Peter Furler ends career with Newsboys with one final CD
Posted November 17, 2010
By bigmac,
After great publicity from their previous album Go, Newsboys return with another album, In The Hands of God. This album is special for a couple reasons.
1. Jody Davis is back with the band as lead guitarist in place of Paul Colman, who left the band in late 2008.
2. This is the last album with Peter Furler as lead vocalist with the band.
Peter's decision to leave Newsboys came as a shock to everyone. No one was expecting it and had all been excited about the upcoming album before recieving the news in March 2009. Peter's reason for leaving the band was family. As he says "Everything in my life was falling apart." His marriage was straining and he was falling from the Word. Driving around in a bus all the time, he had ceased going to church and instead listened to audio sermons on Sunday mornings. He decided to stop touring and focus more on his family and God.
I was one of the very shocked people when I heard the news about Peter leaving the band. I immediately pre-bought In The Hands of God and couldn't wait for its release date! Finally it came, and after listening to just the first song, I knew that it was a great buy!
In The Hands of God begins with the very upbeat song “The Way We Roll”. It sounds similar to “Giving It Over”, only even more more upbeat, catchy, and with more music! This is definitely my favorite song on the entire album. Peter sings about life with the band and the many things they do while on the tour and how they built up from being a new band with hardly any cash to one of the biggest bands in Christian music!
The second song is “No Grave”. This song is a rock song that gets a lot more serious and deep than the other songs. Peter sings "No grave gonna hold my spirit down...Lord knows they'll never keep me in the ground. Ain't no grave gonna hold my spirit down." As I said, the song gets very deep, but has a good tune and is another favorite off the album.
The next highlight on the record is “Glorious”. It's all about acknowledging the greatness of God with lines like "Glorious! Shining so glorious! Though I stumble, though I fall, You remain glorious!"
After Glorious is the title track, “In The Hands of God”. This would be my second favorite and was a big hit on Christian radio, climbing to the top of the CCM charts. The tune is superb and it’s a great worship song speaking about how we are safe in God's hands and that He'll always help us. The chorus says "In the hands of God, we will fall. Rest for the restless and the weary. Hope for the sinner. In the hands of God, we stand tall. Hands that are mighty to deliver. Giving us freedom." This is an awesome song that any fan of Christian music will love!
For those who like a funny song in an album, “My Friend Jesus” is the song for you! This is just a funny track with a Christian message still in it. Peter sings about being on hold on the phone and getting so annoyed with how long he has to wait. However, the song says that if we were like Jesus, we would not be so unhappy and we would forgive easily.
After the funny track, the album moves to another worship song. This one is “Lead Me to the Cross” by Hillsongs. I really liked Newsboys' version of the song, with its very slow and soft music.
“Dance”, the song before the last, is a fast, catchy song. The music makes you want to (you guessed it) dance! Peter Furler says about the track "The song is about giving yourself up, stirring yourself up and stepping out. It's about being led by faith, believing the best and making the most of every situation."
Finally, the album closes with the soft song RSL 1984. Peter Furler writes the song about growing up in Australia and not knowing where his life was headed. He was a preacher's kid, but he had no vision of the future ahead of him. The song has references to names of groups and surfing back in Australia. It's a great ending song to this album.
I really enjoyed this album a lot! It's a great finish to Peter's career with the Newsboys. However, after listening to it, I had to admit that it was not as good as I had hoped it would be and cannot compare to the band's previous album Go. Now, I'm a big Newsboys fan, so if I think that there's something missing from the album, that tells you something. Don't get me wrong, though. They did a great job with this album, but I don't think they did enough. The album only has ten tracks and one of them is not even their own. So, you get nine original tracks and of the entire ten, three are worship and two others are pretty soft songs. Newsboys is known for their pop/rock genre, but I just don't think they made such a great display of it on this album.
However, of the few songs that were pop/rock, Newsboys did a spectacular job! “The Way We Roll” is one of the best songs I have ever heard from them! “No Grave is magnificent, My Friend Jesus is totally humorous, and “Dance” is just such a catchy song! These songs, and the good worships songs such as “In The Hands of God” and “Glorious”, bring the album's rating up! Any Newsboys fan, or Christian music fan for that matter, has to listen to this album as it has songs for everyone on it! View All Music And Book Reviews By bigmac | View bigmac's Profile
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