Tara Fox on Growing Up Around Stryper and Finding Her Own Frequency

Aug 22, 2026

For most fans of Christian hard rock and metal, the name Oz Fox is inseparable from Stryper, the yellow-and-black stage gear, the soaring twin-guitar harmonies, and four decades of records that helped shape a whole generation. For Tara Fox, that same name has always carried a simpler title first: Dad.

Growing up inside the Stryper orbit gave Tara a view of that world almost no one else experiences, the rehearsals, the gear, the touring, the fans, right alongside the far more ordinary father who existed once the stage lights went dark. Today she has built a creative identity entirely her own, working across music, photography, modeling, visual design and her RoboFox project. Her ideas tend to begin with sound and then expand outward into images, characters and complete visual worlds. She is also releasing her own music, recently dropping a pair of cyberpunk-leaning singles available everywhere you stream or buy music.

Her path recently crossed with Heaven’s Metal Magazine’s Seth Metoyer when she created the visualizer for his industrial reworking of Stryper’s 1988 ballad “All of Me”, a song Oz Fox played on nearly forty years ago. In a conversation with Metoyer, Tara talked about that full-circle moment, her upbringing around one of Christian metal’s defining bands, and where her own work is heading next.

Growing Up Around Stryper

Long before Stryper became a landmark in Christian rock history, the band was simply part of Tara’s everyday childhood, albums, tours and musicians woven into the ordinary experience of growing up with her father. Asked about her earliest memories of that world, she reflected on how a child absorbs their surroundings rather than measuring them:

“A child doesn’t measure the uniqueness of their surroundings, they absorb them. It wasn’t until I was older that I could look back and understand how uncommon the world around me actually was. The Stryper family and the music were always part of my life, so to me, it was my normal. I remember being around rehearsals, shows, guitars, gear, and the people who came with that world. I also spent time on tour with my dad, which gave me a behind-the-scenes view most people never get to experience. Some of my favorite memories, though, are the quieter moments in between, traveling and simply being together as a family.”
“As a kid, I was just spending time with my dad while he worked. I didn’t fully understand Stryper’s history or what the band meant to so many people. As an adult, I have a much deeper appreciation for how unique that upbringing was. Being surrounded by music and creativity from such a young age naturally became part of who I am and helped shape the creative path I eventually found for myself.”
– Tara Fox

She grew up knowing her dad played in a band people recognized, even if the meaning of that fame took time to register. The turning point, she said, came in glimpses, often from a stage, looking out at a crowd:

“I grew up knowing my dad was in a band and that people knew the name Stryper, but fame was at the time an abstract idea to me, something the outside world understood long before I did.”
“I think some of the moments that started putting it into perspective were being at shows and seeing the size of the crowds. The band or my dad would sometimes bring me out on stage to wave hi to everyone, and I remember looking out and seeing all those people. When you’re that young, you don’t necessarily process the significance of it. I was just excited to be up there with my dad. As I got older, I started to understand that the way I knew him and the band was very different from how fans around the world knew them. At home they were family, but to a lot of other people, their music was a meaningful part of their lives.”
– Tara Fox

For fans, a band can harden into mythology, frozen into specific eras by photographs and songs. Family, meanwhile, sees the person who keeps living once the show ends. When it comes to the side of Oz Fox that stage audiences rarely glimpse, Tara pointed to something fans who follow him online may already suspect:

“If people follow him on socials, then it may not come as much of a surprise just how down to earth he really is. There’s Oz Fox on stage with the guitars, the hair, the lights and all that energy, but then there’s just Dad. He’s always had a goofy sense of humor, and he’s someone who really values his family and the people close to him.”
“Growing up, I never really thought of him as this larger-than-life rock musician. I just knew him as my dad, and I think that’s a side of him fans don’t always get to see behind closed doors. Our father-daughter relationship has always been built around music and nerding out over new technology. A lot of my early memories with him involve him introducing me to different ways of creating, whether it was making music, teaching me design, a new sound, experimenting with computers, or just showing me something new he thought was cool. He’s extremely tech-savvy, and I think that’s something we really share.”
“As artists, we’re both naturally curious and always experimenting with new technology and new tools that enhance what we are trying to convey. I think that curiosity for both music and technology definitely rubbed off on me and became a big part of how I create today.”
– Tara Fox

