STRYPER's MICHAEL SWEET 'Would Love' To Help VAN HALEN Make Classic-Sounding Album

October 14, 2015

Canada's The Metal Voice recently conducted an with STRYPER frontman Michael Sweet. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below.

On his upcoming solo album:

"I started recording a new solo album in the next three weeks. It's gonna come out on Rat Pak Records next year, probably maybe May or June at the latest. It's gonna be a metal album. There's not gonna by any poppy stuff or ballady stuff. It's gonna be real heavy. Will Hunt [EVANESCENCE] is drumming on it. I think it's gonna blow a lot of people away. They're gonna be, like, 'What?' Dude, it's gonna be a really pumping… I'm gonna do a lot of guitar stuff on it, but I'm gonna try to steer clear of the STRYPER-esque stuff. So, in other words, no big background vocals. There will be background vocals, but not the big angelic spreads. There's not gonna be a lot of harmony guitar solos. There's not gonna be a lot of that stuff that you expect from a STRYPER album that makes it sound like STRYPER, if that makes any sense."

On the most disappointing album he has heard in the last few years:

"I'm gonna go with the VAN HALEN album [2012's 'A Different Kind Of Truth'], the one before the live one. I'm a huge VAN HALEN fan — about as big as they come — and I've always loved the band and everything. And I just feel like the last album… You know when you feel like a band is just going through the motions and they're just not giving it their best? That's what I felt with that album. It got some really good reviews — people were saying, 'This is great. This is great' — and I'm just kind of sitting there reading them, thinking, 'Okay, I'm hearing something completely different than these people are hearing, apparently.' And I have absolutely no clue what I am talking about, because I just didn't get it. I didn't get it. There's qualities there that you've come to expect that are still there that you love — you know, Eddie's [Van Halen] playing… Eddie could play two notes and cause chins to drop, 'cause he's Eddie. But… I don't know, man. I'd love to get hold of those guys, man, and take them into the studio and take them back to the old-school days and help them make an album that, basically, is comparable to 'Van Halen' and 'II'. That's what I'd like to hear, and I know they can do it, man. It'd be killer. They'd probably have a platinum-selling album if they did that."

STRYPER's new album, "Fallen", will be released worldwide on Friday, October 16 via Frontiers. The CD was tracked at SpiritHouse Recording Studios in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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