I recall back in the 1980s as a teenager being told constantly that my choices in music were no good. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard the phrase "It's the Devils music" I might be as rich as Gene Simmons, artists such as Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Alice Cooper and the like were all going to send me "Straight to Hell". Then late one night watching MTV I saw a video for a song called Soldiers Under Command by a band calling themselves Stryper. This really got my attention, not only did I think their black and yellow outfits were cool, but their sound was really heavy, their lead singer had a killer voice and they had a righteous message as well, surely there could not be anything wrong with this, right?... sadly no, as I was told this too was unnatural. I can only imagine how the band felt as they too had to endure criticism from ignorant religious and non-religious figures as they carved out a career selling the "Good Word". 30 years later they are still standing, staying true to their mission of faith and with that comes their latest offering No More Hell To Pay, a true masterpiece to rival past efforts Soldiers Under Command and To Hell With The Devil, to get his thoughts on the new album, the changing music industry and his forthcoming solo album and book releases I caught up with frontman/guitarist Michael Sweet.
Rock Man: Congratulations on what has been an outstanding career, there are a lot of bands that don't last 5 or 10 years, but you have been successfully selling the message of Christ for 3 decades, did you ever think you would survive that long?
Michael Sweet: You know truthfully, I did not really think about it much, I suppose if I were to pretend that I did I would think not more info. We took quite a lashing from the church back in the day, we obviously broke up and went our own separate ways back in 1992 and at that time when I left the band I never thought that we would ever reform again. So to be, not only reformed, but to be reformed with the original line up and going longer and stronger, or at least so it seems, than our original run from 1984 to 1991 is pretty incredible and it feels good to be 30 years later and in our prime and it is quite an accomplishment and really astonishing.
RM: It must be an amazing experience to be playing in a band with the talent of Oz Fox (guitar), Timothy Gains (bass) and your brother Robert Sweet (drums)?
MS: It is, it is great man. It is a lot of fun, at times it is not so much fun, as one as one might think [laughs] what I mean by that is, I am kind of the guy who cracks the whip and I am the whip master, I am the guy who says "Come on guys, get together and rehearse before tour" and "Come on guys, learn the songs for the album" and "Come on guys", "Come on guys". So, you know, I guess at times, in a fun way, I am kind of the bad guy, but, you know, somebody has to do it and I do, I do it. Once we are rehearsed and ready it is great playing with these guys, yeah absolutely.
RM: Congratulations on the release of the new album No More Hell To Pay. If I can put this in sporting terms, you have a home run on your hands here, I mean, you have seriously hit this one out off the park, you must be very pleased with this record?
MS: I am very pleased and I have been expressing that for quite some time. When we recorded the album I started talking how I felt and believed it was going to be our best album and I said at the very least, if not our best, certainly one of our best. I really think that it is our best album, taking everything into regard, you know, just accounting for every single piece and part of this album, what some of our other albums did not have, this one does and what some of our other albums did have, in a negative way, this one does not. So it is really cool, it has got flavours of almost every album we have ever done, but yet it is all its own and, you know, it feels really great to still be making music that holds its own against our most popular and successful albums of the past, in 2013, it is incredible.
RM: To me, this record harkens back to the early 1980s sound and attitude of Yellow And Black Attack andSoldiers Under Command was there a conscience effort to capture that era or is it just how the record panned out, how do you see it?
MS: Well I think that has always been in us, that style and producing and recording albums that have that particular style and sound. That has always been in us, obviously because we did it in the past and therefore we can do it again, but I think what helped us to achieve that is the mentality going into the project, obviously trying to do it, perfectly setting out to do it, to make an album that, you know, rivalled To Hell With The Devil, that was the thinking when we went into this. And then coming off the heels of Second Coming and even before that, The Covering, going back to our roots musically, really helped us to head in this direction and to get back to our roots and what we started out being on the first, second, third albums. We even strayed from that, on a small degree onIn God We Trust because that was the first time we started striving for perfection and in doing so, you know, perfecting the rawness to death and losing that, we always kept a certain level of rawness on record one, two and three. And then on Against The Law it was totally different, love it or hate it, it really almost at times did not sound like Stryper, it almost sounded more like Van Halen, not that that is a bad thing, Van Halen is one of my favourite bands, but Stryper always has a certain particular sound and we got back to that, full circle, on this album No More Hell To Pay.
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