What You Learn From Watching the Work

More than forty years into Stryper’s career, the records and concerts remain the visible part of the story. Behind them sits the far less glamorous architecture of a working musician’s life, the rehearsing, traveling, recording and relationship-building that keeps a band going long after most of its peers have vanished. Tara watched that process up close, and it left a lasting impression on how she approaches her own career:

“I think one of the biggest things I learned from watching my dad is that being an artist takes a lot more work and dedication than what people see on stage. There are rehearsals, traveling, recording, interviews, meeting fans, and constantly having to show up and put in the work year after year. I watched him continue doing that through all the different stages of life.”
“It taught me that if you really love creating, you have to be willing to keep going even when it isn’t glamorous or easy. Talent is obviously important, but so are consistency, discipline, and having a genuine love for what you do. Sometimes it comes with the sacrifice of time, and a lot of yourself, but when you truly love and believe in what you’re creating, it becomes more than something you do. It becomes a part of who you are and, in a way, what you feel you were meant to be doing here all along.”
“I think I carry a lot of that into my own creative work now.”
– Tara Fox

As her own creative life took shape, she began noticing familiar traits surfacing in herself, the same curiosity, drive and stubborn persistence she had watched in her father:

“Definitely. Looking back, I realized it at a very young age. The older I got, the more I started building my own creative path. I began recognizing a lot of the same curiosity and drive in myself. My dad’s always loved music, but he’s also someone who likes experimenting with technology and figuring out new ways to create, and I’m very much the same way. I also recognize his persistence in myself. When I believe in something creatively, I can become completely immersed in it and keep pushing until I bring the idea to life. I think we both have that need to create and evolve rather than stay in one place. I may express it differently through my own music, visual art, and technology, but I can definitely see where some of those instincts came from.”
– Tara Fox

Finding Her Own Frequency

Tara’s work moves fluidly between mediums, photography leading into character design, music becoming a visual environment, a single image growing into something cinematic. She summed up the throughline in one sentence: “Most of my work starts from a visual perspective forming around the music.” Pressed on what actually happens in her head when a track starts to play, she described something close to a film unspooling:

“I usually start visualizing a whole world or environment inside my head when I hear music. It can be colors, lighting, a location, a character, or even just a certain kind of movement that matches what I’m hearing. Interestingly, I’ll even start seeing specific poses in my head, which ties into my modeling background and the artist merchandise I’m wearing. I’m thinking about how the pose, clothing, environment, and music can all work together to tell the same visual story.”
“Sometimes it feels almost like scenes from a movie playing in my imagination. From there, I start thinking about how I can actually bring pieces of that world into something real through photography, video, character design, or whatever medium makes the most sense.”
“A lot of it is based on feeling too. I’m not always trying to literally illustrate what the lyrics are saying. I’m trying to capture what the music feels like visually. Sometimes one small image or idea is enough to start building an entire world around a song, and that’s probably my favorite part of the process.”
– Tara Fox

Because she makes music herself, that relationship between sound and image runs in both directions, sometimes the picture arrives before the song does:

“My visual imagination is a huge part of how I approach music because I rarely hear a song as just a song. I’m usually building the world around it at the same time, the colors, atmosphere, character, movement, and overall feeling. Sometimes the visual idea actually comes first, and the music begins forming around that. That is how I identify with what I am hearing.”
“That’s helped me create an identity that feels very much like my own. I love blending futuristic and nostalgic elements, technology, fashion, photography, and storytelling with my music. I want someone to be able to see an image or visual from one of my projects and recognize the world it belongs to before they even hear the song. For me, the music and visuals aren’t really separate, they’re different parts of the same story.”
– Tara Fox

Reimagining “All of Me”

