Tourniquet was an American Christian metal band that formed in Los Angeles in 1990. The band was founded by Ted Kirkpatrick, Guy Ritter, and Gary Lenaire. Tourniquet primarily performed a mixture of thrash, progressive, and neoclassical metal, and was influenced by additional, non-rock forms of music such as classical and world music. It earned six GMA Dove Award nominations and won multiple recognitions from the readers of HM Magazine, including "Favorite Band of the 1990s" and "Favorite Album of the 1990s" for Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance (1992). The band released ten studio albums, two live albums, four compilation albums, one EP, and several video releases. Tourniquet has sold more than 300,000 albums. In addition to its use of classical music, the band is known for frequently using medical terminology in its album and song titles and lyrics.
The last Tourniquet lineup consisted of Ted Kirkpatrick (drums) and Aaron Guerra (guitar, vocals, bass). The band's 2003 release, Where Moth and Rust Destroy, features special guests Marty Friedman, formerly of Megadeth, and Bruce Franklin, of Trouble, both on lead guitar. Tourniquet's members spoke out against animal abuse, and appeared in publications such as The Vegetarian Times, United Animal Nations, and Animal Agenda.
The band is named for the tourniquet, "a surgical device for arresting hemorrhage by compression of a blood vessel." According to the band, a tourniquet is a metaphor for "a lifelong spiritual process by which a personal God, through the atoning blood, death, and resurrection of His only Son—Jesus Christ—can begin to stop the flow of going through life without knowing and serving our Creator. He is our Tourniquet."
History
Classic lineup (1990–1993)
Tourniquet formed in 1990 with drummer Ted Kirkpatrick, vocalist Guy Ritter, and guitarist/vocalist Gary Lenaire. Kirkpatrick previously played in the Chicago doom metal group Trouble on their Run to the Light tour. The group was one of many bands who were, at the time, affiliated with a church group called Sanctuary - the rock and roll refuge in Los Angeles.
Tourniquet released its first studio album, Stop the Bleeding, in 1990. It was produced by Bill Metoyer of Metal Blade Records and released by Intense Records. While it was mostly distributed to Christian bookstores, Stop the Bleeding gained some notoriety in the mainstream metal scene and is considered a notable thrash metal album. Tourniquet's style broke new ground and quickly gained them fans all over the world. Musically, the album showcased elements of 1980s speed metal with its Mercyful Fate/King Diamond influences, notably the falsetto vocals. In this lineup, Guy Ritter sang the melodic vocal parts while Gary Lenaire did the aggressive, thrash metal shouts. Session guitarist Mark Lewis played lead guitars on the album. The band was later rounded out with the addition of bassist Victor Macias and lead guitarist Erik Mendez. This version of the group is commonly known as the "classic" lineup of Tourniquet. The band, including Macias and Mendez, filmed a music video for the song "Ark of Suffering". The video had some limited airplay on MTV, but the network quickly pulled it due to violent content portraying animal abuse. Because of the song and its subsequent video, the band became known for its stance on animal rights.
In 1991, Tourniquet abandoned most of its 1980s metal influences and recorded a more modern-sounding album titled Psycho Surgery. On the song "Spineless", the band experimented with rap rock in the vein of Anthrax and Faith No More long before the style became popular in the late 1990s. Psycho Surgery showcased Kirkpatrick's classical music influences more prominently than Stop the Bleeding, and his background in the pharmaceutical industry became apparent with many of the song's lyrics utilizing medical terminology as metaphors for social/spiritual issues. Some critics described it as if "Slayer plays Beethoven in a slightly rewritten way". On Psycho Surgery Tourniquet continued to work with producer Bill Metoyer and signed a distribution agreement with Metal Blade Records. Metal Blade released Psycho Surgery to a wider general market audience than the band had been able to reach with Stop the Bleeding. Intense Records released Psycho Surgery to Christian retail. Tourniquet released a home video (VHS) titled Video Biopsy the following year.
