Red Skies

While not the definitive Metal Church demo, it is still just about the most historically important... the fact is, for 1981, you will not hear anything much heavier than this. This is pretty much thrash metal, and has more balls than that band down the street formed by that reject Lar$ie (who auditioned for Metal Church and was told where to stick it!). It's definitely as thrash, if not more so, than $ucktallica's pre-Kill 'em All demo releases. It's kinda hard to tell, given the horrible recording quality and the fact that I have 8th-generation bootleg copies. But still, this is the logical continuation of Tyrant and Saints in Hell and friends.

We have three songs here - including the setlist staple Merciless Onslaught, in an instrumental form (yes, there was a with-vocals version a year earlier!) and also a rather blazing song called Red Skies, which Iron Maiden would've initially accepted as being a nice quality bastard son, and then violently reject because it was too heavy for them. Maybe a band like Savage would've had some fun with it. The third song is the little-known "And Heads Will Roll", also known as "Put the Chains On", from the earlier rehearsal sessions.

The only real drawback with this demo is that it's an instrumental, but you can tell that the songs were written to have vocals - especially And Heads Will Roll. Still, an indispensable pickup. For 1981, this has balls the size of nuclear powerplants.