In the early 1980s an idea was formed by a couple of brothers in Southern California to create a band like none before them. Drawing musical inspiration from artists like Van Halen, this new band would rock – but they would do it with a little help from the good Lord above.
What started as Roxx Regime eventually became Stryper – the classic lineup featured brothers Michael (guitar, lead vocals) and Robert (drums), guitarist Oz Fox, and bassist Tim Gaines. The band would go on to find gold and platinum success with the albums Soldiers Under Command, To Hell With The Devil (featuring the hit single “Honestly”), and In God We Trust.
Stryper has sold over 10 million recordings worldwide and released 13 studio albums, including 2013’s return-to-form No More Hell To Pay, 2015’s Fallen, 2018’s God Damn Evil and 2020’s Even The Devil Believes. With a string of music videos in their visual arsenal, the band – now featuring Perry Richardson on bass – is reaching millions through clips like “Sorry,” “The Valley,” and “Do Unto Others.”
Rock Confidential sat down with frontman Michael Sweet for an in-depth conversation about the history of Stryper and to touch on each of the band’s studio albums. This is the most comprehensive conversation we have ever had with Sweet.
What impacted Stryper more early on – the struggle of being a new band or the excitement of taking on the world?
I’ll be honest. I don’t think we really thought much about it. We just followed our hearts and our dreams. We never talked about what bothered us or what our fears were. I think we do that more now – trying to figure out how to survive and continue on as a band in this crazy world we live in. Music was our driving force. Obviously our faith. We combined the two and just ran with it. There was no looking back. It was such a blur at that point and time. Everything was moving so fast we didn’t have time to think about it.
We were having the time of our lives playing music at such a young age and following our dreams. Now that I’m looking back on it, which is something I do often, I was just in the moment and in awe with a huge smile on my face. I didn’t think about how young we were back then or signing a recording contract at 20 years old. I didn’t think about that stuff then, but when I look back on it in hindsight I think, ‘Wow, that’s incredible.’ Stryper worked so hard for years prior to that. I started doing demos when I was 13, 14 years old. We starting packaging those demos into vinyl and cassettes when I was 15 and 16. By the time I was 20 it felt like a lifetime of trying to break into the business. It didn’t feel like an overnight success at all because it wasn’t.
Working so hard for years really taught me a lot about my work ethic now. I work even harder than I did back then. As a teenager I didn’t have time to work a regular job because I went to school and I was playing music on the weekends. I would get a job loading catering trucks. I would get up at three in the morning and start loading them at 4AM. I would load them until 6AM, come home and take a shower and then I’d go to school. The pay was really good. Then I would come home and rehearse and play and then do it all over again. I would only do that for a month or two, just long enough to make enough money to buy my gear or pay for a demo and then I would quit the job. And a few months later, whenever I needed to raise some money for something else, I’d go get another job. Rob did the same thing. Oz did the same thing. We all worked hard. I did that multiple times to get where I needed to be. That’s just always been my work ethic. Don’t let one minute pass you by. Don’t waste the moment. Once we started playing clubs and we had investors, we were able to focus 100% on the music.
Was there one key event that inspired the visual and musical direction of the band?
Everybody’s got a different take on that. If you talk to me you’re gonna get one thing. You talk to Rob you’re gonna get another. And that’s OK. Everyone remembers the past differently. I see our inspiration coming back then from not only God and seeing friends give their lives to God and seeing the change in their lives – that really affected our lyrics and our message. Musically speaking it was just growing up in a musical family and being around music our whole lives. We didn’t have a choice. I was born into a world of music and my parents going out and playing clubs and performing and writing songs. That’s the world I grew up in and that’s what I wanted. I was inspired by my parents. Robert was always more of the visionary guy. He was always in awe of bands that had more of a visual concept. I’ll never forget seeing KISS with Robert and seeing his face. He was in awe of the show and the production. I was always more of a musical guy. That was the great combination between Robert and myself. He was the one painting his drum kit in the far left corner of the garage and I was the one in the other corner of the garage writing songs. We could have been a band that just dressed in black like a lot of other bands. Who knows? Maybe we could have been more popular. Maybe we wouldn’t have. My point is, the visual side of Stryper is just as important as the musical side of Stryper. It just works. A lot of people remember us because of the yellow and black and the stripes. I always hoped they would remember us for the songs. That means more to me.
Tell me more about Stryper as an acronym.
