Armored Saint did think about finding another singer when John Bush left for Anthrax in 1992. The thought lasted about as long as it took to say it out loud.
Phil Sandoval put it to Eamon O'Neill of Eonmusic this way. "Yeah, I think there was thought of that, but ultimately it was like a thought, and then it just left, because John just is such an integral part of our team," the guitarist said. "We love Johnny. We all love each other, and it's a cool thing. Armored Saint is like a brotherhood, a family."
The timing was the cruel part. Symbol Of Salvation had come out in 1991 and was the record that finally said what the band were, made after guitarist Dave Prichard died of leukemia in 1990. Sandoval remembers thinking things were about to go well. Then Bush took the Anthrax job, which he calls the big atom bomb.
What followed was a band that stopped rather than continued. The Symbol Of Salvation line up came back together for Revelation in 2000, La Raza in 2010 began the slow part of the repair, and Bush has been at the microphone throughout the stretch that produced Emotion Factory Reset this year. Sandoval's point is not that the band survived. It is that a brotherhood was the reason there was nothing to survive with a different voice in front of it.