The All Saved Freak Band

Resurrection Band, also known as Rez Band or REZ, is one of the most well-known and respected Christian rock bands in the history of CCM. Based out of the Jesus People USA Christian community in Chicago, Illinois, and led by the husband and wife team of Glenn and Wendi Kaiser, the band has been the preeminent example of how to evangelize using Christian rock.

The band originally played together under the name "Charity" in 1972 with Jesus People Milwaukee, based out of Milwaukee. When the community split into four groups, and one became the "Jesus People USA Traveling Team" before their relocation to Chicago the name "Resurrection Band" was chosen and the band became a primary focus of the community's ministry. After arriving in Chicago, the band recorded two independent cassettes that were given away after their concerts, which were performed anywhere Resurrection Band was allowed to play, from schools to prisons to street corners. The first cassette, Music to Raise the Dead, featured hard rock, while All Your Life comprised only their acoustic numbers, which was a reflection of the folk-oriented sets they would play at more conservative venues such as nursing homes and churches, the latter of which were deeply skeptical of Christian rock, especially the borderline heavy metal that Resurrection Band specialized in.

Glenn Kaiser

Photo from: Flickr Photos

REZ was intensely interested in using its music to speak plainly to non-Christians about the reality of God and to Christians about their responsibility to the disenfranchised and hurting in the world around them. To that end, REZ returned to the studio in 1988, and the result was Silence Screams, a hybrid of blues, hard rock and heavy metal that served as a musical blueprint for all of the band's successive releases. Sporting unsettling cover art, Silence Screams deals forcefully with social concerns such as abortion, greed, racial profiling and even terrorism, proving that--as they did with confronting apartheid in 1979--the band was once again ahead of the curve. The album is also unique in that it is the first to have been released on the band's own record label, Grrr Records, a wordplay on Myrrh Records, the most successful Contemporary Christian record label at that time.

In July 2000, Resurrection Band brought almost 30 years of music and ministry to a close with a farewell performance, leaving behind them a transformed Contemporary Christian music industry, and a platform upon which future Christian musicians could build. [ from the Wikipedia posting for the Resurrection Band ]