When I was in high school, I found myself in a pickle. I was discovering all of these awesome, life-changing bands like The Cure, Depeche Mode, and Nine Inch Nails, but they were decidedly secular. As a good Christian kid, though, I lamented that I couldn’t find any similar music made by my brothers and sisters in Christ. That is, until my friend Daniel introduced me to Mortal.

Put simply, the band’s Lusis and Fathom albums blew me away with their blend of metal, industrial, techno, and hip-hop, as well as frontman Jyro’s impassioned vocals and thoughtful, poetic lyrics. “Mytho-X” was the band’s first big hit single, a brooding techno number about maintaining one’s faith in the midst of a broken and troubled world.

I’d never heard lyrics like “When I see the dying children/Fighting desperately to breathe/Then words cut to the heart/Asking ‘What do you believe?’” from a Christian artist before, and it was pretty bracing for my youth group faith. And it still is, truth be told, more than 30 years after the fact.