Stryper originally released “All of Me” on 1986’s To Hell With the Devil. Metoyer took the melodic ballad apart and rebuilt it as an industrial metal piece, mechanical textures, heavier beats and a darker, colder sense of space, a version that, by his own admission, divided fans. Then Oz Fox’s daughter stepped in to create its visualizer. The finished piece travels through a cyber-industrial landscape of machinery, prayer, electricity, wings, transformation and religious imagery, blending photography, original characters, digital manipulation and contemporary tools into something that answers the song while standing as its own statement. Tara’s connection to the original recording runs through her father, which made hearing the reworked version a strange and personal experience:

“I thought it was really interesting hearing something I’ve known my entire life taken into such a different world, especially one that, creatively, feels so much like where I belong.”
“There’s obviously a personal connection to the original because of my dad, so I know that version almost instinctively. But instead of feeling like the reimagining was trying to replace what was already there, I heard it as another way of experiencing the song.”
“The industrial sound immediately started giving me visuals, the mechanical textures, darker atmosphere, electricity, but also the spiritual side that was still underneath it all. I wanted the visualizer to respect where the song came from while allowing myself the freedom to interpret this version through my own creative lens. In a strange way, it became this really cool bridge between something connected to my childhood and the cyber-industrial world I create now.”
– Tara Fox

The visualizer’s fusion of machinery and faith wasn’t accidental. For Tara, the contrast she heard in the track became the whole point:

“A lot of that imagery came from the contrast I heard in the track. It felt heavy and mechanical, but there was still something deeply spiritual running through it, so I wanted those two sides to exist together rather than choosing one or the other. The machinery and electricity represented this almost artificial, constructed world, while the wings, prayer, and religious symbolism brought something human and sacred into it.”
“I think I was ultimately exploring the idea that faith and humanity can still exist in a world that feels increasingly technological. Whether we like it, believe in it, or are ready for it, our civilization is going to continue advancing with or without our permission. What matters is how we choose to rise with those changes, adapt to them, and still hold onto the things that make us human.”
“There’s transformation happening throughout the visualizer, but I didn’t want to explain every symbol or give everything one specific meaning. I like leaving some of that open so people can interpret what they’re seeing through their own experiences and beliefs.”
– Tara Fox

Her toolkit now spans photography, compositing, digital editing and newer generative technology, all capable of living in the same workflow. The distinction that matters to her isn’t which tools get used, but who stays in control of the decisions:

“I usually choose the tools based on what the idea needs rather than trying to fit every technology I have into a project. Sometimes the strongest starting point is a photograph, sometimes it’s something I’ve designed or created digitally, and other times newer tools can help me push an idea somewhere I couldn’t have taken it before.”
“What keeps it mine is that I’m still making the creative decisions throughout the entire process. I’m deciding the concept, the composition, the characters, the photography, what stays, what gets removed, and how everything ultimately comes together in post-production. I look at technology as an extension of the artist rather than the artist itself. The tools will continue to change, but having your own perspective and knowing what you want to communicate is what gives the finished work its identity.”
– Tara Fox

Music, Art and What Comes Next

Tara’s ties to Stryper give her an unusual place in Christian metal history, but her focus keeps moving outward, toward her own music and the visual language she is building around it. She has new material on the way, and a name for the sound she is chasing:

“Right now I’m continuing to build out my own sound, which I’ve been calling Cyberwave, a mix of synthwave, cyberpunk, cinematic elements, and the visual storytelling that has become such a big part of my work. I have new music in development that expands on that world, and I’m experimenting more with the idea of each song having its own setting, story, and visual identity rather than simply releasing music on its own.”
“I’m also continuing my photography, modeling, visual projects, and collaborations with other artists. I don’t really want to limit myself to one medium because I’ve found that they all feed into each other. I think the next chapter is really about bringing those pieces closer together, music, technology, visual art, and storytelling, and seeing how far I can take it while still keeping a human heart at the center of everything I create.”
– Tara Fox

There is something fitting about the arc: Oz Fox playing on “All of Me” in 1986, and decades later his daughter building the imagery around its industrial mutation. Music travels, families carry pieces of it forward, and the vocabulary keeps changing, but as Tara frames it, the goal is to keep a human heart at the center of all of it.