Photo via Summerfest
Stryper
If this band’s name still conjures images of long-haired pretty boys dressed in yellow-and-black spandex flinging Bibles into the crowd, think again.
Since its heyday, when 1986’s To Hell with the Devil and 1988’s In God We Trust landed Stryper in consistent MTV rotation, the band has gradually changed its appearance. But after joining many of their hair-metal brethren who laid low during the ‘90s and early 2000s, Stryper released the aptly titled Reborn in 2005 and introduced a heavier, more aggressive sound.
Seven more albums followed, culminating in 2020’s Even the Devil Believes, which topped Billboard’s Christian Albums chart—a Stryper first. What’s more, a 2021 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the creation of a Stryper documentary tentatively titled The Story, the Music, the Faith & the Fans more than doubled its original goal of $100,000 in about three weeks.
Then, in March 2021, lead singer, guitarist and chief songwriter Michael Sweet told BraveWords.com that he was recording lead vocals for a new Stryper album, which would be the band’s fourteenth.
Despite the band’s legacy as a Christian hair band in the era of Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and Poison, Sweet earlier this year told the podcast “Talk Is Jericho” that “we’re really not a Christian band, but if people wanna call us a Christian band, that’s okay. I view us as just a rock band that decided to take a different path.”
Three of the band’s original members are still on that path: Sweet, his brother Robert Sweet on drums and Oz Fox on guitars, plus former Firehouse bassist Perry Richardson. And through it all, Stryper still sounds vital today—playing old hits with a passion and new material with a vengeance.
