STRYPER To Film San Juan Show For Upcoming DVD

Reunited Christian hard rockers STRYPER will be filming their March 6 performance at Tito Puente Amphitheatre in San Juan, Puerto Rico for an upcoming DVD, tentatively due later in the year.

Although plans existed for the band to record their Oct. 24 show at the Ogden Theater in Denver, Colorado for the DVD, the group eventually scrapped the idea due to technical reasons, according to singer Michael Sweet.

"We attempted to shoot a DVD in Denver, Colorado and I pulled the plug on it because the venue where we were shooting had no lights, had no sound, we had a 102 decibel limit — it was just bad all around," Michael told On Track magazine in a recent interview. "So what we did is throughout the [most recent U.S.] tour we got a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage, but we didn't actually shoot a show, and what we're going to do is shoot the Puerto Rico show. So yeah, when we get that footage from that show, we're gonna put that together and we'll have a live album from the recordings [we made during the last tour] and then we'll have a DVD as well, so we'll be releasing both of those in 2004. . . The DVD will be just from the Puerto Rico show and then a lot of behind the scenes footage from the tour, from the U.S. 'inland' tour, 'cause Puerto Rico's part of the states, right? So, yeah, it'll consist of a lot of behind-the-scenes footage, but the show itself will be the one in Puerto Rico. The recording that's being released as a live record will be from the [recent] tour, like excerpts from every show throughout the tour."

In the same interview, Sweet discussed the possibility of the band recording a new studio album at some point in the not-too-distant future.

"If STRYPER did a new record I think it would reflect, in a lot of people's eyes, Michael Sweet solo stuff," he said. "And the reason why I say that is I'm a different writer than I was 15 years ago, and if you look back at all the old STRYPER records, I wrote most of the stuff that we recorded. I wrote, gosh, 95 percent of the music that we recorded and if we did a new album, I would probably write a good portion of the stuff that we would record. So what I'm writing now isn't at all like what I was writing then, so I would venture to say that if we did a new record, say this year, 2004, a lot of people would probably say that. 'Oh this stuff reflects more what Michael is doin' solo.' but I just kind of wish people would take that into account. . . It would certainly be an edgy record. Like, for example, STRYPER would never record a record like [my solo record] 'Real'. . . We'd never do something like that. It would certainly be an edgy record, I kind of wish that things had worked out where we could have done a record and it would have sounded like or been similar to, or actually been the 'Truth' record, the music off the 'Truth' record. That, to me, if someone said, 'What would be your ideal record to do with STRYPER?' That would be the record. And I think if that record had the right push and the right label and STRYPER did it and you put the STRYPER name on it and we released 'Save Me' as the first rock single or something like that, I think it would do some incredible things. But, that's just my opinion." Read the rest of the interview here.