Stryper - To Hell With The Devil (1986)

The kings of 'God Rock' return with an album, that, despite its holier than thou persona, would have still appealed to the metal kids because let's face it, anything with 'hell', or 'devil' on the front was a selling point. Stryper were keen to spread the word of God and of course, they were panned for it, understandable when you hear the pomp rock of 'Calling On You' and 'Sing Along Song' which sound like Cliff Richard songs! I own the Spanish version of the vinyl, which opens out, and of course the back sleeve sees the band in their yellow and black suits which wrestlers would go on to fashion. Musically, it's all pretty standard, slightly whiny metal mainly due to Michael Sweet's rather meek and watery delivery over those weak guitars courtesy of Oz Fox. Some may see a handful of these cuts as hymns in fact, again, we go back to the almost Eurovision type warbling of 'Calling On You' and vomit inducing 'Honestly'. However, Stryper still had to exist within the realms of metal, and despite the criticism and sounding rather dated, it's all part of metal's magical history. Cracking album cover but music to wet the bed to.

6/10