To Hell With the Devil: Stryper’s 40-Year Reign in Christian Metal

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Stryper at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on January 3, 1987 was my first concert. After living under the fundamentalist rule of the Islamic Republic in Iran for eight years with maximum resistance to its tenets, entering the live music space through a Christian heavy metal band seems absurd. Despite my negative experiences with organized religion, I fell for Stryper’s irresistibly catchy songs. I attended the concert by myself, dressed in the only striped item of clothing I had: a blue and black one-piece bathing suit that I paired with leggings. It wasn’t Stryper’s requisite yellow and black, but nevertheless, I pumped my fists, yelling “To hell with the devil” so loud, my voice could be heard above those of people around me.

When I shared this with Stryper’s vocalist and principal songwriter Michael Sweet on a recent Zoom, he commented, “If there is any band in the world that you could send your daughter to by herself to their show and not have any concern, it’d be Stryper for sure.”

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Sweet is at home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on a break from Stryper’s 40th anniversary tour, which coincides with the release of the group’s 12th studio album, When We Were Kings. Joining Sweet are two other original members: his brother Robert on drums and guitarist Oz Fox. The group’s bass player, Perry Richardson (Firehouse), has been with them since 2017. Even I, a die-hard fan, didn’t think the group’s admittedly gimmicky holy schtick would last four decades. The album title, and the accompanying video for the title track, reflects a nostalgia for Stryper’s heyday, when I was one of millions caught up in their sanctified anthems.

Once MTV started playing Stryper’s videos, the reaction was immediate. Fans bombarded the request lines of the music video countdown program Dial MTV. “We beat Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Poison,” says Sweet. “All the biggest bands of the time, we removed them from the No. 1 position, and we stayed there week after week. What world does that happen in?”

For someone as forward-looking as Sweet, it’s a surprise to see him in reminisce mode, but, he says, “I feel like we’re still kings. Night after night, album after album proves that. We’re sometimes referred to as B leaguers instead of A leaguers like the mighty Van Halen or Judas Priest—some of my favorite bands of all time. But we went against all the odds and we won. A band that sings about God in yellow and black bumblebee outfits, we’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Somehow, we were able to be very successful, gold and platinum albums, sold out arena shows in the ’80s, No. 1 videos. That’s miraculous.”

At the present time, Stryper are playing theater rather than arenas, but their audience remains dedicated. Their live sets are split into two parts: last century material and this century material, a bold move considering legacy bands generally only get away with performing new songs by slipping them between classic favorites. But When We Were Kings is on par with Stryper’s most commercially successful albums: the Grammy-nominated (Best Gospel Performance) To Hell With the Devil (1986), In God We Trust (1988) and Soldiers Under Command (1985). The second Stryper album to be released in 2024 (the first was To Hell With the Amps, a collection of acoustic versions of their songs) Stryper’s signature Bible-based themes are at the forefront of When We Were Kings. Sweet turns these into chant-along, high octane headbangers, which he is amped to take to the masses, who Sweet says are, “Incredible, very enthusiastic.” 

I would have loved to have known any one of these fans when I saw Stryper in concert a second time, in 1988. Once again, I was by myself—but dressed in the correct striped colors. The group’s former bassist Tim Gaines tossed a Bible to me, which I hung on to for decades. But my metal friends continued to have a deep aversion toward Stryper. “It’s a love/hate relationship with people,” Sweet acknowledges good-naturedly, fully aware there is no middle ground when it comes to his band.

After this leg of the tour wraps, the Stryper documentary team, fueled by a Kickstarter campaign, will be coming to Sweet’s home to capture his story firsthand. The fan-focused film is projected to have a 2026 release. In the meantime, Sweet shares how he keeps powering on despite being one of the main whipping boys of the global metal community, and how he found his way back to being on stage after a stint as a farmer.

Why did you leave Stryper in 1992?

I started to see the band go down a path I didn’t want to continue. We started out telling people about God and mostly being good stewards. As time went on, in 1991, we would tell people about God from the stage, and then go to the bar and get drunk with them. That’s not a good look. I didn’t like it. My marriage started to suffer. My family started to suffer. I was ashamed. I was not happy with where we were headed. It didn’t seem like we were wanting to do a U-turn and get on the opposite path. I started thinking about leaving the band. These thoughts went through my mind for quite a while. I woke up one morning and felt it’s either my family and my marriage in life, or music in the band. I left with no regrets whatsoever and I vowed never to come back. I got a lot of hate mail. I have people to this day who come up to me and say they hated me for years, and they still kind of resent me. That’s okay. It’s worth it because I saved my marriage. I got to spend time with my kids, and you can’t put a price on that. 

