Album Review — Stryper

Stryper — God Damn Evil

It certainly seems that Stryper set out to make their heaviest album to date. From the album title to the guest musician to the high-octave screams throughout the record, I believe the band has accomplished what they set out to do. I’m just not sure most of their decisions make the album any better.

So there’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is there are a lot of strong songs here. The second half of the album is very good and I enjoy every song. For me, the album highlight is “Beautiful”, a song that would definitely make my Top 10 Stryper list. “Sea of Thieves” is another strong track and even though the opening riff on “The Valley” is a direct rip from Metallica, it’s another impressive song. “Sorry” is the best song on the front half of the record.

Now for the bad news. The majority of the decisions on this record to make it “heavy” end up hurting the album. “Take It To The Cross” features growls from Matt Blanchard of Shadows Fall and it’s just a bad track. The album would be much better without the song and I’ve taken to skipping it as I’ve listened to the album all week. The last track on the record, “The Devil Doesn’t Live Here”, is very heavy and would have been a great opening track. Some re-working of the track listing would have helped.

Sweet sounds great throughout the record but for the sake of sounding metal, takes to high octave screams on a few songs which really distract, especially on “Lost”. Sweet sounds as good as he did in the 80s and there’s no need for the theatrics.

Having listened to the album through multiples times this week, I’ve grown to like it more and more. It would grade much higher with the omission of the first track, but it still ranks up in the top half of Stryper records.

Grade — 85 out of 100

Track Listing

01. Take It To The Cross
02. Sorry *
03. Lost
04. God Damn Evil
05. You Don’t Even Know Me
06. The Valley *
07. Sea Of Thieves *
08. Beautiful *
09. Can’t Live Without Your Love *
10. Own Up
11. The Devil Doesn’t Live Here

*Best Songs