{"id":10627,"date":"2013-03-26T00:00:21","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T00:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=10627"},"modified":"2013-06-01T16:11:54","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T16:11:54","slug":"album-review-stryper-second-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-stryper-second-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"STRYPER – Second Coming (2013) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

STRYPER
Second Coming<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nFrontiers (2013)<\/span>
Rating: 8\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The yellow and black is back! Oh how we knocked, pounded and ridiculed Stryper back in the 80s. Us teenagers were a moronic lot; our jackets daubed in satanic imagery, Stryper were simply an easy target with their pompous, Christian brand of lightweight metal. The facts were of course that I was a secret fan, and often played the California band\u2019s To Hell With The Devil<\/em> 1986 opus, even if I found some of the ballads a little too slushy.<\/p>\n

Even so, decades later, Stryper are back and no-one cares what they believe in; they are simply proof that if you\u2019re a good enough musicians then you can stand the test of time, and with metal back in a big way it means we can welcome such a band back.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Second Coming<\/em> isn\u2019t an all new Stryper record, although it does feature two brand spanking new tracks (\u2018Blackened\u2019 and \u2018Bleeding From The Inside Out\u2019). Instead, Michael Sweet and company have opted to re-record the old classics. I\u2019ve never been a fan of this type of resurrection; Kiss tried it, and while in some aspects it works, you can never better the original records because they were very much part of a time. Sure, a lot of old, particularly 80s metal albums suffered at the hands of grotty production, but it gave such songs a charm, and any real fan would continue to play such records. So, to be presented with a disc of mainly re-recordings, I\u2019m rather sceptical, more so due to the fact that Stryper\u2019s last studio album, 2011\u2019s The Covering<\/em>, was merely cover versions.<\/p>\n

So, the album kicks off with \u2018Loud \u2018N\u2019 Clear\u2019 which opened up their 1984 debut The Yellow And Black Attack<\/em>. As one would expect, the production is far crisper; Michael Sweet\u2019s vocals shine like his halo, and the guitars are sweeter to the ears.<\/p>\n

\u2018Loving You\u2019 is given a real kick up the arse this time around; Robert Sweet\u2019s drums are clinical and more cutting, but again, this is what one would expect with today\u2019s technology. It\u2019s also no surprise that the band have chosen six songs from To Hell With The Devil<\/em> and another six from 1985\u2019s Soldiers Under Command<\/em>, the best of these being \u2018First Love\u2019, \u2018The Rock That Makes Me Roll\u2019, \u2018To Hell With The Devil\u2019, \u2018Calling On You\u2019 and \u2018Free\u2019, but it\u2019s a shame Stryper chose to ignore their underrated 1990 record Against The Law<\/em> which contained some of the band\u2019s heaviest work.<\/p>\n

As for the new tracks, well, these bode well for a new album. \u2018Bleeding From The Inside Out\u2019 is a reasonably heavy number which features some incredible axe-work, the melody of the chug reminding me of Bad Company\u2019s \u2018Feel Like Makin\u2019 Love\u2019 (from 1975\u2019s Straight Shooter<\/em>). Meanwhile, \u2018Blackened\u2019 rolls in on more exceptional guitar work and Michael Sweet’s soaring vocal.<\/p>\n

Stryper in 2013 could well be a bigger force than they were back in the heavy metal heyday. For a start, there doesn\u2019t seem to be the ignorance within the metal world any more; metal is metal, whatever form it takes, but to see a band as heavily criticized as Stryper churning out this type of melodic metal is great. Maybe re-recording some of the older tracks wasn\u2019t a bad move after all, and I hope that this time round they truly revel in the light they cast all those years ago. In Stryper we trust!<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STRYPERSecond Coming Frontiers (2013)Rating: 8\/10 The yellow and black is back! Oh how we knocked, pounded and ridiculed Stryper back in the 80s. Us teenagers were a moronic lot; our jackets daubed in satanic imagery, Stryper were simply an easy target with their pompous, Christian brand of lightweight metal. The facts were of course that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stryper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10627"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12226,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10627\/revisions\/12226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}