Feature: Mortification in Montana: A Road Trip Back in Time

By Seth Metoyer, Heaven’s Metal Magazine

It was one of those scorching Montana summers where the pavement warps in the heat and the wind offers no relief, just a blast of oven-baked air. Sorry to lead anyone on, but Mortification didn’t play live in Montana, at least not in 1991. If they had, you’d better believe I would’ve been front and center in the pit, probably catching an elbow or two. I was 17, sitting with my brother in the backseat of my mom’s gray Honda. But this wasn’t just any road trip. We were on our way from Great Falls to Billings to meet Pastor Bob Beeman, the legendary long-haired shepherd of Christian metal, and Jim Laverde, bassist for Barren Cross. Thank the Lord for A/C in the car.

By then, Pastor Bob and I had already been writing letters back and forth for two years. It all started when I was 15, after seeing his messages in cassette tapes from bands like Vengeance, Deliverance, and Tourniquet. I sent Bob a handwritten letter via good old-fashioned snail mail, and he actually wrote back! For a kid with Christian metal posters plastered across his walls, this was mind-blowing. Not only that, Bob was from Montana, just like me. What were the odds?

As the years passed, he sent me his teaching tapes, and eventually, we got word that he and Jim would be in Montana. They even left a message on our home answering machine, the kind that used actual cassette tapes. If you know, you know. That was all the excuse we needed to hop in the car and make the three-and-a-half-hour trek to Billings.

My mom, a connoisseur of fine Christian metal herself, especially Bloodgood and Sacred Warrior’s Master’s Command, was behind the wheel. At some point along the way, we picked up a disposable camera (a plastic relic from the pre-smartphone age). Little did we know, this particular camera was missing something crucial: film. But we wouldn’t realize that until later.

When we finally arrived, we found Bob full of his usual energy and passion, while Jim Laverde… well, he was sprawled out on a couch, looking tired and maybe a little bored. Rock stars, right? Uninterested, hungry, probably wondering when he could grab a burger. He gave off the exact ‘too cool to care’ rock-star vibe you’d expect, either that or he just needed a nap. Looking back, that was probably the most rock-star thing he could have done.

Bob had something special to show us, a brand-new CD produced by Roger Martinez of Vengeance, one of my all-time favorite bands. The cover alone was enough to tell me I was going to love it. The Mortification album artwork was a brutal, apocalyptic vision: grotesque, melting faces emerging from a river of fire, clawing their way through a green inferno of suffering, their distorted faces twisted in agony as they melted into the fiery abyss. The band’s jagged logo loomed over the dark sky, a fitting visual for the raw, unrelenting death metal sound contained within.

Bob also hooked us up with several copies of Heaven’s Metal Magazine featuring Believer on the cover to take home and share with our youth group. He even gave us a VHS of Hot Metal 4 from Intense Records, a collection of music videos from bands like Ken Tamplin, Deliverance, Tourniquet, Angelica, Ransom, and Vengeance Rising. Decades later, you can still find the video floating around online, though usually in a grainy, well-worn transfer on YouTube. Even so, it’s a fun trip back in time, a glimpse into an era when Christian metal was carving its own path, one headbanging anthem at a time. I’ve embedded the video below if you’re interested in checking it out.

At some point, we got the brilliant idea to capture this monumental moment with a group photo—me, my brother, Pastor Bob, and the ever-relaxed Jim Laverde. That’s when we discovered our camera’s tragic flaw: no film. No film! A once-in-a-lifetime moment lost to the void. It was like finding a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory, only to be turned away at the door.

Before we left, we chatted with Pastor Bob about the possibility of attending Sanctuary Church after high school, something that had been on my mind for a while. The idea of being part of a community that embraced both faith and heavy metal was exciting, and the conversation stuck with me. The following year, in 1992, I ended up making that move, but that’s a story for another day. With that and Mortification’s self-titled album in hand, we hit the road. On the way home, we stopped by a Christian bookstore to grab a copy of Sanctuary Praise on cassette, Bob didn’t have any extras.

And that’s how I found myself, cruising back through Montana’s vast, open plains, stereo blasting, head filled with thoughts of Sanctuary Church. That moment, that drive, the music, it was all part of something bigger. A bridge between where I was and where I was going.

It’s funny how music has that power. Just a glance at an album cover or the first few notes of a song, and suddenly, you’re 17 again, sitting in a gray Honda, heading down a long road toward something unforgettable.

That photo may be lost forever, but the memory? That’s burned into my mind like the opening riff of ‘Brutal Warfare.’

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