The vision began with four young men from Guelph, Ontario: Dave Carlo on guitar; Stace 《Sheepdog》McLaren on vocals; Mike Campagnolo on bass; and Mike 《M-Bro》Embro on drums. All of them fans of the then-new resurgence of heavy metal, they became hungry to inject the genre with a bleaker view of the world and its inhabitants: in essence, a cold, calculated assault in both melody and lyrical imagery.