Here with the title track of their 1984 debut album, March of the Saint, is Los Angeles’s Armored Saint. Check out the video here below of the band performing the song live on Headbangers Ball.

Some of you may recognize the singer John Bush, who would later go on to replace Joey Belladonna in Anthrax for most of the 1990s. Armored Saint broke up during this time, but in 1999, Belladonna would return to Anthrax and Bush and the rest of Armored Saint reunited. Both bands remain active to this day.

This Massive Metal Monday is dedicated to original Armored Saint guitarist Dave Prichard, who succumbed to Leukemia in 1990 at the age of 26.

When I was growing up in rural Indiana in the early ’80s, there was very limited access to heavy music. These were the days before MTV blew up with the whole hair metal, Headbangers Ball phenomenon. But on Sunday nights, there was a two-hour radio show that came from WOXY, the radio station of Miami University of Ohio, just across the state line in Oxford, Ohio. It was called Massive Metal for the Masses and I would wait all week for it to air. It was through this show that I was introduced to bands like Venom, Bathory, WASP, Michael Schenker Group, Slayer, and countless others. This Monday weekly column is my tip of the hat to that show. I call it Massive Metal Monday. Every week, I will pay tribute to defining moments by the artists that laid the groundwork for heavy metal to become the worldwide cultural bond for all of us metalheads.

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