1057. Stryper / Soldiers Under Command. 1985. 3.5/5

If you come looking for Stryper albums, then you know what is involved. You can be Christian, you can be ambivalent, and that’s entirely up to you. But you should be coming for the music, and if that is what you are looking for then you will find a reasonable balnce of the good and bad that this genre and style of music can offer.

There are a couple of… terrible… songs. There’s just no other way I can describe them. Those terrible awful ballad tracks that for some reason bands insist they must produce in order to sell their records. Or gain airplay. Or something like that. Yes, I know there are some people out there who like them, but for me they can destroy what otherwise are perfectly decent albums. So here Stryper has produced a couple of beauties, those being “First Love”, which is so sickly sweet it encourages a gagging reflex every time I have to listen to it without skipping, and “Together As One” which is pretty much on the same level. I’m sure the band thinks they are a valuable addition to the album. No, they’re not. They destroy the momentum and feel of the album in its tracks. In the days of vinyl and cassettes I used to cut these songs out when I recorded it for the car, and it made the album a hell of a lot better.
Away from this, the solid base of the album comes from the songs such as “Makes Me Wanna Sing” and “Reach Out” which are the best type that Stryper put forward, hard rock songs that put forth their message but also give it to you with guitars and great vocals. “Together Forever” and “(Waiting For) A Love That’s Real” are also better than average tracks. “Surrender” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” don’t quite finish off the album as great as it could, but neither do they destroy what has gone before it.
On the other hand, there are two songs here that stack up with the best of anything that was produced by hair metal bands throughout the decade of the 1980’s. The title track “Soldiers Under Command” and the first side closer “The Rock That Makes Me Roll” showcase the best that Stryper can offer, with the twin guitars of Michael Sweet and Oz Fox paired off with their amazing vocal work, and driven by the rhythm of Robert Sweet’s ‘visual timekeeping’ and Tim Gaines bass guitar. Both are terrific songs that call for pumping fists and banging heads and are the absolute highlights of the album.

Take the themes of the lyrics as you like, you can either live by them or ignore them. But the songs as a whole throughout are excellent if you enjoy the style of music that came with the hair metal generation of the 1980’s. Michael Sweet’s vocals are always the highlight for me of a Stryper album, the notes he hits are still amazing, while the trading guitars licks and solos of Sweet and Fox are more than good enough to keep the average punter interested. Knock your Christian socks off and listen to (most of) this album and there should be something there for you to enjoy.

Rating: “Stand up and fight, for what you believe in”. 3.5/5