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| IN GOD WE TRUST by Stryper (1988) Enigma Records | D1-73317
Producers: Michael Lloyd, Stryper
File Under: Glam Metal
Time Capsule-Worthy Track:
Always There For You
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In God We Trust sold over half a million copies, earning gold record status. It reached #32 on the general market album chart. Two singles from the project made it onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart, quite a feat for any Christian rock band at the time. The album received two GMA Dove Awards (which was amazing, considering the fact that only two decades earlier, Dove Awards were handed out for things like Best New Quartet and Favorite Bass or Tenor Singer, things like that). And yet, somehow In God We Trust was considered a step backward for the band that one reviewer described as "four bumblebees that got into a can of Aqua Net."
Michael, Robert, Tim and Oz had exploded onto the scene in 1984. Christian rock would never be the same again. This glam-metal quartet in big hair, makeup and spandex quickly demolished conventions and pushed barriers to their outer limits with their debut, a 6-song EP titled The Yellow and Black Attack. With a bigger budget, the music became more sophisticated. Their reputation grew with the sophomore release, 1985's Soldiers Under Command. The upward trajectory continued in 1987 with a mega-successful, platinum-selling, MTV-embraced record called To Hell With the Devil. Worldwide fame ensued. Two years later, Stryper would record In God We Trust, an album that Michael Sweet says was their most polished album yet.
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| Michael Sweet |
"As our popularity grew larger, our budgets did too," Sweet said in a 2019 social media post. "We had more money to spend on recording so we did just that. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make [In God We Trust]. Due to having more money, we took more time to track it. We layered and layered and unfortunately lost the rawness in the process. I also got really sick during the recording and had to really work through it. I often wonder if it would have been our biggest and most popular album had it been a little less produced like the others."
He's right about the layering. It was all just a little too much. Too many stacked vocals...too many forgettable melodies...and too much pop, not enough metal. But In God We Trust wasn't all bad. It had its moments.
The title track became an iconic Stryper song that opened with a clever lyrical idea...
It's been said money talks
If so what does it say?
Four simple words we see every day
But from there, the lyrics became very simplistic...
In God we trust
In Him we must believe
(He is the only way)
In God we trust
His Son we must receive
(Tomorrow's too late, accept Him today)
Of course, Stryper and simplistic lyrics went together like macaroni and cheese, so that was no big surprise.
Always There For You occupies the #2 hole on this album and it's one of my all-time favorite Stryper songs. It does suffer somewhat from God-As-My-Girlfriend syndrome (along with a few other tracks on this record), but the song just clicks. And it works equally as well lyrically as a pledge from God to us that He will never leave us nor forsake us or as a song from an earthly friend or lover promising loyalty and fidelity. Either way, it's a positive, uplifting message. It's also a great musical and vocal performance, and it's got a hook that stays in your head for hours at a time.
Oh - and in the video for Always There For You (linked below) it is revealed that Stryper had their own helicopter. Their own freakin' helicopter.
Keep the Fire Burning has a more traditional Stryper sound and song structure (as if anything about this band could be called traditional). I'll say it this way: Keep the Fire Burning could've been included on Soldiers Under Command or To Hell With The Devil and it would've felt right at home.
I Believe in You was a stereotypical hold-your-lighter-up-and-sway-to-the-music love ballad. Unfortunately, it was a collection of generic phrases like:
Then you came into my life and gave your love to me...In my heart you'll stay...And I believe in you through and through...Always and forever it will be You and me together...You're the only one that fills my heart and I love you more and more everyday... you get the idea.
Side One of In God We Trust concludes with The Writing's On The Wall, a hyper-evangelistic song that harkens back to the band's earlier days. This song is about as subtle as a Donald Trump tweet.
The truth is right before you
Don't refuse it
No matter what you've been through
He can change it cause
He is our God, Creator of all
Unless you accept Him, you'll continue to fall
The battle is real, on you He will call
So don't ever wait because the writing's on the wall
Just look around and
You will see confusion
The God that Stryper serves
Is no delusion
The tempo picks up quite a bit here and some nice, twin guitar harmonies are heard.
It should also be noted that several times throughout this record Michael Sweet unexpectedly soars into the stratosphere and suddenly hits vocal notes that make my nuts hurt. And he nails it every time. So there's that.
Michael Sweet also served as the principal songwriter for this album. His brother Robert helped out with the title track, and Oz Fox wrote a couple of songs on Side Two. Michael penned everything else.
Additional musicians for In God We Trust included Billy Meyers and John Van Tongeren on keys, Steve Croes on the synclavier, and Brad Cott on bass. The album was produced by Michael Lloyd and the band; it was engineered by Dan Nebanzal and Carmine Rubino. Bob Vogt, Brian Scheuble, Charlie Brocco, Dave Deavalon, Gary Myersburg, Jeff DeMorris, Mark McKenna, Mike Bosley, Robert Hart, and Scott Gordon - ten dudes - all served as assistant engineers. ("Here's your problem right here...")
The album cover was, like most Stryper covers, just over the top. The hair and makeup were ridiculous...and if it weren't for his chest hair, you would've sworn that Robert Sweet was a flat-chested girl with a Farrah Fawcett hairdo on steroids. He was just too pretty to be a dude. Patrick Pending was the art director and the photos were taken by Neil Zlozower and Anne Revenge. The design concept came from the band.
In God We Trust was mastered by Bernie Grundman and mixed by Carmine Rubino, Dan Nebenzal, Michael Lloyd, and Stryper. Jeff DeMorris and Robert Hart assisted with the mixing of the album.
