I have heard the future of Christian Rock Music

Yes, sounds just as pompous as Jon Landau's original Bruce Springsteen quote, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't believe me. Okay the component parts from hip hop beats to funk rock beats aren't new but the bold adventurous monster they've lightning bolted together most certainly is. This is Techno Rock with a huged pulsing heart pumping fresh ideas into a stagnating genre. A rites of passage album on which the band lyricise the exorcism of their own personal demons as they journeyed down the road to Christianity.

They nail their flamboyant colours to the cross on opener 'psample', an invigorating combination of surging, huff like axework, scratching sampling and looping programmed rhythms. It's an agenda setting start which pulls us forward onto the edge of our seats, listening,waiting for more and more is what we get! Together picks up on the Shamen's single minded Dance sensibilities and along with the anti-racist "Are You Waiting", brings to mind the full blooded sound of those analogue synths we more readily associate with Georgio Moroder. Thanks to Phil goss's trippy axework on the former and soaring solo on the latter it all comes out sounding like rock. Title cut "Forget Me Not" subtly mixes and matches Gregorian chants, sweet soul music and special FX, a swaying swinging track emerges which could easily go toe to toe with any of the current dance floor fillers.

Highlights otherwise include 'Fear No Evil' and a sound which boasts the slick commercial nous of the Pet Shop Boys, the AOR influenced keyboards ang guitars of "Sun is Rising", the funky smokey "Flame" and "Spirit of Eden" and finally "Eyes", which returns us to the huge backbeats and dramatic rock guitars of opener "Psample" again crossbred with sharp contemporary power rhythms.

Thankfully, the guys never resort to sloganeering or cliches in their attempt to communicate the Christian message, rather relying on impressionist lyrics which credit the listener with a degree of intelligence, although at times we could have done with a little less intensity. But that's a small complaint about a band and an album which hauls CCM kicking and screaming onto the cutting edge of comtemporary rock. No mean feat for a British band's debut album. Go out and but it God is in the groove.

Brian McGowan
Score 9/10