat and detail to the songs whereas when Ted and Aaron have done the bass they more or less just follow the guitar instead of being letting bass be an instrument of its own. They play the bass well and are skillfull enough to make it sound good, but Victor really was waaaayyy above them both.

I agree about Victor Macias. He was a true bassist. After he left the band, Ted and Aaron were like when Metallica used Bob Rock to fill in after Jason Newsted quit. Very straight forward and basic...

When Moth and Rust Destroy had Steve Andino on bass but that record has the bass is somehow too low in volume in intensity that it can't be enjoyed that much. The guitar tone in itself is very bassy in that album and it buries a lot of the actual bass. And it feels like Steve doesn't dare to do much of his own there.

If you compare the fast thrash endings of Convoluted Absolutes (WMARD) and The Test for Leprosy (Stop the Bleeding) you see the difference. In Convoluted Absolutes the fast part starts without bass and you can hear when the bass kicks in but it's kinda just a steady level of bass sound going through the background.

Now in The Test for Leprosy you can hear how the bass clanks and makes noises and it has tons of energy in it. Ted was on bass there so he knows how to make the bass sound awesome. It could be that Ted probably played bass with a pick and Steve played with his finger, but then again Victor played with his fingers too and he had no trouble making it sound awesome.

My theory is that Microscopic View was the last album where they still trained a bit more like a band. Youtube has that cool video of Ted and Aaron going through Besprinkled in Scarlet Horror. But as Aaron had left the band for a few years and wasn't part of WMARD and Ted was left to do all the rhythm guitars on his own, I think Ted didn't have that much of rehearsals with Steve Andino where he could've gone through the songs in his own way, but instead they just recorded the album without thinking about the bass too much. Or then it could be that Bill Metoyer and Ted just wanted the bass to not jump out too much.

Anyway, in retrospect it feels like Where Moth and Rust Destroy was the first album that changed Ted and Tourniquet into what it is now. Ted played all the rhythm guitars on his own and had two guest guitarists play the leads. After WMARD he was frustrated about record labels wanting demos before making deals, and he said that in the Tourniquet discussion board. That's when they went full independent. But I guess all of this had a bit of an effect to the band dynamics in the sense that there wasn't much of a need to come together and rehearse and jam as a band. And I think at this point everyone lived far away from each other too.

I love modern Tourniquet and I love Ted's solo stuff (Onward to Freedom is my least favorite Tourniquet disc though), but I think WMARD was a clear point of things changing for good for the band.

I think your right but WMARD is a great album and came out during a fairly dry time in metal.

Yeah don't get me wrong, I even love In Death We Rise on that album. A Ghost at the Wheel is the only song I don't care about that much, but it's an ok song too. The rest are great.

WMARD is an interesting album also in that usually Ted doesn't do collaborations with other people in the band. If Ted wrote the lyrics, he wrote the music too. If he wrote the music, he wrote the lyrics too. There are a few exceptions like Officium Defunctorum (where I think he only wrote the last moments of the song) and Pushin' Broom where Gary wrote the lyrics and Ted wrote the music. In WMARD there are two songs where Luke Easter wrote the lyrics and Ted the music (A Ghost at the Wheel and Convoluted Absolutes) and that's the only time where Ted shared a song with Luke. It has always been Luke and Aaron like back in the day it almost always was Guy and Gary.

As far as the muddy sound on WMARD... that was the beginning of Ted incorporating his love of the “stoner” guitar sound. He’s a big fan of vintage 70s type amps like Orange and SUNN.

Can't stand that stoner guitar sound

Temple of Blood wrote:

Can't stand that stoner guitar sound

I like it, but not for Tourniquet. The first three albums had a tight crunchy sound like Megadeth and Slayer.

Well, we know whom our two Tourniquet experts are here!

UNCLE SAXON'S KICKASS CDS wrote:

Well, we know whom our two Tourniquet experts are here!

What’s the matter? Are we not allowed to have opinions? I don’t see the point of your sarcasm.

TZ - that was the opposite of sarcasm. I read through all of you guy's dialog and had to play my Tourniquet discography to even see what one of you posts were talking about [yes - I do not like Crawling to China either apparently]. I was absolutely sincere. I really appreciate half of your posts and wish Rami posted more in other threads. Truth. Love you brother.

UNCLE SAXON'S KICKASS CDS wrote:

TZ - that was the opposite of sarcasm.  I read through all of you guy's dialog and had to play my Tourniquet discography to even see what one of you posts were talking about [yes - I do not like Crawling to China either apparently].  I was absolutely sincere.  I really appreciate half of your posts and wish Rami posted more in other threads.  Truth.  Love you brother.

Thanks Sax!

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I wasn’t sure where you were coming from... (because of the past)

I dunno. The first two have always been in my rotation. Then I lost interest until I heard Microscopic View and really grooved on that. Then lost interest again until I heard dUg was on the one track a couple albums ago [Onward to Freedom]. Did not even like the dUg song. So, I am back to not caring. Although, my interest is piqued again because of this thread. And Ted really is top 5 metal/hard rock drummers ever!

I'm done with this band until they add another songwriter.

Ted needs to loosen his grip on the band and allow someone to help with ideas. We see how one sided and boring a single writer approach can be with Kerry King writing all of the last Slayer album, and Eric Peterson writing all of the last Testament album as well. The best albums usually have some collaborations.

Gary Holt is the leader and main songwriter for Exodus, but he is smart enough to be open to input from Steve Souza and Lee Altus.

Maybe a good producer could help Ted arrange this songs.  That's the biggest problem to me here:  arrangements.  No one can afford producers like that any more though, which is one reason 80s albums were usually better quality than today.

I write pretty much everything myself but I try not to take the listener for granted and engage in audience abuse.