Stryper-Fallen (2015)

Stryper-Fallen (2015)

“The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

By: Ghost Writer

Maybe I'm one of the only Stryper bands to grace the face if the Earth, I'm amazed these guys keep coming back again and again long after most of their contemporaries gave up.

Stryper came to life just in time to adjust to the MTV generation, their yellow and black attires and their unconventional "Christian rock" approach helped them to be one some kind of notorious, but for me, it was always about music, their music was rebellious, maybe it's because spirituality or strong conviction but these guys sounded more real than the rest of the makeup and spray rockers of those times.

Oz Fox and Michael Sweet were thousand times better guitarists than your Poisons, Cinderellas and Motley Crues, they were more metal based than most of their LA Glam contemporaries, that added to the almost operatic high vocals of Michael gave the band a certain closeness to classic metal, cleverly put on display on their recent covers album.

Whether it was Against the Law, Reborn, Second Coming, No More Hell to Pay or this Fallen, Stryper have always found a way to reinvent themselves, of making their music meet the new times and to put always and foremost music at front, Christianity may be a part of their concept, but never something that blurs their music.

And precisely Fallen starts with the galloping Yahweh, a sort of trip back to the days of the NWOBHM, a curious cross between Iron Maiden bass lines, twin guitar attack and Sweet's King Diamond's like acrobatic high vocal range, the result is kind of like a demolition truck with a church chorus on its speakers.

Fallen is heavy and intense, a typical metal song with great drums and screaming guitars, but is on the chorus that the band achieves the feat if getting a very unique sound by modern standards, dense and abrasive guitars are Stryper's personal sign, and they prominently appear on Pride, a great theme featuring a powerful guitar work and Michael's going all the way on his unique voice, I guess bands like Motley Crue never found their voice again after the classic Dr. Feelgood, they weren't able to find the clue to make their sound evolve and recently almost called quit, here on a tune like Big Screen Lies, Stryper shows the way to revamp their sound and to keep their concept relevant, thick guitars, intense singing and banging drums.

It's on Love Like You Do that the band shows notable changes on their sound, an approximation to pop and a showing closer to the more intimate records Michael has issued as a solo artist, but that's just a small coda on the record as the bans returns to the brutal sound of albums like Reborn on the metallic sound of After Forever that goes even harder than most so called "metal acts" of the day, which along with the more melodic 

sounding Till I Get What I Need, but is in the record's last songs, The Calling and King of Kings that the band shows the conviction I talked about at the beginning, the band rocks harder than ever and with a complete mastery of their instruments showing how particular and peculiar this band really is, and after all these amazing songs one can only ask oneself if this is Christian rock? Heavy metal? Classic rock? What's the matter it rocks harder than a lot of today's current act, this band just gets better with the passing if time, committed to God, perhaps but also committed to make great heavy music.