Music review: Kutless - Believer


For various and sundry reasons, I didn't give this new release by Kutless a lot of attention in the lead-up to the album's release. I'm a bit hot and cold on Kutless - generally I like their stuff and I've even gone to see them in concert, but I enjoy their worship albums about a billion times more than their standard rock albums. I've long felt that Kutless would be better off just doing worship-oriented music - I mean, "What Faith Can Do" is a classic and it's truly one of my favorite songs ever.

But then the folks at New Release Tuesday gave their new album, Believer, a five-star review and raved that it was the best thing these guys had ever done. And I tend to give the NRT guys a lot of respect. So over the weekend, I ... umm ... tracked down the album (it's all on YouTube) and gave it a digital spin.

Gosh darn it, if the NRT folks weren't right. This album is AWESOME. Melodic, beautiful, sweet, honest, passionate, touching ... Believer is definitely the best collection of songs the band has put out. While some of the other reviews I've read have classified this as a "worship" album, I don't know if I'd go that far. It's definitely a worshipful album, parts of which that have very Top 40 pop/rock overtones. But this isn't your Chris Tomlin worship album. Heck, it's not even Kutless's It Is Well worship album.

The lead single, "Carry Me To the Cross" is a lovely tune that sets the tone for the rest of the album. My favorite song is the title track, "Believer," which I think may actually be a better song than "What Faith Can Do" and I never thought that was possible. "Hero" is another great song, and one that I think we'll see on network TV soon playing behind the scene of a guy reaching out to hold a girl's hand after a tragedy. And the rockers all have a Switchfoot vibe to them, which is a good thing. Really, there's not a bad song on the album.

And this all makes me happy because few things in life make me giddy with joy than tremendous new music and between this album, Worth Dying For's Live Riot and Starfield's The Kingdom the last few weeks have produced some absolutely fantastic tunes.

Believer releases tomorrow. Get it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Car camping in our Toyota Rav4

Image
My wife and I booked a tenting trip to Yellowstone National Park last summer. We had never been there before and were really excited to go, but weren't thrilled that we were sleeping in a tent in bear country. We are fundamentally too cheap to buy a camper trailer, and our Toyota Rav4 doesn't have a big enough engine to pull anything larger than a ladybug anyway, so our options were pretty limited. During a discussion of those limited options just weeks ahead of the Yellowstone trip, I Google'd "car camping Rav4" and discovered there's a whole sub-culture out there of people who have retrofitted their Rav4 vehicles to sleep in the back. We started devouring other people's blog posts and videos on the subject and quickly set about to lifehacking our car and our trip to suit our needs. So we did a live beta test in Yellowstone and slept in our vehicle. We loved it. Sleeping in our Rav4 was quiet and dry. We didn't have to worry about wildlife, and
Keep reading

Buff Pack Run Cap review (and bonus thoughts on Run Cap Pro)

Image
Buff Pack Run Cap in red (left), Buff Cap Pro (centre and right) Every once in a while, I remember I have a blog... And I've edited this post at the bottom. I've become a huge fan of the Buff Cap Pro, which is one of Buff's lesser known products (and one that I've never actually seen for retail sale anywhere). I took a flyer on ordering one from Buff's Canadian website last year and loved it so much I bought a second one on sale last month. The Cap Pro is a terrific little hat. It's like wearing a small Buff on your head, but with a little sun visor attached to the front. They can be totally crunched up and packed tight in a pocket, are pretty breathable, and keep the sun from roasting my increasingly balding head. While I wore a Tilley Hat for year and years, the Cap Pro has become my go-to vacation hat. It keeps the sun off my head and the sweat out of my eyes. And I can crumple it up and stick it in my pocket at restaurants and such. (Which is much
Keep reading

Travel blog: A glorious and triumphant return to Las Vegas

Image
Welcome, friends. It's been a while, huh? So, having survived this whole COVID ordeal for 2+ years, we decided to blow three years worth of travel budget in one summer. Which meant we had to return to Las Vegas. We started at a new place at Harrah's called Walk On's , which is a Cajun sports bar. I got the gator wrap, which was quite tasty. Gator basically tastes like chicken, so this was nothing mind blowing in terms of exotic flavours, but I'm not going to a Cajun place and ordering a hamburger - I want something weird enough. My wife got the shrimp Po Boy. We both enjoyed our food. We went back to Walk On's a couple of days later for breakfast, which for me was a pretty good chicken and waffles. It's hard to screw up chicken and waffles, and yet... I also had the most disappointing chicken and waffles I've ever eaten. Which was surprising because it came from Chef Marcus Samuelsson's Streetbird Fried Chicken at Resorts World, the newest big hotel/cas
Keep reading