The Wedding:The Sound The Steel

 After releasing 2 full length albums, 2005′s “The Wedding” and 2007′s “Polarity”, Fayetteville, Arkansas’ own The Wedding pulls back into the station with a five track EP, titled “The Sound The Steel”. Joining the band on this outting is new lead singer Matt Shelton, formerly of the band Letter Kills. He brings with him a much more mature vocal sound than previous lead, Kevin Keihn. Paired with a more mature sounding band, The Wedding has created something that can be appreciated by both longtime fans and new fans. The biggest downfall to this album is that it is only five tracks, so there isnt a great deal of musical variation displayed, and several elements are actually overused.

   “Recieve” has a very straight-forward message in it, “You cannot keep us silent, We are the prisoner set free”. Christ has set us free from our sin and this message is abundant throughout this song. The imagery of the train coming is very dramatic in that, it truely is like a train coming when we feel the power of Christ in our lives. From a musical standpoint, this song, as well as “Return” and “Renew” overuse the gang vocals a bit. It gets very repetitive after the first chorus of each song. “Return” serves a two-fold purpose on this album. First, it is an outright notice to everyone that The Wedding is back and they want everyone to know. Second, it is our natural response to what Jesus has done for us. He calls us to “Sing of Me, sing of My love” and that “We’ve got to shake the world, we’ve got to lift our voice.”. Its basically the Great Commision, summed up in a song. The driving guitars of both of these songs really draw you in, even thought they seem to run together sometimes. “Return” does have a really great breakdown near the end that takes the tempo from driving to a much slower, yet more forceful version of the chorus.

    “Renew”, the third track on the album, is a song about drifting, breaking relationships, and in the end, being pulled back by God and those who love you. “So I’m shaking like a leaf, You keep coming after me, So as long as I can breathe, I’m gonna have to sing.” The final track on the album, “Redeem”, is the slowest track on the album, and probably the most beautiful. The sound is quite different than the rest of the EP, reminiscent of Waking Ashland, and Weaver At The Loom. Altogether, this song rounds out the 5 R’s quite well.

     While this album grabbed my attention straight from the get-go and has since become one of my favorite albums this year, it could have been the best album of the year, if it had just been a little more diverse. The gang vocals, and random screams and yells became rather repetitive after a couple of listens, but this EP is promising of a bright future for the new, more mature The Wedding. I look forward to hearing the continuing evolution of The Wedding and adding their future album releases to my collection. This album recieves