We used to be called Roxx Regime and that was always a difficult name to pronounce and for people to remember. Every time someone asked the name of the band and I told them, the response was always the same. Excuse me? Roxx what? It was never understood perfectly right out of the box. I always had a problem with the name because of that. Once we signed on with Enigma, they didn’t really care for the name either. That’s what prompted us to come up with a new name. Once we came up with Stryper, we thought it would be really cool to turn that into an acronym and find a scripture that goes alongside that. It would always be a part of the logo, Isaiah 53:5. We came up with Salvation Through Redemption Yielding Peace, Encouragement and Righteousness. I think Robert started working on that and it might have got tweaked a little bit along the way. It’s such an important thing. When you break it down, the name and acronym and scripture really describes in-depth the meaning and purpose of the band. All the stripes take on meaning and have significance.
I’ve always felt Soldiers Under Command is the definitive classic Stryper record.
Soldiers Under Command is a much more important record, by far, than even To Hell With The Devil or In God We Trust. Those albums are good. To Hell With The Devil is our most popular, highest-selling and award-winning album to date. And rightfully so. It was all about timing and I get it. Everything aligned perfectly. Soldiers Under Command is the album that really set the bar for the band. It proclaimed very boldly who we were and solidified us in the metal, hard rock, guitar world. There was a rawness and a passion to it that I don’t think any of our classic albums have. It was at a different level than all the others. To Hell With The Devil was less raw, more polished. It was more refined and more produced. In God We Trust was much more polished. We came back a little more to the raw vibe and sound with Against The Law. No album did that in a better way than Soldiers Under Command. There’s many reasons for that. We knew the songs. We were playing them out for over a year live, so when we went into the studio we had everything worked out. Every note, every phase, almost every lyric. We were able to go in and record the album very quickly without questioning anything. It just felt right. With that comes a certain level of confidence. You can hear that in those songs. You can also hear the fun. We were having a really great time. We were young, grinning ear to ear, and enjoying every moment in a big studio. We did that in about two weeks. It was very fast paced. Robert tracked all the drums in a day and a night. There’s something to be said for that. My favorite classic Stryper album by far is Soldiers Under Command.
Were you under any outside pressures to move away from the lyrical content as you were writing To Hell With The Devil?
We never thought about moving away at all. We were the opposite. We wanted to go in that direction even more boldly and more strongly. We did want to change things up a bit on that album. I wanted to create an album that was a little bigger and fatter and tighter. With Soldiers Under Command we did not record to a click track. On To Hell With The Devil we did. We did that to tighten things up and lock in a little bit more. I can hear us speed up in sections on Soldiers. That’s part of its charm. But To Hell With The Devil was more in the pocket. We also started multi-tracking a lot more. We did four takes of the rhythm guitars playing the same thing and it was just this big, huge wall of guitars. In terms of rhythm guitar, that’s the ultimate guitar sound for Stryper.
In God We Trust features money on the album artwork and ironically introduced the era of bigger budgets for you guys.
Definitely. Not just for us, but for every band. Those were the times we lived in and that’s how it was back then. As the 80s progressed and as rock and metal music progressed and filled the charts, the albums got bigger. The tours got bigger. The hair got bigger. The clothes got more outlandish. You could see that in every single band that was on the scene at that time. Stryper, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Poison. We all started spending more money and the videos got more expensive. The albums were the same. On Soldiers Under Command, I want to say we spent something in the area of $40-50,000. For To Hell With The Devil it was more in the $200,000 range. For In God We Trust it was more in the $600,000+ range. We were spending more and making more to make a bigger and better machine.
How did the band handle success?
There were challenges, definitely. I think we handled it fairly well but some people didn’t handle it so well. We didn’t start shooting up heroin or overdosing or people finding us almost dead on the bathroom floor of a hotel. Thank God we didn’t get to that point, but we certainly could have. You will get caught up in that lifestyle if you allow it to consume you. Stryper did, to a degree. We started drinking again during the late 80s and early 90s. We had a rule where we didn’t bring alcohol into the rehearsals or while we were making albums and then we started doing that during the Against The Law album. During rehearsals one guy would bring in a six-pack and during the album one guy would bring in some wine and beer. We’d sit there and drink while we were recording. We went down the path that was destructive, but thank God not as much so as some of the other bands around us and some of the things we witnessed from our peers.
Did writing the material on Against The Law feel forced? I know you’re not a big fan of that era of the band.
