Tony Cummings talks to the hard working veteran of rock music, MICHAEL SWEET

Michael: It's incredible, and especially for us it's twofold, because we pray that our music delivers the message, inspires and encourages people, changes their lives to follow God. When we see young kids out in the crowd, it's exciting, because it's living on.

Tony: I met someone once who got converted not through the music but simply through the sleeve of 'To Hell With The Devil'. It got them asking the right questions.

Michael: That's the most important part. All this fun stuff of loud amplifiers and lights, crazy costumes and hair - later on in life, none of that really matters. What matters is where are we going, who do we believe in, where do we place our faith? We do it on a platform of fun - something we grew up with and love, which is rock and roll - but that's not what's most important.

Tony: In a press release you said you wanted to catch the rawness of Stryper's live performance on your CD/DVD, 'Live At The Whisky'. Do you think you succeeded?

Michael: We really did. There's a certain something that Stryper has live that we, for whatever reason, haven't been able to capture in the studio. Although I think some of the albums have been great, turned out well and whatnot, there's just a certain energy that happens live that doesn't happen in the studio. We tried to capture that on this CD and DVD; although it's a small venue, it's a legendary venue. That's where we began: I played the Whisky when I was 16 years old, before Stryper - we were Roxx Regime. Those are our roots. To go back and record a DVD and an album there made perfect sense for us.

Tony: I was surprised to see you credited as the producer, because usually the producer of a live gig is sat outside in a mobile.

Michael: We hired a company to come and record it - so they just plugged in cables, made sure levels were right, and that was it. I took the hard-drive. We went into a studio and we really tried not to doctor too much, change too much, but we did fix obvious mistakes - added a sample kick with the live kick to make it punchier - and then we mixed it. I budgeted it, put it all together, took care of everything. Producer, in my mind, is so many different levels of responsibility.

Tony: Many years ago I produced a couple of live albums, but now I wonder if I really was the producer. I think it was the engineer who really produced them.

Michael: I tread on thin ice in interviews because I don't want to offend anybody, but a lot of those old Stryper albums were produced by me. I don't mean exclusively, but I had a lot of input in production. I was there from 10AM to 2AM; and when the producer, who we were paying $40,000, would show up at 2PM in the afternoon and leave at 8PM - stick his head in every now and then and say, 'Yep, sounds good!' We're sitting in there doing all the work! Unfortunately, maybe five or six times out of 10, that's the case with big-name producers. They bring their name to the table - and a great engineer - and that's about it. I got smart and decided, when Stryper reformed in '03, 'We're not going to spend the money on a producer: we know how to produce this, we know what we want. We're going to save the money, invest it - do better things with it than fritter it away on a producer's Porsche.' There are some great, real producers out there in the music world; but not many.

Tony: What about the video side of things? Don't you need experience there?

Michael: You do. There's a guy that we've been working with for the last few videos - my solo videos and the Stryper videos; they're a great company. They filmed the 'Live At The Whisky' footage. It's called Fortress, and it's AXS TV - a gentleman by the name of Devin, who's a great guy, really talented. They're great at what they do: they know how to edit, make everything look really nice. I think we had five cameras, then another one on a boom with an operator. So we did it right: we had a lot of different angles.

Tony: Are you thinking about the next Stryper project?

Stryper

Michael: Yes. I'm already starting - believe it or not - to write, to get ideas with guitar riffs, the structure/flow of the next album. We won't start recording it until January of next year - late January. We're a little ways away, but that will be here before we know it. I also have a Sweet and Lynch album coming out in February of next year. I'm excited about that, because it's a really cool album, it's got a lot of great music on it. George is one of my all-time favourite guitar players, and it was a real pleasure working with him and James Lomenzo [of Megadeth and White Lion] and Brian Tichy [of S.U.N., Whitesnake]. I just had a blast doing that. It takes you back to the '70s - late '70s, early '80s kind of sound.

Tony: 'I'm Not Your Suicide' has been well received. Are you pleased with it?