To Hell With The Devil

To Hell With The Devil is the Grammy Award nominated third release, and third studio album, by the Christian metal and glam metal band Stryper, released October 24th, 1986. It was the first Christian metal album to achieve platinum status, selling over one million copies. It remained the best-selling Christian metal album until P.O.D.'s Satellite in 2001.
The album was listed at No. 88 in the 2001 book, CCM Presents: The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music. The album was the only heavy metal album on the list. Ian Christe, author of the heavy metal history book Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal (2003), mentions To Hell with the Devil in his book as one of the landmarks of the glam metal movement. Throughout 1987, both music videos for "Free" and "Honestly" ranked No. 1 on Dial MTV, the daily MTV list of most requested videos. The first single/video video for "Calling on You" also reached No. 2 on the show. "Honestly" was the biggest single from the record peaking at #23 on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles Chart.
The original cover of To Hell with the Devil caused a torrent of controversy, and was soon changed to an all-black design. The original artwork depicted four long haired angels throwing the devil into a fiery pit. The cover was then changed on later pressings to a basic black cover with the Stryper logo and the album title in the center.
According to Michael Sweet's autobiography, as the band started to record the album, Michael felt Tim Gaines wasn't the right bassist for the record. He was replaced by bassist Matt Hurich, who eventually ended up not working out. So session bassist Brad Cobb took Gaines' place while recording the album. However, before the tour began, Sweet asked Gaines to rejoin as he felt it wasn't right performing as "Stryper" without him.
In 2010, HM Magazine listed To Hell with the Devil No. 3 on its Top 100 Christian Rock Albums of All Time list stating that "when this album broke, it went multi-platinum, forever raising the ceiling of what heavy Christian music could do." Heaven's Metal fanzine ranked it No. 6 on its Top 100 Christian metal albums of all-time list.
The album has been reissued several times, the latest in 2000 by Michael Sweet Productions which features the Christmas song "Winter Wonderland" from their 1985 "Reason For The Season" single. This edition is limited to 2,000 copies.

Lineup

Michael Sweet (Sweet & Lynch) - Lead Vocals/Guitar
Oz Fox (Sin Dizzy, Bloodgood) - Lead Guitar/Background Vocals
Timothy Gaines (Sin Dizzy) - Bass/Background Vocals
Robert Sweet (Blissed) - Drums

Guests

John Van Tongeren - Keyboards
Brad Cobb - Bass