I feel like I’m cheering someone biking up a really tough hill in the middle of a long day on the third day of a 5-day bike trip. “Come on, you can do it. Keep going, keep going! Don’t let those legs stop pedaling!”
And then he does, he stops pedaling halfway up this hill at the steepest spot so that the only option now is to walk up the rest of the way.
That’s how I feel listening to Ben Cantelon’s Running After You worship album. The first three tracks show him gaining momentum on this hill, but then he just stops. Everything else becomes slow worship ballads when the beginning had such promise with hints of rock ‘n’ roll worship.
This is the hard part about a rock critic approaching a worship album: I want the album to keep up its pace, to keep its focus, to make it up that hill. Petering out into a seven-track goulash of ballads doesn’t cut it.
It’s disappointing, because while the first three tracks are obviously still in the contemporary worship genre, they rock with enough punch to make them more than backing tracks for the local contemporary group. “Not Ashamed,” “God of All,” and “Jericho” have hints of the more rocking selections from Hillsong United. There’s enough electric edge to them to keep me coming back to those tracks.
However, if those three songs help propel me into the day as a soundtrack while I’m driving to work, the rest of the album lacks that same energy. Those first three tracks, though, show Cantelon has promise as an artist outside of the worship genre. Or at least he could bring some more rock ‘n’ roll to bear on future worship songs. It’ll be hard for rock critics to pay attention unless that happens.