It definitely didn’t feel forced. I remember getting hung up on a few songs. “Lady” was one of them. I wanted to write a really cool ballad and was experimenting writing a few things here and there. Nothing was feeling right and finally I wrote “Lady” and everybody really liked it. We felt like it was perfect. It was important to make sure it fit the album and that was a different album. The song “Invitation Only,” which we pulled off the shelf and recorded for Even The Devil Believes, was part of Against The Law. It just never got finished. There was definitely more hang-ups back then, musically speaking. Getting caught up and hung up on songs and figuring out how to finish them – that was never a problem on any of the other albums. That has not been a problem in the last 15 years. Why did I feel that with Against The Law? I don’t know. Probably because of the fact that it really wasn’t a Stryper album. It’s a great album and people like it. It feels good. It sounds good. It’s produced well. There’s some really good songs on it but it’s really not Stryper. When I say things like that people really get upset. When you compare it to Soldiers and To Hell With The Devil, even some of the newer albums, it’s really the odd man out. I think it would have made a killer Van Halen album. Anyone with ears could put that album on and agree with that. “Not That Kinda Guy” is a carbon copy of “Hot For Teacher.” It just has a different melody. But we’re not Van Halen. As much as we love them and as great as they are, we’re Stryper. We have our own sound and we developed that with The Yellow And Black Attack and Soldiers Under Command and To Hell With The Devil and In God We Trust. We just threw that all away. Not only the sound but the look. We lost the yellow and black and grew beard stubble and started frowning. We just became a completely different band.
Can you remember the first time you wrote a song and thought, “This would sound great on a solo album.”
Not really. Even when I was writing “Honestly” or “Together As One,” those are nothing like “The Writings On The Wall” or “Soldiers Under Command” or “Surrender.” Those are a more Judas Priest metal type of thing. When people heard “Together As One” they said “I love that song but that’s really different for this album.” I could’ve said back then, “Let me set this aside for a solo album.” The reason it worked is because we’ve always incorporated our roots into what we do. We would throw on a Judas Priest album and listen to it for an hour while we were painting the walls yellow and black and right after that album was finished we’d put on a Journey album. Then we’d listen to Van Halen and then Loverboy. We listened to all kinds of music. We’d throw on Earth, Wind & Fire and Lionel Richie and the Bee Gees. Our taste in music is very eclectic.
When I write songs for Stryper, I don’t sit and break them apart and dissect them. I just write songs from the heart. If I don’t like the songs I’ll put them on the shelf and move on. If I’m not feeling a song I’ll retire it very quickly and put it away. Sometimes I might pull from that song later, but that’s rare. I know what I like.
Reborn is noted as being the comeback record for Stryper, but it was originally intended as your solo album.
Some people get confused by that and I understand. It is kind of weird. Stryper did a celebration in 2003. We had no plans of reuniting. It was supposed to be a one-off tour to celebrate the history of the band and move on. When I came home from that tour I couldn’t just stop working. I went into my studio and started recording Reborn. I recorded the entire album. If fans could go back in time and listen to that album and then go forward two years to when Stryper re-recorded it, everyone would say it sounds exactly the same. We literally re-recorded and copied my version of Reborn with Robert, Oz and Tracy (Ferrie). We did add “In God We Trust.” The album is identical – every note. We added a few harmonies here and there. I’ve always thought by doing that we lost something. I’ll take credit for that. I thought the songs felt really good and I didn’t want to change much. I’ll take responsibility for that but I felt by doing so we lost the energy, attitude and the vibe. We purposely didn’t do a lot of guitar solos. The drum tones didn’t turn out as planned. We recorded at a great studio with Robert playing. Robert copied the drum parts that were on the original and something got lost in translation. Even though that’s our comeback album and it’s dearly loved by a lot of fans, there was something lacking in the production. I always felt that when the time was right I should release my version. It just sounds better. The drum tones are way better, it’s tighter, it’s fatter. I wanted to release it someday and add the things that were missing – guitar solos, high screams, some Moog on the choruses, some synth to beef it up. That’s what I did with Reborn Again. I took the old, unreleased, original tracks and added to them. The album has new artwork by the guy that does the Stryper artwork, Stan Decker. It’s killer. It sounds so good. It really addresses all the issues the fans had with that album. They’re really great songs that are getting the justice they deserve. Just so people aren’t misunderstood, this isn’t a dig at Stryper at all. It’s just a way to offer the original version to the world and give respect to the drummer and bass player who worked so hard on it – Derrick Cursyle and Bruce Spagnolia. This was originally a solo album and I hope that’s not hard for people to digest.
What about Reborn‘s follow up, Murder By Pride?
