Founded by guitarist Kurt Vanderhoof in the early eighties, Metal Church's underground popularity rose quickly, and their debut self-titled album was everything fans could have hoped for, a landmark cutting-edge crushing metal album featuring "Metal Church" and "Beyond The Black", still a BNR favorite. After the capable second release The Dark, vocalist David Wayne left, replaced by Mike Howe, formerly of Heretic (ironically, Wayne recruited two other Heretic members for his new band, Reverend). By the time of Hanging In The Balance (featuring that awful album cover) the band's popularity had waned somewhat, despite the fact that the three albums after The Dark were every bit as good as the those first two. Nonetheless, the band drifted apart and eventually broke up, until reforming with Wayne in 1999 and releasing Masterpeace, a capable reunion album. After another long period of inactivity (during which time both Vanderhoof and Wayne worked on solo projects), a largely new lineup got together and recorded 2003's The Weight Of The World, and since then recorded two more albums. After a lengthy run, they finally decided to break up in June 2009.