Reviewed by Tony Cummings

How does the British Church do it? Okay, America has Chris Tomlin and one or two other premier league contemporary worship talents, but good Ol' Blighty seems to be able to turn out truly excellent worship leaders and bands by the dozen. So no sooner have you added the Cantalons and Bluetrees to the Redmans and Delirious?es to your must-have CDs list then along comes another UK worship ministry offering breathtakingly invigorating worship. The Gathering is an annual conference organised by the Elim churches and now the house band have delivered their blistering studio album which shows the two frontmen Tim Sanders and Ryan Griffith to be top grade composers and worship leaders while the band, finely produced here by always reliable Paul Burton, punch home with all the rhythmic power of any number of stadium rockers. Particularly outstanding are the haunting mid-tempo "Faithful To The End", the thumping rocker "Found Me Freed Me", the moody "Lifter" with its memorable "you are God" hook, and the opener "The First The Last" with its inspired use of sci-fi sounding synth weaving in and out of the crunching guitar and socking drums. In the past Cross Rhythms reviewers have criticised the simplicity of many modern worship lyrics and in truth those on offer here are pretty straight forward paraphrases of Bible imagery and seldom stray far from musings on "the triumphs of his grace," "you have no beginning, you have no ending," "no one is higher," etc, etc interspersed with lots of use of the "me" and "I" words. But in the same way that the simplistic declaration of adoration to the Lord work within the context of Hillsong United's youthful congregations, these songs of full on passion no doubt played a part in over 1,000 accepting Jesus into their lives at The Gathering MAX event at the NEC Arena in Birmingham last October. And if you weren't there to witness this extraordinary outpouring of God's Spirit this handsome package also includes a DVD of some edited highlights of what God TV filmed at the event. On this footage one or two of the vocals are a bit rough and none of the four songs here are on the studio set. But the atmosphere is truly infectious.