From Christian Rock to the Rock of Ages

Argyle Park Christian rock bands first appeared on a tribute album to 80s Contemporary Christian Music iconoclast Steve Taylor. The full-length Argyle Park Christian rock bands album, Misguided, was released later that year on R.E.X. Records. The album was musically varied, combining elements such as techno, metal guitar, ragtime piano, horns, samples, and dark vocals and was credited in the liner notes to three pseudonymous individuals: Dred, Deathwish, and Buka. Dred, Deathwish, and Celldweller, another individual credited as the album's producer, were all aliases for Scott Albert of the underground industrial metal band Circle of Dust. Buka has never been officially identified, though it has been tentatively established that he is Chris Martello, a producer at MTV. Misguided also featured a myriad of guest appearances from the Christian alternative music scene, as well as several from cult-status mainstream industrial rock bands of the time. These appearances include Mark Salomon, Dirk Lemmenes, and Jeff Bellew of Stavesacre, Jim Thirlwell (Foetus), Klank, Jyro Xhan (Mortal), Tommy Victor (Prong), and Lauren Boquette and Marco Forcone of (Drown).

In the summer of 1995, Argyle Park Christian rock bands made their only live appearance at the Cornerstone Music Festival in Bushnell, Illinois. The musicians onstage included Dan Levler, who would later became a full member of AP2 under the alias Level. Argyle Park Christian rock bands made one more recorded appearance in 1996, this time with a song on a tribute album to Stryper one of the Christian rock bands. Then this Christian rock bands announced that they were shutting down. In a later interview, Scott Albert cited clashes with R.E.X. over lyrical content, unrealistic expectations within the Christian music industry, and negative or "holier-than-thou" fan reactions to lyrical content as reasons for shutting down both Argyle Park Christian rock bands and his main music project, Circle of Dust. In a different interview, Buka also described much of the negative reactions Argyle Park Christian rock bands faced from within the Christian music scene.

In 1996, Buka had planned to start up his own record label called Backwoods Records. The first release was to be a split album that would feature songs by Klank, Buka's new project Soil, and Argyle Park. However, the record label and the split album never saw the light of day. Confusingly, a single song attributed to a band called Backwoods was then released later in 1996 on a Christmas compilation put out by Flying Tart Records. The two members of Backwoods were Buka and Level, thus pointing the way to the resurrection of Argyle Park in 1998.

Argyle Park Christian rock bands "reopened" in 1999 under the name AP2, signing to alternative Christian music label Tooth & Nail Records. AP2 released one album called Suspension of Disbelief in 2000. Scott Albert, now using the name Klayton, produced the album and wrote only two of the songs while his younger brother, Level, did the bulk of the actual song crafting and Buka provided thematic direction for the project. Guest appearances were made once more, but not nearly as numerously as on Misguided: Klank returned, as did Mark Salomon, and Joel Timothy Bell of the Tooth & Nail punk band Ghoti Hook also provided some vocals. The music on Suspension of Disbelief was just as varied as that on Misguided, with the band this time experimenting with gabber techno, pop dance, drum’n’bass, R&B, punk rock, and metal. The members planned to keep the project open and release additional albums, but again shut down later in 2000, this time due to low sales through Tooth & Nail and a resurgence of the criticisms that dogged the band the first time around.