Eldritch Rite began in January of 1985, the founding members being Steve Murphy (guitar) and Ronny Harris (drums). In the summer of 1985, David left Ritual to join the group as a guitarist. At this time, Craig Stricker discontinued practices with the band. After many months of auditioning bass players, Steve gave-up guitar for bass. Shortly afterwards in February of '86, singer, Chris Orloski became a member (vocals). On June 11, 1986, Eldritch Rite recorded their debut demo at PantegoSound Studios in Pantego, Texas (Pantera recorded their first albums here). It featured five songs: (Empyrean Vision, Anathema, Rampant Corpse, Peter the Hermit, and Task Force.) The response has been very positive with airplay in France, Brazil, Hawaii, and Dallas.
Chris left the band in the fall of '86 to go to school in Austin, Texas. His leaving was a definite disappointment to the band, yet this setback was quickly dissolved when Don "Buddy" Forsythe took over the vocal duties. His previous credits included being with Sentinel and Scythian Oath.
Recently, the decision was made to add a second guitarist. The band decided on Rick MacConnell who had recently moved to Texas from Atlanta, Georgia where his band M.D.T. played several shows with Hallow's Eve. Unlike many other metal band who employ second guitarists to simply add to the confusion, David and Rick work together to create a combination of technicality, speed, and aggressiveness which they simply term progressive power metal.
Eldritch Rite is not death metal. They do, however, display power, speed, variation, and complexity - a combination necessary to provide music of greater interest and diversity. Also lyrically speaking, Eldritch Rite tries not to focus on just one subject.
After playing shows with bands such as Watchtower, Rigor Mortis, Talon, and PowerLord, Eldritch Rite has been getting very good response. Their future in the Texas metal scene looks very promising, so watch for them on the local front and beyond.
ER's main concern at this point in time is to distribute the demo and continue to forge their name in the expanding metal underground. If there are any questions or wishes for correspondence, just call or write. Eldritch Rite are always happy to hear from the most important people to them- the fans!
The above section was taken from 2nd to last bio we did, late in '86. Buddy sang with us for a few shows then he went back to Austin and Chris Orloski came back and did the last few shows with us. At the very end we had Bart lined up as our next singer but we broke up before playing any shows. I think Ronny quit to move to Lubbock and I moved on to Rotting Corpse. David and Bart formed The Answer which did several Eldritch songs including Empyrean Vision. They did a demo. Rick moved back to Georgia and started a band called Kinetic Dissent which put a few albums one of the indie labels. (steve)
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