Terrible pictures taken at EarthlinkLive in Atlanta, GA with camera phone.

Opening Band: House of Heroes:

Main Band: Stryper:

These pictures are worse than the ones above. The opening band had scaled down stage presence, of course. Stryper had a big to-do going on in comparison 🙂

This one was taken when Oz Fox was soloing … that’s him in the bright white spotlight on the stage.

You can make out some figures in the Stryper pictures. The House of Hero pictures are figure-out-able for the most part. More guesswork in the latter (stryper photos).

The concert of great. There was a very long wait for the affair to begin. Finally House of Heroes began. I’ve heard them via their MYSPACE site, a few songs streamed. I was looking forward to hearing them in person. Their sound is great in person, but the sound system really muffled them. I do like the lead singers voice, and it should mature wonderfully over the years and get rather much better, I do hope. The band is young. Voices mature around 35 years of age, BTW.

Their stage precense was good. As I said, a young band, and I can see interesting things from them in the future.

Stryper came out then after another set-up lull. It was one after another of great Stryper songs, going back to their early years, and mixing in their new Reborn tracks. Notably missing were In God We Trust era songs. Not one. 🙁 Many off of To Hell With the Devil, though. 🙂

They opened with Sing-Along Song, off of To Hell With the Devil. Appropriate crowd pleaser to get right into it.

Next the opening track on their new Reborn album: Open Your Eyes. It was a pleasure, as that is one of my favorites from the album.

I can’t go on in track by track recording, it’s a bit muffled right now. I’ll see about filling this in better soon.

I’ll try to list what they DID sing though:

Sing-Along Song

Free
Calling On You
Open Your Eyes
Soldiers Under Command
Loud’n’Clear
Live Again
Make You Mine
Rock the Makes Me Roll
Reborn
All for One
The Abyss & To Hell With the Devil

In NO real particular order, just rumbled there together … I might be missing one or so. [I don’t think they played “Passion” I know I WISHED they did, but don’t THINK they did.]

It was great seeing Stryper again. I saw them years ago in Disney World “Night of Joy”, in the 80’s. They made it plain last night that they plan on staying together now. That is WONDERFUL news.

They left the stage last night, then came back with The Abyss & To Hell With the Devil and another song or two. Then Michael Sweet asked if he could pray … of course the crowd agreed with that. It was a great ending to a great concert. They are unabashadly Christians, but offer their songs as encouragement and drawing people to Christ, not thrusting the message down throats.

I have many groups in my playing lists … I love many intensely, and Stryper is right there, in a very special place in my heart.