Since praise and worship music has gonna extra common and popular, more and more projects are hitting the shelves for fans of praise music to choose from. One of the latest offerings is Unshakeable - Acquire the Fire: Worship for a New Revolution. The album mixes modern rock and pop talent with worship leader's renditions of modern praise tunes. The disc opens with Superchic[k]'s "Holy Moment," a song worlds away from previous songs by Superchick, and worlds better. The song is done in a more electronic rock feel, like something you'd more likely hear from Plumb, than Superchick's typical garage punk music. It's one of the best tracks on the album, and an excellent opener. This is followed by former Sonicflood frontman Jeff Deyo, and his pop/rock tune "Fill Me." Here starts much of the rest of the record teeter-tottering between modern rock tunes and basic pop worship tunes. The main problem with the album is it sounds like they can't decide whether to make it a typical worship project or a modern worship project. If you like both, this is a real treat for you. If you like just one or the other then you probably won't like the record as a whole. Nick Gonzales, Ron Luce, Jeff Deyo, and Melissa Tawlks all offer basic praise tunes that focus more on the emotions than the music, while Plumb, Phil Joel, and Superchick (along with Brad Olsen's portion of his duet with Luce), seem to have more polished, finely crafted vocals and songs as a whole. I must be honest to say I have a hard time enjoying the music of most praise and worship these days because it isn't about the music, but about the worship. This of course makes a CD review for a worship project especially hard. But while emotion and excellent music are fused nicely in worship by artists like Skillet, Steven Curtis Chapman, Third Day, Audio Adrenaline, and even dc Talk and the Newsboys, most other worship music seems to be lead by someone who's voice is just good enough to lead, but not necessarily good enough to do anything but lead a worship service (all this is simply my opinion and you don't have to agree). Unshakeable as a whole is a decent collaboration, but is dominated by artist Melissa Tawlks and speaker Ron Luce's efforts on vocals. The talents of Superchick, Joel, and Plumb, and especially Olsen, seem to take a back seat. While the promotion of the project seems to be pushing the project as an edgy representation of the Christian youth revolting and standing "firm and strong against the winds of temptation, artificial love, apathetic Christianity and the media." Indeed it is a project geared towards youth, but it's not for everyone. However, it is definitely worth checking out.

- Review date: 9/30/01, written by John DiBiase