Anti-social, sociopathic, misogynistic, evil, disturbing, rotten, immoral, satanic — all terms that have been used to describe heavy metal music and its practitioners.
In many cases the terms are quite apt.
Whatever the case, it could easily be argued that it is the blend of dark mystique and hyper aggressive sounds that has kept the genre alive. It speaks directly to the rather primal testosterone-driven young male human; a beast all too often keen to rebel and buck the system.
American band leader Michael Sweet understands the lure of heavy metal music, growing up on a sonic diet of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, all acts who have had their moral accusers over the years.
But where Sweet and many of his peers who were inspired to pick up guitars and create their own cacophonies differ, is Sweet chose true rebellion ... taking his Christian faith and love of his fellow man to the all-too-gloomy metal masses.
Surprisingly, and perhaps defiantly, 32 years on, he and his Stryper bandmates — brother Robert Sweet, Oz Fox and Tim Gaines — remain true to their cause.
On October 16 they will release their 11th fresh longplayer Fallen, arguably the band’s finest hour.
‘‘I’m tough skinned, so I’m not saying this and asking anyone to play a violin or anything, but we’ve gotten the snot beat out of us by critics and other bands in metal and we’ve been called everything in the book — we’re phonies, we’re fakes, we’re wimps, we’re pussies, we’re this, we’re that ... you name it,’’ Sweet said.
‘‘I have to always kind of laugh at that because I think about everything we’ve done, swimming against the tide and not following anyone, sticking to our guns. Sorry for the word, but that takes more balls than anything else anyone can do and we have done that for 32 years. I tell you man, that’s more rebellious than anything in metal that you see out there.
‘‘To me, sex, drugs and rock n roll, that was rebellious back in the 50s, and the guys that raised their hands in the air with their spikes on and trashed each other, that was rebellious back in the 90s ... it’s old news. When you go and stand in front of a crowd of 10,000 muslims and you throw out bibles, that’s rebellious.
‘‘We don’t do it to be rebellious. We do it because we’re serious about what we do and we believe every word that we say. People can say what they want about us, but at the end of the day that doesn’t change who we are or what we’ve accomplished at all.’’
And accomplish they have. From their yellow and black spandex and leather clad formative years in the 80s, where classic Stryper albums like Soldiers Under Command and To Hell With The Devil sat alongside the devilish platters of their contemporaries, through to their rebirth in the early 2000s, Stryper have maintained a loyal worldwide following wearing faith and positivity.
Sweet sees Fallen as the ideal follow-up from 2013’s critically acclaimed No More Hell To Pay.
‘‘I think what’s happened with us is we’ve gotten in a groove. From ’03 to now it took us a little while to fine tune things and get everything down and I think we’ve hit our stride, starting from Murder By Pride (2009) on and we’ve been getting better with each release,’’ said Sweet. ‘‘I’m liking how stuff is sounding, I’m liking how the production and sonic quality is going and I can’t wait to do the next album, because I can’t wait to outdo Fallen. If we can keep doing that then maybe we’ll be one of the first bands in history to pull that off and keep outdoing ourselves.’’
Unlike many bands of their era, Stryper is still musically relevant. Fallen’s 12 tracks show a band with much creativity left in the tank.
‘‘I think people get burnt out, they grow up, they get older and they’re in a different place,’’ Sweet said.
‘‘When I was a kid writing the Yellow And Black Attack and Soldiers Under Command songs I was listening to Maiden and Priest every day and Journey. Now I don’t listen to those bands. I still love them, they’ll always be my favourites and on my top ten list, but I’m just saying I don’t drive around listening to them. So you listen to different music and you have different influences and it becomes harder and harder to stay true to your sound and give the fans what they loved about you. I think Stryper has finally come around full circle to doing that.
‘‘I was in Boston so I can say this about them. When I heard the first Boston album it blew my mind and it blew the world’s mind, but then I listened to their latest album, and it’s not that it's bad, it’s a good album, but it doesn’t sound anything like the first album. It sounds like a different band to me and I think that happens to a lot of bands. I think they lose sight of who they are musically. Stryper really tries not to do that.’’
