Stryper

The timing is almost too neat. To Hell with the Devil came out on October 24, 1986, and Stryper play the Newton Performing Arts Center on Friday, October 16, 2026, eight days shy of the record turning forty. It was the first Christian metal album to go platinum, it earned a Grammy nomination, and it is the reason a band in yellow and black stripes is still filling rooms four decades later.

The anniversary has been marked all year, most visibly by Roxx Records putting out a track by track tribute to the album in its original running order. Stryper themselves are simply out working, with a fall run through New England, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin ahead of this date, Michael Sweet still on lead vocals and guitar and his brother Robert still behind the drums.

Newton is the part worth planning for. The venue sits in Catawba County, roughly forty miles northwest of Uptown, which is about forty five minutes up I-85 and US 321 with no traffic and longer on a Friday evening. It is a seated arts center rather than a club, so this is a theater volume version of a band that made its name on arena volume, and the seats are assigned. Leave earlier than the map tells you.