I did my utmost to shut out past experience and listen to the new Casting Crowns album with an open mind. I tried to understand the phenomenon, to comprehend what makes this group so loved. I’m sorry, it was beyond me. Casting Crowns produce a sound midway between Creed and Michael Bolton.

This sound is used as a vehicle for sung sermons of various levels of cliché.

Promise Keepers should acquire the rights to the first song, “Courageous,” immediately, with its cry of “We will love our wives and children / We refuse to let them fall… / May the watchers become warriors / Let the men of God arise!” These are less lyrics and more instruction manual, and that kind of thing has never made for good art – just read the Psalms.

Yet, over and over again, the musical and lyrical content is the epitome of obviousness. I definitely don’t want to stick the boot into Casting Crowns for the sake of it, but my honest response to hearing this album is that they are a band who could only ever have succeeded in Christian middle-America. We should demand more than that from Christian art.

One star out of five