The Strangest Christian Industrial Album From the ’90s Is Getting Reissued

The ’90s were a heyday for Christian industrial music, with labels like Intense Records, R.E.X. Records, and Wonderland releasing a non-stop blitz of albums from bands like Mortal, globalWAVEsystem, X-Propagation, Circle of Dust, Under Midnight, and Generation. Most of those albums fell squarely within the spectrum defined by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Skinny Puppy, but one Christian industrial release carved out its own singular niche.

Following the dissolution of Chagall Guevara, guitarists Dave Perkins and Lynn Nichols teamed up with Dessau’s John Elliott and Afrikan Dreamland’s Michael Saleem and Mustafa Abdul-Aleem to create Passafist. Their self-titled (and only) album, released in 1994 by R.E.X. Records, took the typical industrial elements (e.g., distorted guitars and vocals, samples), mixed in some jazz, funk, and psychedelia, and employed a razor-sharp sense of humor to skewer topics like gun violence, modern views of sex, and Cold War-era paranoia.

Passafist sounded unlike anything else in the Christian market at the time and not surprisingly, it was widely dismissed. To this day, however, it remains a truly unique release from one of Christian music’s most interesting eras. And thanks to Retroactive Records, it’s finally getting its due, courtesy of a limited edition vinyl reissue that features a remastered recording, new artwork, and extensive liner notes by Perkins that delve into the album’s origins and production.

The remastered Passafist will also be released on CD, and both vinyl and CD editions will be released in January 2027.