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    The Phantom Tollbooth 2005/Alive

    Alive

    Summon Your Power

    (2005)

    Reviewed by Burton Wray

    Label Messageshout RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2005
    pop rockworship

    Alive started as a rock band in 2001, but they reached a point where they realized that their focus was off. Several members of the band felt that they needed to re-focus but several others did not. This resulted in the band breaking up. A chance encounter at a gas station between the front man, Stephen Miller and Ryan Hudson ended up with the band being reformed with several new members (another old high school friend was also added to the group). The reformed group finds their focus and mission in Psalm 68:28 which says "Summon your power, Oh God. Show us your strength as you have done before". This is a group that says that their desire is to see God's glory as it was seen in the early days of the New Testament church.

    This EP feels short with only three songs, but to the project's credit each track is more than four minutes long. The first track "God Indeed" is a nice pop rock worship song that would fit well in the contemporary worship time that many churches have. "Summon Your Power" is an interesting number with more sonic material. It starts off with some hard guitars that soften once the vocals begin. At this point, the song features more of a standard mid-tempo praise and worship sound. It is good but doesn't provide anything unique that has not been heard many times before. Unfortunately, the song should have ended by the 3:12 point (instead of continuing for more than another minute and a half) because after this point, it falls into the trap that many praise and worship songs do by becoming repetitive. The EP ends with "We Will Return" the slowest song of the three. This song also falls into the trap of being overly repetitive with the title lyric being repeated countless times during the second half of the song.

    This is a group with some promise but they don't seem to offer anything unique instead sounding like much that is already in the praise and worship market.

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