542. Stryper / In God We Trust. 1988. 2.5/5

In the preceding four years, Stryper had not only managed to find a way to make Christian rock accessible to more people, but had well and truly infiltrated the glam metal and heavy metal scene with the success of their bombastic yet harmonising songs that found a way to be attractive to a wider and more varied audience imaginable. Having started with their debut album “The Yellow and Black Attack”, they had followed it with two albums that truly managed to cross codes in “Soldiers Under Command” and “To Hell with the Devil”, which combined not only their Christian themes and beliefs into songs, but did so in a way that made some of those songs heavy metal anthems, something that seemed to be completely out of step with how the religious community looked at the heavy metal scene.
The success of the “To Hell with the Devil” album, which you can hear all about in an episode of Season 1 of this podcast, would have put a significant amount of pressure on the band leading into the writing and recording of their fourth studio album. Not only that, but the composition of the songs is also something that must have been crucial. The band had had commercial success with their singles and the music videos that they comprised, especially through the MTV market in the US. On the whole it was their sugar laced ballads that had brought this commercial success and what still drove that point of sales. But the other market they had cracked had been through their heavy metal anthems, songs such as “Loud N Clear”, “Soldiers Under Command”, “The Rock That Makes Me Roll”, “To Hell with the Devil” and “The Way” that had been just as important in increasing their fan base. Metallica and Megadeth fans taking on Stryper as well was a massive thing for the band, and in moving forward this had to be an integral part of the songs they produced in order to retain that part of their fan base. Or so one would have thought.

Whatever the eventual reason may have been, most critics and fans alike would agree that there is a drop in the overall quality in the songs here on “In God We Trust” compared to their earlier efforts. And perhaps it is unfair to compare it to “Soldiers Under Command” and “To Hell with the Devil”, but from early on in the piece it is obvious that this doesn’t stack up against them. The stronger tracks on the album can hold their own, but there is far too much wimping out here in regard to the strength of the tracks.
The album starts off strong with the title track, which at least echoes those great anthemic tracks mentioned earlier, and in particular gives centre stage to those great guitars and Michael Sweet’s amazing vocal chords. However, one of my major gripes with this album is that, in essence, it starts to sound like a poor rip-off of their previous album. Take a close listen to the second track on the album "Always There for You" and tell me you can't hear the song "Calling on You" from the previous album. Beyond this, there is little doubt that the rather disappointing "It's Up 2 U" is a very ordinary re-hash of the infinitely better "Sing Along Song" from the previous album. And then when you get to the tremendously awful ballad “Lonely”, you can positively hear the same melody and feeling that came with the same tremendously awful ballad “Honestly” from that previous album. Now one can only imagine in the writing process that it was decided that they needed to retain the same successful formula for this album as for the “To Hell with the Devil” album, and that is to be commended... but at least try and make it sound a LITTLE different! And better! Or had the band simply run out of ideas?
Elsewhere there is still much to enjoy on the album, in particular the harder hitting tracks such as “The Writings on the Wall” and the closing song “The Reign” tap into that enthusiasm that marks the best of Stryper’s work, while songs such as “Keep the Fire Burning” and “Come to the Everlife” are average harmless songs. On the other end of the scale, the ballads of “I Believe in You” and “The World of You and I” are right alongside “Lonely” as ones I would like to avoid for eternity.
Kudos once again though to Michael Sweet, whose vocals again soar to hitherto unnatural heights. I am constantly amazed at his ability to not only sing how he does, but to play guitar at the same time as well. Oz Fox again is supreme on guitar, while Robert Sweet’s drumming is efficient without showing the star quality of earlier albums.

Coming off the joy of their earlier albums and the stunning concert on the ‘To Hell with the Devil’ tour in Sydney the previous year, I jumped at this when it was released in the belief it would be another step further on from those other albums. So it is possible I went into this in a state of over excitement which doesn’t always allow an album to be heard in its best setting. And while I did enjoy the album and many of the tracks, I guess I was still let down by the number of ballads that were present and that soured the whole experience. And to be fair, it does with every Stryper album ever released. But getting beyond that there is lot here to still enjoy, and that is what I hold onto when it comes to listening to this album, and I have done that about thirty times over the past three weeks leading up to doing this podcast episode.
To me this album had the potential to be as good as their previous works, but in the end it falls down in the final direction they allowed the music to go. Because there isn’t a real metal feel about the harder songs here, they are more of a hard rock genre, a softening of what they could have been if the band had wanted them to be. And that is where this album is led, by where the band wanted to go. A shame when you actually listen to the album, and can hear for yourself where they really should have taken this material. At least, that’s what I would have done.