Murder By Pride is another album that gets a bad rap. Half the fans love it and the other half says it’s their least favorite and they don’t like it at all. There’s no middle ground with Reborn and Murder By Pride. I kind of understand, but I don’t completely. You can’t argue with a good song. Some of the best material Stryper has ever recorded is on those two albums. Murder By Pride gets more of a bad rap because that’s an album that Robert did not play on. We went out to Vegas and worked our butts off during a time when my wife was sick with cancer. It was a really, really difficult time for me. It was the most difficult and darkest time in my life. I somehow found a way to write an album and to fly out to Vegas and rehearse with the guys and learn the album. Thank God Kyle allowed me to go and I was able to. A lot of work went into that – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. We rehearsed so hard for a few weeks and rehearsed the songs. We burned copies of the rehearsals and everyone was supposed to listen to those CDs and really learn the songs so when we went in to record we would be ready. We didn’t want to waste time and money and cause any headaches. Reborn was a bit of a headache. The recording process was a disaster. We didn’t want to repeat that. That’s why this was extra important for everyone to do their homework. For whatever reason, Rob lost his disc and didn’t let me know he lost it. When it was time to go record the album he wasn’t ready. He didn’t know the songs and hadn’t rehearsed the songs. We were just days away from going in. Oz and I spoke and made the decision together to bring in Kenny Aronoff to play drums. He was able to come in last-minute and deliver quickly without wasting a lot of money. Obviously, that didn’t sit well with the fans. I understand that. Of course.
Rock fans are passionate, but Stryper fans are…
(laughs) They’re extra passionate. It didn’t sit well with them and I get it. We knew it wouldn’t. But at the same time, this is a business. Like the Queen song “The Show Must Go On.” We already had everything scheduled. The other option was to postpone the album. We were under agreement to deliver the album by a certain date. My wife was sick. That wasn’t an option. We had to get it done. We all learned a lesson with that album and it’s still one of my favorite albums.
Releasing an album like The Covering would have been impossible earlier in you career. You would have been excommunicated.
The Covering was a roll of the dice. We knew we were going to get flak for it. Stryper has never been a band that bases our decisions on whether or not we get flak. I say that with all due respect. If we would have cared we would have never made The Yellow And Black Attack. We just don’t care – and thank God we don’t. We do what we feel led to do and what we’re passionate about doing. We don’t let the negativity stop us. We always wanted to show people where we come from and where our roots lie musically. We thought there was a great story there – and there is. I think most people assume that we sat around early on and listened to Petra and Rez Band. No disrespect to those bands, we love them dearly. But we never listened to Petra or Rez Band. As a matter of fact, we didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know what Contemporary Christian music was. I grew up on mainstream secular music. Those are the bands that shaped this band, musically speaking. We were very cautious about which songs we chose for The Covering. We didn’t want to record any lyrics that were opposed to who we are and what we stand for. Still, people found a way to be offended. We do things based on what we feel led to do. We had such a great time doing that album. I feel that album represents Christ in every way, shape and form. How is that possible? Easy. There are many mainstream songs that are even more anointed that many Christian songs. There are bands and songs that God’s anointing is on and they just don’t know it. Some people may think “What in the world are you talking about?” I’m sure you’ve heard a mainstream secular song that really moves you, inspires you, and gives you goosebumps – but it’s not a Christian song. That’s the same thing with all the songs on The Covering. Those songs made us stop and go “Wow.” We didn’t feel like demons were going to fly out of us if we played those songs. That’s what a lot of Christian pastors preach and want you to believe – evil is in the beat and the guitars. Nonsense. We’re all sinners. Worry about your own sin. We all have the same thoughts and we all have the same issues that we face daily. I think we’re beat over the head with rules and regulations by people that can’t even follow those rules and regulations. The important part is to follow God’s rules and regulations. What is God leading you to do? What is He leading you to say? If you read the Word and you pray and you have that personal relationship with God, He’s going to guide you. That’s all the answer you need right there.
Second Coming sounds unbelievable. What a great way to show the fans you still “had it” after changing direction on Reborn and Murder By Pride.
The first thing anybody in a band wants to say when they do a re-record is that it’s the best we’ve ever done or it sounds better than the last. You hope for that but sometimes you don’t always achieve that. I really think in many ways, not all ways, it surpasses the originals. Certainly sonically. Especially the tracks from The Yellow And Black Attack and Soldiers Under Command. These songs are more in your face and defined. You can really hear everything. It’s heavier and chunkier. The trickiest part was capturing the energy and I think we did that, too.
