Review

One of the newest offerings from Vineyard Music is the enhanced CD entitled "Hold On". This CD was recorded in-studio in Nottingham, England and draws upon influences from the Trent Vineyard and features worship leaders, Nigel Briggs and Kat Regester. Being a CD birthed in the UK, you can really hear that influence in the very heavy guitar driven arrangements, although they have taken a lot of time as well, to add some really nice texture to the arrangements. Upon my first hearing of the CD, I was very impressed at the sonic quality of the disc and musically there are some pretty infectious tunes.

The opening track Shine On is a great song that I could easily do for a weekend service. It has some great movement, lyrical imagery and a chorus that is incredibly hooky. This song really sets the theme for the entire project with its references to holding onto God and walking with Him through our lives. This is a song that is simple, but not too simple and the congregation will be able to grab hold of it and own it.

Track number four, "Be The One" is an incredibly cool song. It has a vibe that really grabs you right from the first minor chord and has a haunting melody throughout the verse that reminds me of an old Steve Ray tune called "Riviera Paradise". The song then takes the turn upward for the chorus from the minor key to major and has some great lyrics. "This is your life, within my veins, flowing through this heart to lead to brighter days, Jesus be the One". The chorus really has a driving downbeat that pushes it along with passion before it drops back into another ethereal feeling verse only to resurface again. Grace is another really good song that speaks very eloquently about God's grace toward us and how we can be changed by that grace. I think the obvious strength of the song is the melody that drives it. It has a heavy backbeat and a guitar hook that really carries it along.

My absolute favorite song on this disc is "King Forever", and is sung by worship leader Kat Regester. It is a very simple song but has incredible energy and I absolutely love her voice and can hear her worship God as she sings. The only weakness in the song is that it resorts to overusing the word hallelujah in the chorus, which is probably the most over used word in contemporary worship. Even with this weakness, I think that the song still works incredibly well and transports you to a place of worship of God.

One last song that is worth mentioning is "Fool". It is a very sparsely arranged song and starts out as a very meditative and honest song unto the Lord. The problem is that Nigel forgot to finish the song and it is only 1:45 in length. I'm sure that he must have intentionally done this, although I can't help thinking that this could be an awesome song, if he would have written another verse and a bridge. I guess that is maybe just my programming after listening to song after song that is verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. I'm not sure how I could use this song congregationally though.

So, that is five songs with strength and vigor that I think will work well, which unfortunately leaves the disc with seven tunes on it that I was disappointed with. I could go through and list them song by song, but I think that the things that I found weak in these songs were pretty consistent throughout. Generally speaking these seven didn't have much to offer lyrically. Another indicator to me for a song being weak is that the producer tries to bring life into it by adding cool arrangement points. No doubt there are some pretty inventive arrangement ideas in some of these tunes. Unfortunately these were wasted trying to salvage a song instead of taking a really good song and making it a great song. One of the other weaknesses that I see in the remaining seven is that often the song doesn't really go any place thematically. A number of these songs have lyrics that are really a series of random thoughts that don't really tie together well and seem poorly crafted, while others rely on repeating the same phrase until you are really, really tired of hearing it, especially on choruses. There are places in worship and maybe even on an album to do something fairly repetitive, but those are few and far between. My feeling is that a worship song should take you on a journey with the Lord as you worship Him. A new worship song should allow you to say how much you love God, or stand in awe of Him, or revere Him or adore Him, in a fresh new way. The other weakness that I see in these remaining seven songs as well as many other "new" songs is that they are not new. Many of them are the same regurgitated lyrics that we have heard sung six other times to six other melodies.

Still, with five strong songs on the disc "Hold On" scores for me and is definitely worth having in my collection and it should be in yours as well. I don't know about you, but I have many CD's in my collection in which I have only found one good song. A CD that has five songs that are new and that will work well for my congregation is a must have.

Review by Bryan Bloom