Back in the mid-1980s, when Contemporary Christian Music was at its peak as a commercial genre, heavy metal band Stryper was the first heavy metal band with overtly spiritual lyrics to gain widespread acceptance.
It released three albums that achieved gold sales, and 1986’s “To Hell With the Devil” achieved platinum sales.
Forty years later, Stryper still is at it, with four of the records it has released in the 2020s hitting the Top 5 on Billboard’s Top Christian Albums Christian chart, and last year’s Christmas album, “The Greatest Gift of All,” hitting the Top 50 on Billboard’s overall Top Albums chart.
The band on Sunday played at Stroudburg’s Sherman Theater.
But contemporary Christian music these days can be as much a negative as a positive for artists, Stryper singer Matthew Sweet says in an interview from the road in Massachusetts.
“I'm on record saying that Christianity doesn't sell and Christ doesn't sell,” Sweet says. “And people say, "Oh, that's crazy.’ Really? It's not crazy – it's absolutely 100 percent true.”
As a reference, Sweet cites Bob Dylan’s 1979 album “Slow Train Coming,” which charted high and sold well when it came out, but was followed by two more Christian albums that didn’t fare well.
“These crowds and his fans were pulling him off the stage,” Sweet says. “It is one of his best albums. … But seeing, you know, why I think fans turned on him is because he was acknowledging Christ and singing about Christ. There's still an explanation for it.”
That pushback hasn’t slowed down Stryper, whose debut album “The Yellow and Black Attack” in 1984 just missed the Billboard Hot 100, and who later had four more albums in the Top 40.
Stryper not only continues to release music, but at a pace that exceeds the band’s output at its commercial peak.
Its newest album, “Throne of Thorns,” released Sept. 25, already has hit the Top 4 on the Christian Albums chart – just two years since its previous album, “When We Were Kings,” hit No. 2 on that chart.
Stryper not only is consistently releasing new music, but is expanding its musical palette, Sweet says.
“We always try to do things that are a little different on each album, but not so much different that we alienate our fan base or walk away from who we are,” he says. “This one has little curveballs here and there, but not a lot.”
Sweet cites as examples the songs “Here in Your Heart,” which he says is “a little bit more on the modern side; the melody's a little different for us,” and “Ashes to Roses,” which he says is “a little bit more on the radio-friendly, easy-listening side, but it's a song that's not like any other song that we've ever done before.”
Sweet says the album still is “very Stryper. It's got classic songs, it's got modern songs. It kind of represents the classic-sounds Stryper, and some that represent where we are today, musically speaking. But it's 100 percent Stryper all the way.”
Sweet attributed the success of the previous disc, “When We Were Kings,” to “getting back a little bit more to our roots in terms of that classic Stryper sound, and a little more straight ahead, a little more melodic in the sense of the word, and a little bit more radio.
“But you had some bangers on there too, some heavy, heavy stuff.
“This album is similar to that. This one has the bangers, but it also has the radio-friendly songs, songs like ‘Falling’ and ‘Hollywood.’ So it's kind of got that classic vibe, but also some modern twists along the way.”
Sweet said Stryper had talked for years about doing a Christmas album, “we just never had the opportunity to do it – time didn't permit or allow. And we finally just said we're doing it, and that was it. I just put my foot down and said, ‘We're making this happen. We're not going to talk about it anymore.’
“And everyone looked at me like, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘Yep, we're doing it.’ It felt maybe a little bit rushed, not really, but some in terms of it was lightning speed, like, ‘Let's go, go, go.’ That kind of thing. But I just wanted to do it, get it done.”
Sweet says the reception to “The Greatest Gift of All” shows “it's one of those albums. It's a catalog piece that will live on forever. It'll be played every year at Christmas, and that's the beauty about a Christmas album. And I love that fact – that they're going to be playing Stryper every Christmas.”
And just three months before “When We Were Kings,” Stryper released an acoustic album, “To Hell with the Amps,” which was stripped-down versions of some of the group’s best-known songs.
“That was just to kind of showcase a different side of Stryper,” Sweet says. “A lot of these songs are written on acoustic guitar. People don't know it, so when you play them in their original format, it's very interesting.
“We had gone out and done some acoustic shows over the years, and it went over so well, and it was fun hearing these songs back acoustically. We decided, ‘Let's go make an acoustic album.”
As if the group wasn’t prolific enough, Sweet also released a solo album, “The Master Plan,” in April.
“I'd always wanted to do a worship album, but I didn't want to call it a worship album,” he says. “I'd fall into that place where it's just kind of same old, same old, and blending into all of all other worship albums. So I wanted to make it different and unique.
“So that was something I always thought about in the back corners of my mind. And then once I had the opportunity to do it during COVID, I did. I just started writing, and I let it all come out.
“And musically, I drew from my history, my musical past in terms of the ‘60s and ‘70s and stuff that I grew up on. You know, I used to listen to Al Green, and I used to listen to Motown, and I used to listen to the Eagles, and you know all these bands, and you hear little bits and pieces of some of that stuff in this album.”
Sweet says Stryper is talking about three more albums, and may go into the studio in January and record all three.
“I've always been releasing lots of music, and I'm all about ‘You know what? Let's take these opportunities,’” he says. “Because someday we're all going to get old and not be able to take them, and I don't want to see that happen.”
Speaking of that, with band members now in their mid-60s, Stryper in recent years has faced the kind of health scares that go along with aging.
Lead guitarist Oz Fox, for example, in 2021 had brain surgery to treat tumors, and was unable to record any guitar parts for “Throne of Thorns” because of uncontrolled high blood pressure, but now is “doing great. If he takes his medication, he's great,” Sweet said.
Sweet himself last December revealed he had been diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer, and he says the new album’s song “I’m Alright (I’m Okay)” is about his battle.
“I had surgery, and now I have it on the other side,” he says. “So I'm kind of faced with that, and everything's OK. But I'm just really trying to rise above it, you know, stay proactive and stay on top of it in terms of the medical sense.
“But at the same time, when you're living with that, it's kind of this weight that you carry around for the rest of your life.”
"I'm Alright (I'm Okay)" has put Stryper back on the Christian singles chart for the first time since the 1980s, and Sweet says, “that's a song that is very representative of who we are – who we were, and who we are now. … And yeah, it's great to see and hear that it's getting airplay. It's amazing.”
And 43 years of Stryper being a band “just shows me that time is so precious and so valuable, and it's important to really seize the day and take advantage of your moments, because otherwise it'll pass you by.
“It's just about staying creative and staying proactive and trying to stay relevant and alive and thriving in this crazy world of a billion bands,” he says.
“And if that calling's there and that desire is there and the passion's there and the gifts are there to create, why not? Why not do it? So that's what we do.”