No More Hell To Pay was an obvious return to the classic Stryper sound.
There’s a reason for that. During the process leading up to that album, I put a question online asking fans “What do you want to hear? If you had one wish from Stryper, what would you wish for the next album?” I couldn’t believe the response. Thousands of comments. People were saying, “Get back to that Soldiers thing” or “Get back to To Hell With The Devil.” We had kind of wandered away from that – the dual guitar solos, the harmonies, the screams. We got away from that on Reborn and Murder By Pride. I decided to only listen to classic Stryper albums. I put Soldiers on and listened start to finish for the first time in probably 20 years. I listened again and again. I started to come back to things we had done – the guitar tone, the harmonies, and all that stuff. I applied that to the songwriting style and the production approach for No More Hell To Pay for the first time since then.
Was it easy to jump back into that way of writing?
It wasn’t. I was 30 years older and everything had changed. Your hair, your wrinkles, your clothing, you name it. Life was different. It was hard to go back 30 years to something you had and bring it into the now. I really gave it my best to revisit those guitar tones and that style and present to the fans. I think we accomplished that. Fans said, “This is the album I’ve been waiting on you to make since 1985.” A lot of bands aren’t able to do that. Priest has done it. Accept has done it. Ratt has done it. They’ve released albums in the past 10 or 15 years that are on the same level as the greats of the past. Most bands from that era aren’t able to do it. There’s just something missing and they’ll never be the same.
Fallen is like No More Hell To Pay on steroids. “Yahweh” may be the strongest Stryper song you’ve ever written.
I think I’ll agree with you on that. Fallen sounds beefier than No More Hell To Pay, but I don’t know if I like it better. It’s on the same level. Sonically it has more guts to it. “Yahweh” is probably my favorite Stryper song. I’d put that against “More Than A Man,” “Surrender,” “The Rock That Makes Me Roll,” “Surrender,” “Soldiers Under Command,” “To Hell With The Devil.” I’m listing my favorite hard rock / metal Stryper songs and would probably put “Yahweh” at Number One. I think that song has it all. I’d put “God” on that list, too.
We followed up Fallen with God Damn Evil. I think if it had a different title everyone would say it was their favorite Stryper album – before we released Even The Devil Believes. I think the title threw a lot of people off and keeps people more reserved.
“Take It To The Cross” might be the biggest musical gamble Styper has ever taken.
It was a risk. People have said for years that we should try something a little more thrashy. I kind of laughed at that because that’s like asking Megadeth to do something that’s a little more like Stryper. That’s not what they do and thrash is not what we do. We’re not a thrash band and never will be. We never want to be. But we do appreciate thrash metal and some of those bands. It was fun doing a song like “Take It To The Cross” and we had a blast doing it. Go to YouTube and look at some of the comments. Some say it’s their favorite Stryper song and others say it sucks and it’s the worst thing we’ve ever done. There’s no in-between but I do think the song has grown on a lot of people. It rocks live and I wouldn’t mind experimenting more in the future, maybe on the next album, doing something that crosses that line a little bit more.
Even The Devil Believes at its core is a straight up hard rock / metal record.
It is. I’ve gone as far as to say if some of our recent albums came out in 1985 or ’88, they might have surpassed the classics. We’ll never know, but if you released No More Hell To Pay at the same time that Soldiers Under Command came out and go down the line – Fallen the same time as To Hell With The Devil, God Damn Evil at the same time as In God We Trust and Even The Devil Believes at the same time as Against The Law – I think these four newer albums would have outsold those albums of the past. People get stuck in the past. If you say that to some fans they’ll pull a knife out and say “Let’s go!” That doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.
It seems you’ve really hit your stride the last few years as a songwriter.
I’m always at my most comfortable writing. Especially in the last 10 years. Starting in 2012 until now, I’ve really just fallen into this place as a songwriter that I like where I’m at. I just do my thing, love it or hate it. We have a very unique style and I enjoy it. It doesn’t matter if it’s with Stryper, solo, Sweet & Lynch, Sunbomb. I enjoy the process and I’m blessed that I’m able to still do it. The well has not gone dry yet and I hope it never does. If I woke up tomorrow morning and there were no more songs left, I’d still be very grateful and thankful for what we have and what we’ve accomplished.
What is Stryper’s legacy?
Stryper’s legacy will be that we hopefully made people’s lives better, a little easier, and brought joy to their hearts and minds and gave them peace, hope and faith through Christ.
For more information on Stryper, including tour dates and fan club information, please visit https://www.stryper.com.