Defend the Indefensible: Stryper

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To HELL with the Devil!!!

I will start it off: I saw a video of theirs in their heyday featuring 'concert footage' with big-haired, otherwise prototype-'80s metal chick' blondes in the audience, pump-fisting crucifixes into the air. If that ain't classic, I don't know what is.

― Joe (Joe), Sunday, 10 April 2005 16:11 (twenty years ago)

d00d! The brothers' last names were "Sweet." It's doesn't get more glam than that.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Sunday, 10 April 2005 16:16 (twenty years ago)

Don't forget to mention their cool black n yellow stripey spandex outfits.

― mike sperry (ghost nuts), Sunday, 10 April 2005 22:30 (twenty years ago)

Conclusively proved the theorem that the Devil has all the best tunes.

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Sunday, 10 April 2005 22:33 (twenty years ago)

80's horror movie "night of the creeps" (about a brain eating alien slug invasion that turns frat boys into zombies) has a scene in a bathroom that shows prominent "stryper" grafitti for a brief moment. Years and years after seeing it I mentioned the movie to my brother and he says "stryper"! What a funny detail to stick in both of our minds.

― -rainbow bum- (-rainbow bum-), Monday, 11 April 2005 01:01 (twenty years ago)

no worse than crue, despite lack of umlauts.

― wekilledyou, Monday, 11 April 2005 04:00 (twenty years ago)

Hardly indefensible! '88's In God We Trust is a fanTAStic power-pop album, particularly "The Writing's On the Wall," and I remember my mom strangely liked "It's Up 2U", an anthemic stomper reminiscent of Priest's "Take On the World." Their '91 secular sellout effort Against the Law was almost as controversial in little Christian boy circles as Amy Grant's Heart in Motion, and contained four great great great songs. The other albums are OK. They're a whole lot better than, say, X, or even Cinderella if we're talking '88 hair metal. Admittedly not as good as Guns 'n' Roses or King's X.

― dr. phil (josh langhoff), Monday, 11 April 2005 12:40 (twenty years ago)

Stryper's best-of album is surprisingly listenable and tuneful. well, surprising if you thought they were horrible or something.

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 11 April 2005 12:48 (twenty years ago)

Always thought their lead singer bore an uncanny resemblance (vocally and visually) to a young Dennis "Styx" DeYoung.

They sucked, of course. But, it was a novel gimmick at the time.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 11 April 2005 12:51 (twenty years ago)

Opened a video with fans pointing in the air (to God, presumably) rather than making the then-ubiquitous devil sign.

― mike a, Monday, 11 April 2005 16:14 (twenty years ago)

the yellow and black attack!

but the jesus freaks weren't fooled, oh no sirree!!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 11 April 2005 17:10 (twenty years ago)

http://guterman.com/stryper.png

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 11 April 2005 17:11 (twenty years ago)

to hell w/ the devil!

http://accordionguy.blogware.com/Photos/2004/12/stryper.jpg

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 11 April 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

for a bunch of jesus freaks, their logo is rather oddly, uh, "freemasonic," no?

http://home.ntelos.net/~keefer/stryper-ingodwetrust.jpg

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 11 April 2005 17:14 (twenty years ago)

ok so i forget their "power ballad" but on the episode of miami vice when phil collins plays a evangelist his country singer wife does a acoustic version of it!

― charleston charge (chaki), Monday, 11 April 2005 17:15 (twenty years ago)

three years pass...

http://www.stryper.com/images/promo-reborn1.jpg

― eman, Monday, 30 March 2009 21:08 (seventeen years ago)

from Wiki: The name "Stryper" first came because when they were recording, Robert came up with the name "Stryper" after a passage in Isaiah “with his stripes we are healed” and it also rhymed with hyper.

― 2 ears + 1 ❤ (Pillbox), Monday, 30 March 2009 21:55 (seventeen years ago)

eleven months pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5WCGpdIx0s

That's right, I said heavy metal, okay?

― Johnny Fever, Monday, 15 March 2010 09:37 (sixteen years ago)

I dug their heavier stuff a lot back around 85, "Soldiers Under Command" especially. Say what you will about their flittier songs and their grating fundie rhetoric, at least it was hooky...I've definitely heard a lot worse pop metal from that era.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 15 March 2010 10:04 (sixteen years ago)

Stryper definitely went to the extreme on either end (sometimes within the same song). Their "flittier" songs sounded cornball to me even when I was 12, but the heavier tracks, like "Soldiers Under Command," hold up even now. That opening riff is YOWZA.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, 15 March 2010 10:11 (sixteen years ago)

Yeah, it was weird, one second they're an ace NWOBHM band, the next they're sounding like Air Supply. But they did both very well, you've got to give them credit for that.

They did a comeback album a few years ago that was surprisingly good.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 15 March 2010 10:18 (sixteen years ago)

The cover of In God We Trust sorta reminds me of Funkadelic's America Eats Its Young, so that's kinda nice. Especially since their debut Yellow and Black Attack EP had one of the worst sleeves of all time. Also, I bet Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart and all those guys hated the very idea of Xtian metal no matter the lyrical content, so that works in their favour too.

Dunno if I've ever heard a note of their music.

― Half lies and gorilla dust (Myonga Vön Bontee), Monday, 15 March 2010 13:49 (sixteen years ago)

the only defensible thing I can say about them is that getting Soldiers Under Command for x-mas one year prepared my young ears for Iron Maiden, which was one of the groups that turned me into a full-fledged Satan-loving metalhead.

― richie aprile (rockapads), Monday, 15 March 2010 16:29 (sixteen years ago)

nine months pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UePtoxDhJSw

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, 11 January 2011 17:07 (fifteen years ago)

four years pass...

http://www.metalinjection.net/video/this-new-stryper-song-is-good-folks

This is a straight-up Iron Maiden song.

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Thursday, 9 July 2015 19:11 (ten years ago)

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