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Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles

XI is the eleventh studio album by American heavy metal band Metal Church. It was released on March 25, 2016, and is the band's first album in 23 years (since Hanging in the Balance) to feature vocalist Mike Howe. XI was considered a comeback for both Metal Church and Howe since the latter's retirement from the music industry after the band's first breakup in 1995; the album received generally positive reviews, and was their first studio album since 1989's Blessing in Disguise to enter the Billboard 200 chart, where it peaked at number 57, the band's highest chart position in their career. This is also Metal Church's final album with drummer Jeff Plate, who left the band almost exactly a year after its release.

In 2014, a year after the release of the band's tenth album, Generation Nothing, longtime vocalist Ronny Munroe announced he was quitting the band. In April of the next year, it was announced that former vocalist Mike Howe had rejoined the band. This lineup subsequently recorded and released a new version of the song "Badlands" (from the band's 1989 debut album with Howe, Blessing in Disguise).

Mike Howe spoke about his absence from the music scene for two decades before his return to the band in 2015. He said: "I dropped off the radar because the record business really disappointed me. Things were changing, grunge was coming up and we were getting ignored. We were not businessmen, we were musicians, and like a lot of [other] bands, we just wanted to write songs and play metal."

Over the course of 2015, the band announced its intention of releasing another album featuring Howe. He added - "the biggest thing for us was being able to write, record and present an album of material that represented us and who we are today from beginning to end without any external pressures, timelines or anything like that, and that's exactly what we did. We are very happy about this and it's allowed us to relax, be big kids again and enjoy the process".

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