Abandoned to You
Artist: Re:Zound
Label: Vertical Shift/EMI-CMG
Time: 13 tracks/48:02 minutes

Up until the mid-nineties worship music was relegated to the Adult Contemporary crowd. It wasn't until artists like Deliriou5? And SONICFLOOd debuted that it became cool, and popular, to mix worship lyrics with contemporary pop-rock, thus creating the monster known as "Modern Worship."

This came as a breath of fresh air to the ailing Christian music industry and soon many other bands joined these early innovators in making this new music. Unfortunately, the popularity of Modern Worship has led to a glut of releases, making artists a dime a dozen and records often indistinguishable from others. The flame that once fired the Modern Worship movement has dwindled to an ember, being kept alive by hundreds of same-sounding artists all to eager to maintain the status quo instead of creating innovative worship-an ironic end to a creative movement.

Re:Zound is one of these many Modern Worship bands. Unlike many of these bands that attain popularity in the US market, Re:Zound has chosen an alternate route: touring heavily in India, Thailand, and Cambodia, achieving such feats as being the first Christian band to be broadcast on national television in Cambodia.

Fortunately they don't completely slip into the crowd of same-sounding artists. Re:Zound takes more of a rock approach, having as much in common with early nineties grunge music as they do with Modern Worship. Unfortunately for Re:Zound, grunge is another genre that has been done to death.

Some of the songs manage to create the perfect balance between lyrics and hooks, such as the opener "Beautiful" and the title track, however it all begins to sound the same quickly. There is nothing particularly bad about this record, but nothing particularly groundbreaking either. Standard rock songs with worship lyrics. We have all heard this before. Re:Zound does it well, but hundreds of other bands do it just as well or better; even with their focus on hard rock it is hard for this album to stand out amidst the crowd.

Noah Salo