JesusfreakHideout.com: Top 15 One-Album Wonders

As music fans, we hear a lot of new music all the time from promising new artists. Some national debut albums really leave a mark on us, getting us pumped for the artist's career ahead. Sadly, some of these artists never even make it to album number two before they stop making music, break up, or just disappear.

This list is a countdown of our top 15 "One-Album Wonders" -- bands that released just one album before disappearing from the map for one reason or another -- leaving us to wonder what could have been with album number 2.

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#11. Reality Check
Reality Check

Release Year: 1997

With the success of any major group, there are bound to be copycats. And, usually, it's largely due to the record labels seeking out those copycats (or could-be copycats) and molding them into the next big thing to follow the trends. While it's a little unfair to call Reality Check "a wannabe dc Talk," the comparisons were undeniably there. And dc Talk's Michael Tait even made an appearance on one of the band's songs on their debut. But with their self-titled 1997 album (which released after dc Talk's Jesus Freak and before their 1998 album Supernatural), Reality Check had quickly become known for their highly energetic live shows (they even prided themselves for being able to "break" stages at shows), mixing hip hop and rock in a way that probably would have bridged the jump between dc T's Free At Last and the almost hip hop-free Jesus Freak.

The band began debuting new music at festivals (I still remember hearing a pretty fun one on a television broadcast of one of these shows) but they soon disbanded without there ever being a follow-up album. Resident rapper Rod Shuler started a short-lived group called Fleau, Chris Blaney went into (and is still involved in) artist management, while guitarist/vocalist Nathan Barlowe started rock band Luna Halo.

A few years after the end of Reality Check, while Luna Halo was opening for Jars Of Clay on tour, I had the privilege of talking to Nathan for an interview and asked about the demise of Reality Check. Being a fan myself, I said "I know this is probably old news, but what brought about the 'regretful' end of Reality Check?" Barlowe laughed and agreed it was old news before also confirming that it wasn't regretful at all. He added, "It was just time, it had run its course. We had been together 7 years and people didn't know that." He continued, "We just wanted to be in a fun rock band again. And I think some of the guys, God was calling them to other things. One guy's a youth pastor now. Guys got married, and started having babies and it just became time for everybody to do different things."

Luna Halo disbanded around 2010 and Barlowe has since been heavily involved in the group Five Knives. But for fans of Reality Check, we'll only ever have that pretty fun self-titled debut.
- John DiBiase

Visit our Reality Check page for more information about them...