STRYPER

Before Stryper had officially toured anywhere else on earth, they had toured Japan. In a 2023 interview Michael Sweet put it plainly: when the band flew over in 1985 they had never officially toured any country, and Japan was where that began. He had turned 21 the year the debut EP appeared and was 22 by the time he landed. They went genuinely unsure how it would go, and found crowds waiting. What he keeps returning to is how humbling it was that a largely Buddhist country took a Christian band to heart.

Source: The Rockpit (Michael Sweet interview, 2023)

Stryper crossed to Japan three times during the 1980s: 1985, then 1987, then a third trip after In God We Trust that put them on the stage of Nippon Budokan. Their Japanese label lists those three visits as the milestones of the decade there. A BARKS live report, written years later, dates the Budokan night to 1989.

Source: Avalon Label, Marquee Inc. (STRYPER artist page)

The run that finally brought Stryper back for headline shows of their own after twenty-seven years was not set in motion by a label or a promoter. According to Christian Today Japan, the April 2016 tour — billed as the "Yellow & Black is Back" Celebration Tour in Japan — grew out of a long campaign by fans, among them a group calling itself STRYPER Street Team Japan. They played Umeda Club Quattro in Osaka on the 15th and Club Citta' in Kawasaki on the 16th and 17th; the Kawasaki room, 1,300 standing, was full. Japan also got the opening dates of the world tour behind Fallen.

Source: Christian Today Japan (report on the April 2016 Japan shows)

On 5 April 2024 the Christian pop duo for KING + COUNTRY — brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone — released a single and video of "To Hell With The Devil (RISE)," credited to the duo with rapper Lecrae and Stryper. Michael Sweet went back and re-played his own closing solo for it, and the arrangement gained a newly written passage on the idea of rising out of darkness into light. It came from the companion soundtrack to Unsung Hero, the biopic about the Smallbone family, which arrived on 26 April alongside the film's US theatrical release through Lionsgate. The same soundtrack carries a second Stryper item, a separate track billed as a Stryper Interlude featuring Sweet. The brothers have said that one of their earliest memories is sitting at a record player holding a 45 with the sleeve of The Yellow and Black Attack.

Source: Curb | Word Entertainment (official for KING + COUNTRY press release)

The odd spelling has a source. Stryper takes its name from Isaiah 53:5, the verse about being healed by wounds — stripes — and the yellow and black bars the band wears are that word made visible. Michael Sweet has described the reasoning without much ceremony: they kept playing the music they had always played, rewrote the words instead, and put Isaiah 53:5 behind the look so that the stripes stood for something rather than being decoration.

Source: BLABBERMOUTH.NET (standing note on the origin of the band's name)

Before there was a Stryper there was Roxx Regime. In 1983 the Sweet brothers, Robert and Michael, put a band together with Oz Fox — a classmate from high school — and Timothy Gaines, a bassist with a local reputation. They cut a demo under that name and worked the Hollywood club circuit with it, and the band eventually caught the ear of Enigma Records. The name changed to Stryper soon afterwards and the first nationally distributed record, The Yellow and Black Attack, followed. The demo itself surfaced commercially in 2007 with no overdubs and no re-recording, and one of the tracks on it is the earliest version of "Honestly" — the song that would later become their MTV and Billboard hit.

Source: BLABBERMOUTH.NET (report on the release of the Roxx Regime demos)

When Stryper were looking for a second guitarist, the man who came closest to getting the job was C.C. DeVille. In an interview timed to his autobiography, Michael Sweet said the deal was as good as done — all that was left was signing — and that what killed it was not the music but the wardrobe: DeVille decided he did not want the yellow-and-black. Sweet says there were no hard feelings on either side. DeVille went on to Poison, and looking back Sweet reckons both parties made the right call.

Source: Guitar World (Michael Sweet interview on his autobiography Honestly)

The Japanese dates set for August 2018 did not happen: Oz Fox fell suddenly ill and everything moved to two consecutive nights at Club Citta' Kawasaki in February 2019. The point of the shows was to rebuild the band's 1985 Japanese debut, and both nights opened with that set played in its original running order. The reconstruction extended to small things — Michael Sweet walked out for the first song carrying no guitar, just a hand mic, exactly as he had in 1985. As for the health scare, Young Guitar's reviewer reported seeing no trace of a man recently unwell.

Source: Young Guitar (live report, Club Citta' Kawasaki)