Anthems 
Artist: MCR Worship 
Label: Rockford Master's Commission)
 
So, I'm attending the men's group at the Evangelical Free church in my town (where I started attending Saturday services for something to do...and the preaching's usually solid). After the meeting proper, we meet for breakfast at McDonald's, where I engage in conversation with the youngest among us. He has just graduated from the Master's Commission Bible school in Rockford, IL. Probably because we talk a lot about music this morning, he raves to me about the praise & worship CD a group from his alma mater has produced. He thinks I'll like it because he already knows my tastes are pretty wide.

And, musically, he's right. I'm not sure how altogether varied Anthems is stylistically, but if Third Day had started closer to Chicago than Atlanta and had an Afrimerican female as well as a Euromerican guy for lead singers and came about as a result of grunge being born from prog rock instead of punk rock, this P & W rock group might well be the result. That's no insult. It's probably fairly original for a band of this sort, but not having taken an assessment of other Master's Commission P & W groups, nor those at other apparently non-denominational affiliated and culturally liberal Bible schools, I'll leave my claim for MCR Worship's originality a hopeful guess.

Still, it's an engaging and evocative sound that summons the album's anthemic intentions aptly. It's easy to imagine the audience's arms lifted up in surrender and obeisance to God during the concert recording that comprises Anthems. 

If all the foregoing verbiage appears to be praise (heh heh) preceding less laudatory remarks, well, yes. The weak link-and it's a biggie, considering the nature of the project- is the lyrics. The liner uncredited notes speak of how these songs intend to reconstruct and deconstruct the way musical praise, to "bring it back to to the concept of a heart fully surrendered, completely broken before the King of kings:God Almighty." When did doctrinally solid, melodically engaging songs of worship ever depart from that concept.

These overly repetitive, if forcefully sung, anthems that go on like mantras for sometimes over six minutes each largely leave me craving more text to explicate the points of the Lord's goodness and victory. The only original possessed of something approaching poetic meat, "Stop Weeping" reads more like an encouragement ot the faithful than vertically directed hymnody (anthemnody?). 

That style prog-grunge style they finessed over most of the set's preceding cuts blossoms under the group's interpretation of the standard "It Is Well With My Soul." Then, like Donnie McClurkin chopping up Bob Carlisle's originally narrative "We Fall Down" into a kind of Jesus jingle, MCRW make more mantric mush out of  the classic they just so beautifully remade.

Still, if you're familiar with the school and want to support it,  money from this CD's sales go to support Master's commission Rockford. But, the combination of unique sound and wanting lyrics balance out to give Anthems a 

Jamie Lee Rake