diff --git a/docs/source/news.rst b/docs/source/news.rst
index 3d90aead..8f61b9c8 100644
--- a/docs/source/news.rst
+++ b/docs/source/news.rst
@@ -2,6 +2,13 @@
 Changelog
 =========
 
+19.x / not released
+===================
+
+- fix: prevent raising :exc:`AttributeError` when ``--reload`` is not passed
+  in case of a :exc:`SyntaxError` raised from the WSGI application.
+  (:issue:`1805`, :pr:`1806`)
+
 19.8.1 / 2018/04/30
 ===================
 
diff --git a/gunicorn/workers/base.py b/gunicorn/workers/base.py
index ce40796f..881efa0f 100644
--- a/gunicorn/workers/base.py
+++ b/gunicorn/workers/base.py
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@ class Worker(object):
         try:
             self.wsgi = self.app.wsgi()
         except SyntaxError as e:
-            if self.cfg.reload == 'off':
+            if not self.cfg.reload:
                 raise
 
             self.log.exception(e)