Worth Spending your money on?
Posted December 17, 2008
By Nathan,
Before Worthy Dying For came around anyone saying that there was a band who could be compared to Hillsong United, Skillet and Evanescence probably would have gotten a lot of stares. And while Worth Dying For’s debut self titled project isn’t those three bands to an exact science the comparison is not that farfetched. Emerging from California lead vocals Christy Johnson and Sean Loche, are set to give the youth of this nation new anthems for a revolution which is portrayed well on the cover of the album.
To be perfectly honest the formula that Worth Dying For uses is rather shaky. Take the vocals for a moment, Christy Johnson sound like Flyleaf and Inhibited lead vocalists and Sean Loche sounds like a punk artists who has switched to rock. Those two switch fronting songs evenly through the album which could be a turn off to some fans that prefer only one of the styles used. Fortunately the album has 15 songs giving plenty of listeners to pick from. While Loche’s vocals stay intact on the opening solid rock track he sounds incredibly bored on his next song, “Unite” which fortunately has some complex music backing it up. “Let it out” is a good chick rock tune, the is electronically driven song is far cry from awkward sounding “crazy”.
The entire CD is a roller coaster of ups and downs but the ‘ups’ don’t go very high and the ‘lows’ tend to stay lower longer. Johnson builds up a lot of emotion in the light “lose myself” and “consume me now” uses a clever combination of Loches and Johnson’s vocals in the fast paced rock song. However songs like “all we” and the ballad “unafraid” are just not interesting enough and the early duet in “my only one” is wisely broken up early to avoid a pop rock meltdown. But even without outstanding songs the music gets by with some solid songs like the intense “at your cross” and “die to live” which needed to be a tad harder to match its impressive electronic base.
If Hillsong is the king of praise and worship music than Worth dying for is the rock edition, but sadly what Worth Dying for drifts too close to Hillsong with their simple lyrics and the defining song “holy” which uses these sole words: ‘We sing holy God almighty’. Anyone wanting depth or is not a fan of repetitive songs should avoid Worth Dying For like the plague even if the style of music strikes their fancy. All of their songs have worship atmospheres around and all 15 tracks (with the exception of the final song which is a reggae testimony) are simply praise songs. Sadly the focus is not always on God as what one might expect but the heart of their lyrics is often on how much the singers love God; a rather dangerous position.
The extremely repetitive lyrics and messages aside Worth Dying For does revisit many truths like ’You're the Savior of my life/You're the One that I lift high/You're the only one who can save this world today’ (“revolution”), ‘Lord I believe You bled and died/An atonement of sin for all mankind/Unafraid to be my sacrifice’ (“unafraid”) and ‘Now I am free, through Your love that poured over’(“at your cross”). “lose myself” is an earnest desire for God (and “consume me know echoes it) and “the change” is the actions that follow suit from believers conversions (‘A generation who will not let their lives pass them by/Today we make the change’).
As much as this might be a sad fact, another reason that Worth Dying For may not leave the store shelves is that young fans may dislike the forward and unchallenging lyrics while their parents may look at the CD and pass it up because it sounds like Skillet. It’s a no win situation that is one of the few mistakes that could cost Worth Dying For popularity. Technically solid on some things but lacking in many others Worth Ding For’s debut falls short of the bands potential.
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