Last year on the "Day Of the Beast" I listened to KFJC's "Day of Doom" 24 hours of Doom Metal and...they threw in Slayer & Deicide near the end. This year the 7/7/07 sequence came up. Reminding me of a certain bunch of Jesus freak rockers in bumblebee suits.
For those of you that read the first issue of my zine "Stoner Wall" you might remember this exchange I once had with my "Born again Christian yet liked certain metal bands and later turned into a reggae listening, acid dropping hippy" friend, Danny:
The scene: early Fall 1984. Danny & I had just come back from record shopping in Berkeley. His mom was a judge for NCAA gymnastics. I had bought a new issue of Kerrang! and more importantly an Iron Maiden picture disc 12" of their new single "Two Minutes To Midnight". Danny bought a Stryper tape.
The place: Highway 580 going east towards Pleasanton.
Danny (hands his mom the tape of Stryper): "Here mom, can you play this?"
Danny's mom: "Uh...I don't know what this is..."
Danny: "It's a band called Stryper, they're not one of those devil groups like Iron Maiden that (RagnarR's real name) listens to!"
Me: "Whaaaat!? Iron Maiden isn't a 'devil group' they had only one song about the devil!"
Danny: "No, they're ARE a 'devil group'! They wear crosses...I mean maybe they wear crosses but its for anti-Christian purposes!"
Me: "Not even!...I've never seen a single photo of them with a cross! You don't even KNOW what you're TALKING about.
I had seen practically every photo of 'Maiden in the press and not one with them wore a cross rightside up or upside down. He was likely confusing Black Sabbath or even Slayer with 'Maiden. I figured he would've at least been able to know the difference.
Danny: "Whatever!" (cue wussy intro to "The Yellow and Black Attack")
A few years later in my "I like everything that's hard rock and metal" phase (1986-early 87), I traded my friend Steve a Lizzy Borden LP for his Stryper "Soldiers Under Command" (on white vinyl, natch). A "crap for crap" trade looking back at it. Although I was socially awkward but I knew everything about METAL!...Or maybe not?
Their arch-nemesis The Killer Bees from the WWF
This news from a metal festival in Mexico with Slayer and Stryper on the same bill (!) is pretty weird.
If that wasn't enough, Scott Ian tells of Anthrax, Raven and Stryper playing together in Reseda, CA. Metal nerd note: technically Metallica and Stryper once played together. One of Metallica's earliest gigs in L.A. was with a band called Roxx Regime who a few years later became Stryper. Roxx Regime also had the "stripe schtik" and another soon to be famous big-haired dork named C.C. Deville.
ENDNOTES: Look at how Stryper's "holy missiles" are about to completely destroy earth yet Iron Maiden's "2 Minutes to Midnight" was a warning against nuclear war. I know whose side I'm on...
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