It’s hard to write a music review of an album when your name is in the thank you’s. The other day I wrote a review of Maskil‘s new album, Alta Products.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve known the guys in Maskil and been in contact with them for a few years. It started during my sophomore year of college. They showed up unannounced and uninvited to be the last act of a tiny talent show. I was impressed. It was just two guys then, a guitar and a bass. I asked the guys if they’d like to be on my radio show. The next day they were hanging out at my place and we spent the afternoon laying down some live tracks for the radio.

While they were in town I saw them perform at least twice more. I stayed in touch with them and talked again the next time they came through the Twin Cities. This time we put them on our radio show live. At this point I was involved with ReALMagazine.com and made sure Maskil made it to our Indie Band MP3 section. After all that I didn’t hear much more from Maskil.

Then I ran into Aaron Everitt, the band’s founder, at GMA in Nashville. Their newest album had been picked up by True Tunes Records and Aaron was trying to promote it as much as he could. We bumped into each other several times during the week, and tried (without success) to get together for a longer period of time.

Here I am several months later and True Tunes has released Maskil’s latest CD. It’s time to live up to my promise of reviewing the album on ReALMagazine.com. Unfortunately, I don’t really like the new album. The Maskil I know and love is really simple: acoustic guitar and bass. Occasionally I’ve heard them with more than that and it works pretty good. But this new album had electric guitar and an organ, it had drums throughout, and sometimes a piano. It just didn’t work. Frankly, it was a disappointment. The vocals and the lyrics were still excellent, but the instrumentation and production didn’t match.

My one hope is that someone will notice the shining moments on the album. The parts that get back to the simple Maskil I remember. The parts were Aaron’s writing stands on its own and the music supports it, instead of battling against it.

When you know someone like this and you have to write an honest review of their album, it’s really difficult. This is probably a great opportunity for Maskil. I’d love to help them out and encourage people to buy their CD. But it’s just not there. It pains me to have to rip into it. I guess that’s part of being a critic.

Guess who’s on the cover of Newsweek? Christian music fans. Best quote from the article:

“The only thing I knew about it is what was on TBN, you know, that crying channel,” says Ben Cissell, Audio [Adrenaline]’s 25-year-old guitarist. In high school, he listened to Bad Religion. “A guy on my soccer team used to wear an Audio Adrenaline T shirt and tried to get me to go to a concert. And I was like, ‘No way, I’m not going.’ I was a normal kid in a public school. I wasn’t gonna be caught dead at a Christian-rock concert.” By his sophomore year, Cissell converted to Christianity and began playing with the very band he

I’m getting really irritated at the way every Christian artist has suddenly felt the desire to come out with a worship album. It started as a cool trend where everyone was getting into worship music and it seemed like a soul stretching experience. But not it’s just getting out of hand. Not only are there more money-sucking praise compilations than ever before, but every artist is jumping on the bandwagon and pumping out a worship CD.

Maybe it’s good that worship is a part of so many artists’ lives, but it’s really odd that they suddenly decide to let it out now. “Oh, we’ve always done worship. That’s why we’re doing an album now.” It’s just a coincidence that a worship album will make you a lot of money.

I think it started with Petra in the late 1980s with Petra Praise. Then it started up again when Delirious? released their 2-disc set of worship music. Petra came back with Petra Praise 2 and then the Insyderz came out with Skalleluia, and the worship movement was on. Since then everyone’s been pumping out worship music left and right.

There was Michael W. Smith’s Exodus project, the City on a Hill project, Third Day’s Offerings, Waterdeep’s Enter the Worship Circle, Delirious? came back with Glo and the Insyderz were back for more with Skalleluia 2. Then came complete “worship” bands like Circadian Rhythm and Sonicflood and artists like Matt Redman and Lincoln Brewster. There’s even been a reactionary worship album from Justin McRoberts. This week both Michael W. Smith and Caedmon’s Call announced that they’d be releasing worship albums in the fall, and I’ve heard rumors that Rebecca St. James will follow suit (the source? Rebecca herself during an interview during GMA Week).

And the ultimate sign that worship is becoming it’s own genre? The crappy local bands are now styling themselves as worship bands, cranking out yet more versions of the popular worship tunes.

Call me a cynic, but this is a little much. It feels like God is easily forgotten in all the $14.99 CDs and $18 concert tickets.

Tonight the Dove Awards are being presented in Nashville. Do you know what the Dove Awards are? If you do, I

My real

I am an old man. Last night my wife and I went to a concert. The opening band played loud, hardrock, praise music. They sucked. Especially since they only played the current most popular praise songs, and played them poorly. Wife and I sat on the floor in the back of the concert, resting our heads on our jackets and talking about our days, completely ignoring the hardrock worship. We weren’t there for the opening band anyway. In high school I would have been in the midst of the crowd with my hands in the air.

When the main act finally started, we stood up to watch the show, and I realized we were standing well apart from the main crowd of people near a group of middle-aged parents who were dancing. Their children were no where to be seen, most likely death by embarrassment, a mercy killing.

I hung my head and realized I’m 21 years old and married. I am completely uncool.