Today Passion Conferences released their 21st album “Take it All which was recorded live at the 2014 Passion Conferences. The album comes ridding the coat tails of arguably one of their best albums “Let the Future Begin”. In August of 2013 a promo video was released with a dub step remix of Kristian Stanfill’s “The Lord our God” which peaked our interests at WorshipGtr.com. With that as the promo and Capital Kings playing a larger role at Passion 2014 we expected to see some more of the dub step dance genre of music in this album. While still a strong showing for Passion this album left us a bit disappointed.
Production
Like all of their recent albums this album is polished and there is definitely evidence of studio production, mixing and mastering. The album overall is well mixed and is a great representation of the dynamics and feel of the actual conference (less the dub step sweetness we were jacked about). While the album is polished and the layers of instrumentation are great the layers lack dynamics that make them stand out. Passion’s last album “Let the Future Begin” utilized strong driving drums and bass to enhance the dynamics and flow of the album.
Musicality
Overall the musicality of the album is great. Similar to production we would have liked to hear something different from the standard over driven AC30 tone that has been the standard for so long and what the actual event moved away from.
Dynamics
As mentioned in the production section above we felt that the album overall felt flat. The album lacked movement and the songs tended to blur together. The lack of layer definition and bass severely hurt this album.
Playability
The great thing about this album along with it’s predecessors is that it will be very easy to reproduce in the local church. We all love the stuff Hillsong United is putting out but let’s face it our small to mid-sized churches with limited musicians are likely to not be able to pull off Hillsong United stuff for a while yet. This album will serve as a great tool to worship leaders and guitarists in the coming year. The songs are radio ready and will likely catch with local congregations fairly fast.
Overall
While the musicality and dynamics left us wanting we love what Passion is doing as a ministry. They are producing great music that encourages us to be better guitarists and musicians. The music they are producing also fits extremely well within the local church. We are excited to see where Passion 2015 takes us and what new directions they take. We would love to see Capital Kings and some more synthesizer added to the mix. In the mean time we keep hoping they will release the remix of Kristian Stanfill’s “The Lord our God” which can be heard here.
