Paradox formed in 1986 in San Antonio, where they were active through the end of that decade. They were one of the most influential unsigned Christian metal bands at the time, along with Apostle, Soldier, and a handful of others. The band played a killer version of traditional heavy metal complete with dark, heavy riffs, and pristine vocals with the occasional high-pitched wail.
My first exposure to the band was actually this track, which was featured on the Underground Metal compilation on Regency Records. If you were into Christian metal in the 1980s, these compilations were a huge lifeline for discovering new bands. California Metal, California Metal II, East Coast Metal, Underground Metal, Underground Metal 2, Heavy Righteous Metal, and tons of others were hugely influential on me as a young teenager zealous for the Lord but wanting to rock out, haha!
Paradox released an 8-song cassette demo in 1987, called Ruler, and then a 10-song cassette demo the following year called Power & Glory. Funny sidenote: I traveled to San Antonio for a church youth conference that year, and our group happened to stop at the mall for lunch (food court = lots of options for a youth group). While there, I popped into a record store and to my surprise they had Paradox shirts in the store! Being a local band, they had reached out to the store to get their products in there. The people behind the counter were just as surprised at me buying their shirt as I was in finding one there!
The band started work on a third release in 1989, but never finished it before breaking up. Fortunately, our friends at Retroactive Records have issued all of the band’s available material (including the third release) on CD and LP.
For some reason I got “Meet the King” stuck in my head recently, having come up from within the deep recesses of my brain. So I did what all good metalheads do, and looked up the song on YouTube to listen again. Man, this song is such an earworm. Even if you don’t normally like 80s metal, give this one a listen. If you can get past the high-pitched wailing in the first few seconds, and keep listening, this is a real gem of a song with a gnarly heavy metal riff underneath it all.
