Review

"Alive! Forever" is the wonderful new release from Hosanna Music featuring worship leader Travis Cottrell. While Travis has released an album previously with Hosanna, he is probably best known for his worship leading with the Beth Moore conferences. One of the things that is noticeable right off is the understated way that the CD begins. A wonderful musical intro takes the place of the big "worship leader introduction fanfare", which I really appreciated.

After the intro sets the tone a bit, the CD dives right into a very up-tempo, driving song that extols the greatness of God. "God Is Great" has a really wonderful chorus set to a melody that definitely has some great movement. The arrangement is built around acoustic guitar and acoustic piano with a great rhythm section. This song also employs the many voice choir that comes and goes throughout the different songs on the CD. When the choir kicks in on the chorus and the dynamics are raised by the rhythm section, this song really takes off. "God is Great" is truly one of the great finds on this CD.

The CD then takes a very cool turn to the totally funky, "Your Name" replete with full horn section and big, big choir. This is a song that is not really complicated lyrically, but rather thrives off of the groove that boasts a deep "pocket" throughout the tune. This is a tune that I would expect to find on a Fred Hammond CD, but Travis with the help of the band and the choir, really crank on this song. You can feel the energy from the congregation that he is leading, to the extreme that they come right back into the song after ending it the first time and allow it to continue bringing glory to God during round two. This is definitely a song that I will be looking to learn as soon as I can for our church.

The next couple of songs on the disc are not new, but rather slightly different arrangements on the Paul Baloche song, "All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises" and Israel Houghton's "Sweeter" respectively. The arrangements are very clean and nice, pleasing to the ear for sure, but in my opinion they lack energy. We have been doing both of these songs quite a bit at our church for the past year and maybe I've just heard them so many times by the original artists, that I have a hard time getting those arrangements out of my head.

"Praise To The Lord The Almighty" begins as a really peaceful ballad whose opening soars on the voice of Tammy Jensen and a wonderful piano and violin dominated arrangement. This is another song that continues to build to an almost antiphonal crescendo for that last half of the song and really captures your heart to the point that you can almost see yourself standing in the throne room of God. The musicianship and vocal abilities on this CD are really top notch. There is a very nice "flow" throughout the CD of praise and worship.

The next three tunes on "Alive Forever" are familiar songs. "Friend Of God" a Michael Gungor and Israel Houghton penned song that Travis does justice to, but I felt lacked a bit of energy. However this is made up for rather quickly by the ever powerful hymn, "In Christ Alone" with the refrain from "The Solid Rock" added on for good measure. These two hymns are woven together seamlessly and the result is a very powerful, stately song that stands on its own very effectively. The third "familiar" tune is the almost "dreamlike" arrangement of Matt Redman's song, "Blessed Be Your Name". What is kind of cool is that Travis takes this almost 180 degrees away from Matt's original arrangement. This song has definitely become one of the new standards in our church over the past couple of years, so to hear a new direction in the arrangement is rather refreshing and I think it works well.

Typically you end up seeing the last half of a CD end up having some "filler" mixed in, but that doesn't seem to be the case with Alive Forever. It finishes really strong with a wonderful power-ballad entitled, "Be Unto Your Name" which is sung by Angela Cruz and Travis as a bit of a ballad. This song is very worshipful and lets you take in the awesomeness of God as you are drawn into singing along. It is followed up by the old song, "Holy, Holy, Holy (Hosanna) by Peter Scholtes circa 1966, with a bit of a middle-eastern musical vibe flowing through it. This song, although dated, is still as powerful as the day I first heard it.

Finally, the title track is saved for track number thirteen out of the total fourteen tracks that are on the disc. "Alive Forever" is supported by the full choir and is a song that I have tagged for introducing and using for this year's Easter services. This song has phenomenal energy with an almost chanted percussive section by the choir which then gives way to an overwhelming chorus of "He is alive, alive, alive hallelujah, alive, praise and glory to the Lamb!" What a song of celebration for the victory that Jesus has brought us.

Bryan Bloom