Just finished writing the M.Z. review and looking at the cover of Hovland’s Rise Up, I had a hard time gathering some courage to put this album into my cd player. I have no problem with religious pop or rock, as a matter of fact there are some religious rock highlights in my cd rack. Only after listening to the opener “Holy”, with its ingenious holy, holy, holy ... lord God almighty refrain and the three note bass lines made it obvious that this release wasn’t going to be one of these. The only positive thing I could think of after the first song concerned the vocals of Shannon Hovland which are actually pretty good.

You can imagine my surprise when I found out that Shannon’s husband Mark decided to spoil the only good thing on the album by harassing us with his lead vocals. This man sounds like an eighty year old that has just swallowed a bag of nails, twelve inch of sandpaper and two gallons of booze. Third track “This Is Love” might even be worse than the previous two and made me decide to stop listening to this terror. Rise Up comes recommended for deaf and mentally disabled Christians with no taste of music what so ever.