Sweet says revisiting its old material on 2013’s Second Coming and tackling tracks from bands of influence on 2011’s The Covering were crucial to the band keeping touch with its tried and true formula.
‘‘I think it was really important and it helped us get back on track and remind us of who we are, ‘oh yeah, those were the bands we listened to, I remember that’, and it also showed the world from a different side of the track, it showed us where we come from,’’ he said.
‘‘I think most people expect us when we say our influences to say Petra or Rez Band and I’m sorry, no disrespect to those guys, but they’re not our influences, and they never will be. We grew up on Maiden and Priest, Scorpions, Deep Purple, those are our influences. It was a chance to show the world where we came from musically and it was a lot of fun.’’
Fallen opens with Stryper’s most adventurous track, Yahweh, which Sweet cowrote with Clint Lowery of Sevendust.
‘‘It’s definitely the longest song we’ve every done and it’s got the most tempo changes we’ve ever done in a song,’’ Sweet said. ‘‘It goes through three different types of sections. It opens with almost a Priest vibe and then goes to a Maiden vibe before the solo and then it goes to like a Metallica vibe almost in the breakdown. It was a lot of fun to do that and experiment a little. It’s almost prog rock a little bit.’’
Sweet said despite the intricacies of the song, it took about an hour to write. He says it only took nine days for the album’s tracks to take shape.
‘‘I work really well under pressure,’’ said Sweet. ‘‘I don’t do good when I have a year to write an album. I do much better when I get a call from the label saying, ‘hey we want you to start recording in a week’. Some people might say, ‘that’s not enough time, I need a couple of months at least’, but I would say, ‘let’s go for it, let’s do it’. I’d go downstairs and I’d start writing and I’d come back with 12 songs. Now would they be great songs, I would hope so. I’ve got songs coming out of my head left and right man, it’s crazy.’’
Included in the new set of songs is a cover of Black Sabbath’s After Forever. Sweet said Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi’s simple, yet extremely hooky style of riffing influenced many of the songs on Fallen.
‘‘Some of the best stuff melodically, whether it’s a guitar riff or a vocal line is the simpler stuff and the reason why is because that’s what goes in the human mind and stays,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s easier for us to remember that and recall that. As we say, they’re hooks. I really tried hard on this album to keep it simple, Yahweh is probably the most complicated. But songs like Fallen, Pride, Big Screen Lies, Let There Be Light, they’re not real difficult songs to play but they are catchy and they are powerful and they say a lot.’’
Fallen was recorded by the band at its studio in Northampton, Massachusetts, dubbed Spirithouse.
‘‘We go there for two weeks at a time and we literally live there,’’ Sweet said. ‘‘So we’re around each other 24/7 and I think that makes for a great environment to record and create and we have a good time. We break bread together. We’ll record for a couple of hours and then take a break and sit by the pool and have a swim and then go back. It’s a fun experience and that translates over to the recording itself. If you’re having fun people are going to hear that on the tracks and if you are not having fun they’re going to hear that. It’s very important to me.’’
Sweet said the secret behind the heavier sound to Fallen was the way in which it was recorded.
‘‘We usually stay in the digital realm using Protools,’’ he said.
‘‘We tracked everything through an analog console, the same one Maiden use, and it gave us a little bit of a beefier sound, so this album is a little bit bigger in the lower end than No More Hell To Pay. With the guitars usually we just mic the cabinet. This time we mic’d the cabinet and went in direct which made for a bit more of an in your face guitar sound.’’
Sweet says the band does have plans to return to Australia in the future, possibly as early as next year, coinciding with a planned Japanese tour.
While he loves walking the boards for the masses and hearing his songs sung back to him, Sweet says he’s still inspired by a basic premise.
‘‘We love music. We love metal and we love to plug in a Marshall amp and crank it up and shake the walls ... we’ve always loved that, but at the end of the day the thing that is important to us is trying to inspire people and encourage them and give them something more than just a loud show for an hour and a half,’’ he said.
‘‘We want them to take something with them and maybe change their lives.
‘‘If they’re drug addicts or if they’re alcoholics of if they’re suicidal or whatever, to see people come around, whoever they may be, brings joys to us.’’