The record was released on Enigma and was distributed by Capitol and Benson. It was recorded at A&M Studios, Cherokee Studios, Amigo Studios, and The Village Recorder.
Side Two opens with a stacked-vocals rocker that had to have been written with live performances in mind since Michael Sweet spends a good bit of time during this song imploring the listener to put his or her hands up in the air and move to the rhythm. Total sing-along song for arena shows. The song title was It's Up 2 U. Replacing words with numbers or capital letters happened a lot in the 80s. And yes, it was annoying. Maybe not so much at the time, but definitely now.
The World of You and I (which I think, technically, should be The World of You and Me...but I digress) is a mid-tempo love song with more vocal harmonies stacked on top of vocal harmonies. Lyrically, it sounds like a collection of pick-up lines...
We can have what everybody dreams about
We can say hello and never say goodbye
Love can last forever without any doubt
In the world of you and I
The Oz Fox-penned Come to the Everlife is up next. More stacked vocals abound, causing the actual melody line to sort of get obscured (this is the case with 2 or 3 other songs on this album as well). Come to the Everlife has an up-front evangelistic message. Listening to it again for the first time in quite a while, I can't decide if it's an invitation to faith in Christ...
You don't have to lose, you just have to choose
Just call on His name, you won't be the same
Lift your hearts up today
Put your troubles away
Peace and harmony found
Love will be all around
...or an expectation of Jesus' sudden return.
No sorrow, no pain
New bodies to gain
Come with me tonight
Come to the everlife
We will see new life in the sky
At least one blogger/music critic said that if you were going to skip over one song from In God We Trust, Come To The Everlife should be the one.
Lonely is another ballad that pulls double duty as a song that could be about the Lord or a lady friend.
Once upon a lonely night
Emptiness filled my heart
And I realized my life wasn't right
Then I called upon your name
And I just want to say
I was lonely, lost without your love
Sad and lonely without you
You're the only one that I'll ever love
I need you
All I'll ever need is you
Cause you are everything
I've never seen a love that's so true
The search is over now for me and forever more
And I'll never have to be lonely anymore
There are a few lines that lead me to think Sweet is talking about a relationship with God. However, one online reviewer wrote about being happy that Lonely was not "overtly religious" and was without "Biblical overtones." So I guess the song did its job. That's sort of the point with the God-As-My-Girlfriend genre...the listener just hears whatever he wants to hear in it, right?
In God We Trust ends with a driving metal track titled The Reign that suffers from a melody line that's not memorable at all. Lyrically, this Fox-penned tune is more akin to standard Christian rock fare from the 80s. The up-front message is that Jesus (King of kings and Lord of all) satisfies while fame and materialism do not.
At the end of the day, it's not that In God We Trust was a subpar album. It just had a really tough act to follow. I guess it's hard to top a multi-hit, platinum-selling record. Most bands will never know if it's difficult or not.
It's also a victim of the times. Shimmering, polished, over-produced pop/metal albums were definitely a thing in the late 80s. One blogger described all of the overdubbing and stacking on In God We Trust as "pure gluttony." Called it an "overly-slick, soulless sound drunk on its own technological hubris." But he admitted that a LOT of other metal bands were doing the same thing at the time. So much so that - one guy's theory - it only took one album to single-handedly push heavy metal into the cultural abyss for good - Nirvana's Nevermind.
A reviewer at Encyclopaedia Metallum who goes by the name 'greenberger' says that In God We Trust actually had some pretty strong songs on it and wondered how much better tunes like Always There For You and Keep the Fire Burning would sound "on a much more stripped-down record, devoid of all the glitz and flash." He does give the band props, however, for "sticking to their overtly-Christian message in the face of commercial stardom. Insane or not, these guys did not sell their souls to the devil for some fame and fortune, that's for sure. How many other bands can claim the same?"
Greenberger continues: "In the final Stryper analysis, In God We Trust is more a product of the machine than a work of artistic expression, but it shows that the band still had talent. They just didn't know what to do with it, but neither did any of their metal pals. It's a worthy example of what was happening to heavy metal - and America's pop culture - at the end of the 1980s, and a fun nostalgic trip back to the days of big hair."
At the dawn of the 1990s, commercial rock radio began to change, although most of us failed to notice much at the time. In God We Trust had gone gold and Stryper had hit the road for another major world tour. But, looking back, it was to be their last hurrah. Against the Law would see the band experience a falling away of sorts, scrambling to stay relevant and burned out spiritually from too many miles and too much stardom.
The guys were very transparent with HM magazine about the band's spiritual condition and other negative issues in the early 90s. Timothy Gaines admitted to bouts with alcoholism, said he was basically broke due to lawsuits, and felt that he'd been typecast and blackballed as a result of his time with Stryper. Oz Fox basically portrayed himself and his mates as hypocrites. "There was sin in the band," Fox admitted, "and the reason it was happening is that we didn't know the Lord like we should have. I can't speak for the other guys but my heart was focused on wanting to be a rock star."
"Looking back, it wasn't a pretty sight," lamented Michael Sweet. "We were living the same lifestyle off stage that we were condemning on stage."
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| Stryper in 2019 |
Stryper eventually disbanded and Michael Sweet went off on a solo tangent...and even fronted Boston for a while. The other guys spent time in bands like Sin Dizzy and King James. But the band has since reformed and has released no fewer than ten recordings since 2004. There's been some drama regarding original bassist Tim Gaines (who has either quit or been fired - again - depending on who you believe). But Stryper seems re-born and re-energized. In fact, they'll be coming to my hometown in another month or so. My son and I will be there.
I'll be the guy yelling, "Play Always There For You!" between songs.
