By Scott McLennan

To this day, attend any metal or heavy-music show in the Northeast and you are bound to see someone sporting a T-shirt or hoodie emblazoned with the iconic Sam Black Church cross-on-triangle logo.

When Sam Black Church came together in 1988, the idea was to be not only heavy metal, but also different.

Drummer J.R. Roach explained that brothers Ben and Jesse “Jet” Crandall had a blueprint.

“Ben wanted to forge an aggressive guitar sound, but one that was his own. Jet just wanted to be dynamic. This was the era when heavy bands were all doing that Cookie Monster singing. But Jet is really musical. You can put any instrument in his hand, and he can play it. So, he also was looking for something original to do as a singer,” Roach said.

The resulting maelstrom, they thought, was a fresh spin on classic thrash metal — picking up on cues from older beloved acts such as Motorhead.

But, while the Crandalls, Roach, and bass player Richard Lewis considered Sam Black Church to be a metal band, the group was first embraced by New England’s growing underground scene for hardcore punk.

“Three of us were country boys from West Virginia. We had no idea about the scene around all-ages shows. But we slowly built a following,” Roach said.

And that following stayed loyal.

To this day, attend any metal or heavy-music show in the Northeast and you are bound to see someone sporting a T-shirt or hoodie emblazoned with the iconic Sam Black Church cross-on-triangle logo inspired by the West Virginia place of worship whose badass name was adopted by this band.

The congregation is being summoned for a rare SBC concert set for October 28 at The Palladium in Worcester. Dubbed Re-Alive 35, this anniversary-acknowledging gig also features other heavy crossover pioneers, Killing Time, Leeway, and Scissorfight

SBC ended its days of active touring in 2000 shortly after the collapse of a pending deal with Geffen Records, though the band has returned for occasional one-offs like the one scheduled for this weekend, which will also bring in guitarist Zack Adrien, who joined SBC in 1998 when Ben Crandall left the band.

The band last played a pair of benefit shows in 2021. Prior to that, SBC played three shows in 2016 to celebrate the release of the documentary Leave Behind a Groove in the Earth: The Sam Black Church Story made by Boston filmmaker and musician Duncan Wilder Johnson. Featuring interviews with Clutch singer Neil Fallon, Helmet leader Page Hamilton, and Lamb of God frontman D. Randall Blythe, Johnson’s documentary captures the impact that SBC had on an evolving heavy-music scene.

Roach said that, at the time, the band was just hungry enough to seize opportunities and take risky chances. Before anyone beyond the underground audience for heavy music had heard about the band, Sam Black Church booked an all-ages Sunday show at the Paradise, still one of Boston’s premier rock clubs.

“At the time, the Paradise held 650 and we brought in 450 kids. They said come back any time,” Roach said.

SBC’s popularity lifted it out of Boston and onto tours with Clutch, Helmet, Stuck Mojo, and others.

The Palladium in Worcester has also played a central role in Sam Black Church’s rise as the band cemented its legacy.

Roach recalls a concert in the early ’90s when Sam Back Church was placed on a bill with Slapshot and Murphy’s Law, two stalwarts of the hardcore scene.

“It was billed as the Crucial Barbecue, and people still talk about that show,” Roach said. “We were still up-and-comers, but neither Slapshot nor Murphy’s Law wanted to go on last, so we ended up ‘headlining.’ Those guys have no idea how much juice they handed us that night.”

A few years later, Sam Black Church was tapped to share the stage with heroes Motorhead, opening the Palladium stop of a package show that also included Dio. SBC also returned to The Palladium for a memorable 2014 performance at the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival.

Once SBC had its “voice,” so to speak, by the early ’90s, it really didn’t matter who the band was teamed with — be it punk heroes Fugazi, death metal band Nile, or ska-punk homeboys the Mighty Mighty Bosstones — it proved to be an unstoppable, galvanizing force on stage.

Records, however, became the band’s stumbling point.

SBC released two EPs and a full-length record on the independent Taang! label, which started in Boston and eventually migrated to San Diego. Around 1996, industry powerhouse Geffen Records took an interest in Sam Black Church. People at Geffen saw the potential in metal-hardcore mashups such as “Re-Alive,” “New God Science,” and “We Got the Youth.”

But during the time it took to untangle its business affairs from Taang!, the people supporting SBC at Geffen left in the midst of a company shake-up. The band lost its major record label deal.

SBC retreated to a different local independent record label, Wonderdrug, and released the excellent The Dark Comedy in 1998.

But Roach said the band felt as if it had lost its momentum. Ben Crandall left and by 2000, Sam Black Church seemed like a band no more.

Roach said he prefers to look at the early-aughts as a period of “extended hiatus.” “We never did a ‘last show’ or closed the door on anything,” he recalls, noting that everyone in the group has moved on in different areas of “real life”: families, careers, etc.

Roach is still active in the Boston music scene, playing drums with Blood Lightning, which just released its debut album. And he is friendly with members of the metalcore bands that hit it big after Sam Black Church’s near-miss with Geffen.

“We had a lot of good luck and some bad luck,” Roach said. “We feel fortunate that people still care about this music.”

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Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to the Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to the Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.