I’m sure that by 1990, Alarma Records had probably established a certain reputation for itself, thanks to releases by Daniel Amos, Swirling Eddies, and Altar Boys. Even so, I can only imagine the reaction that Scaterd Few’s debut album generated when it landed in Christian bookstores around the country.

There was, of course, the band’s fast and furious blend of punk, funk, thrash metal, and goth, which they mashed together with wild and sloppy abandon. And there were the lyrics, which bluntly addressed weighty topics like inner-city violence, drug addiction, and religious hypocrisy. Finally, there was Allan Aguirre’s (aka, Rämald Domkus) voice, which sounded like Peter Murphy crossed with a banshee.

Not surprisingly, Zondervan — one of the nation’s largest Christian retailers — pulled the album. After all, nothing like Sin Disease had ever landed in the Christian market, before or since. Even now, more than 30 years later, it remains a wild and invigorating listen filled with enough passion and conviction for a dozen albums. To this day, an electric charge still shoots through my body whenever I hear Aguirre plead with the listener to “kill the sarx,” cries out “Please stop William/The wrong assassination” (“Lights Out”), or proudly states that he’d “rather die than blame it on my God” (“Scapegoat”).