I appreciate your saying you were ashamed.

I don’t want to be a hypocrite. Hypocrisy really bothers me. I will leave the situation, I will leave the meeting, I will leave the job, I will leave the band. I don’t want to be a part of it, and I was a part of it. I was just as big a hypocrite as anyone else in the band. Maybe more so because I was the guy up there singing the words and talking to the crowd. It was really bad. And I was in shock that we became that band again, the band we always said we wanted to get away from, Roxx Regime, back to the early days when we were sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, that whole lifestyle. We made a commitment to not go back to that. And we did. It was heartbreaking. And that was the end of Stryper.

Do you think the emergence of grunge would have marked the end of Stryper anyway?

Everyone says grunge killed the ’80s metal scene. I don’t believe that for one second. If that’s the case, then why was Firehouse so successful in the ’90s? Why was Slaughter so successful in the ’90s? There’s a number of bands that were very successful in the ’90s in that music. What killed ’80s music is it became regenerated and stale. That passion and fire that the ’80s bands had from ’80 to ’88 to ’89 started to dwindle. By the time we got into the ’90s, it was boring in a lot of ways. Nirvana came on the scene and it was not boring. It was amazing. I feel like we were definitely at that point as a band where there was nothing left. The well had certainly gone dry, and we went our separate ways.

What did you do during your time away from Stryper?

I worked at a family campground/cranberry bogs. I was a farmer. You know those Ocean Spray commercials? That was me. That was, in a very odd way, really enjoyable. I loved it. While I was working in the bogs in my hip waders, I wrote a lot of songs. It recharged me and wiped the slate clean. I started getting back into music. I did solo stuff in ’94, ’95, ’96. I was very successful in the Christian market. I got out of music from ’97 to 2000. I put my stuff in a closet. I was going to sell it and not do music anymore. When I started getting back into music, it just exploded. The band reformed under different circumstances with different ideas and thoughts and processes. Everything from that point on has been 100 miles an hour, and I’m so thankful.

Do you find songwriting challenging?

I’m very passionate about music and inspired by music, so I’m able to write music very easily, very quickly. A song a day is how I write, until there’s 11 songs or 12 songs, and we go record them. It’s not months or a year or two of putting together 40 songs and picking the best songs. That’s just silly to me. I’ve always viewed that as a waste of energy and time. I feel like I’m a good barometer for our music. People say it’s up to the fans. No, it’s up to the band to put together good or bad music. We’re writing some of the best music of our lives.

The current top Stryper song on Spotify is For King & Country’s version of “To Hell With the Devil (Rise)” featuring the rapper Lecrae, which is unexpected to say the least. How did that come about?

There is quite a story to it. The band For King & Country are the sons of David Smallbone, the promoter that brought us to Australia for the first time back in the ’80s. We were huge there. We went to do an in-store and there were 3,000 or 4,000 people. They were tearing our clothes, pulling our hair out. The paddy wagon had to come and take us away. David’s sons were sitting on our laps through it. They were hanging out with us as kids, and we inspired them to become musicians themselves. They wanted to give back to us, so they covered our song. I don’t know if Lecrae knows much about Stryper, but that’s their take on our song. It’s different. I thought it was cool in the sense that it hit a lot of people that might not have listened to us.

What did you take away from your time as a member of Boston?

I understand myself a little bit better. I don’t want to lead. I hate it. It’s not my personality. Growing up, we moved constantly. I went to four elementary schools, one junior high, and four high schools. I was kind of a loner and very shy and quiet. My personality is not to get on stage and talk to people, to be the front man. What you see on stage is not the real Michael Sweet. I have to flip the switch. This isn’t a “feel sorry for me, poor Michael” at all. I have thick skin, but I get the most hate within the band, for sure. I could post something political on my Facebook page, lose 1,000 followers in an hour and you would see some vile stuff on there. Oz can post something political and gain followers and get praised. It’s a very strange dynamic. I’ve got nothing to prove and nothing to hide, but the internet brings out that feeling of having to defend yourself sometimes, and it sucks. But, we’re here to enjoy it and we have the best of times.  

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

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