Hail to the King by Hillsong London

Based on Hillsong London's new CD, ‘Hail to the King', it's easy to see why the group has become one of the more successful praise and worship bands in the country. Indeed, their Christian music, reminiscent of early U2, has found a welcome audience even across the ocean in places like the United States. ‘Hail to the King' offers the group's standard excellent vocals and strings, with occasional brilliant piano interludes, all wrapped in a British-pop package.

Having said that, it should be said that there is little new ground broken on ‘Hail to the King'. In fact, with one or two possible exceptions, you can divide the songs neatly into two categories: the slow songs and the fast songs. Most of the slow ones sound like all the other slow ones and most of the fast ones sound like all of the other fast ones.

This is not as severe of an attack as it might first seem. With the slow songs, Hillsong London actually managed to create a style that will probably be welcomed in evangelical worship services. Especially with songs like ‘You Brought Me Home' and ‘I Receive', there is an intensity that lends itself well to worship (‘You Brought Me Home,' especially, had me near tears).

Still, one would hope that on the group's fourth CD, there would be some stand-out songs that would be different, unique, and it's hard to find anything like that on ‘Hail to the King.' One notable exception is ‘The Call.' Even though it's an upbeat song, it relies less on the high-octane electric guitar than some of the other upbeat songs. And it does some interesting things with the vocals which I can't really explain, you'll just have to hear.

One final point: even though this review has focused on Hillsong London's success with praise music, from an artistic point of view, their ‘fast songs' are actually superior to the slow ones. They might find more success if they focused their time and talents more on the youth market and less on the worship songs. Not that they're not good at the latter. It's just that they're better at the former.